The Orthodox Church commemorates today the First and Second Finding of the Venerable Head of John the Baptist.
The first finding came to pass during the middle years of the fourth century, through a revelation of the holy Forerunner to two monks, who came to Jerusalem to worship our Saviour’s Tomb.
One of them took the venerable head in a clay jar to Emesa in Syria. After his death, it went from the hands of one person to another, until it came into the possession of a certain priest-monk named Eustathius, an Arian.
Because he ascribed to his own false belief the miracles wrought through the relic of the holy Baptist, he was driven from the cave in which he dwelt, and by dispensation forsook the holy head, which was again made known through a revelation of Saint John, and was found in a water jar, about the year 430, in the days of the Emperor Theodosius the Younger, when Uranius was Bishop of Emesa.
