St. John the Baptist’s feast day is today, June 24. Around this time last year, I learned about an old Italian ritual called acqua di San Giovanni—St. John’s water. Like many Italian traditions, it’s a blend of folklore, herbalism, and Catholicism. Since my family is from Calabria (along with beloved literary witch Strega Nona), I set a reminder in my phone for this year to make sure I didn’t miss out.
The ritual is simple: around dusk on June 23, you clip flowers and herbs from your garden and place them in a bowl of water. This bowl sits outside overnight, welcoming the dawn on St. John’s feast day. Legend says that St. John will bless the water with morning dew as he passes by overnight. In the morning, you strain the water and wash your face with it to receive St. John’s blessing.
Tradition calls for the use of any herbs you like, but St. John’s Wort must be one of them, hence the medicinal properties of the water. Of course I don’t have any St. John’s Wort growing near my yard, so I made do with mint and basil leaves, hydrangea and prairie sage blooms, and the stinging nettle that persists in creeping under our fence even though I repeatedly yank it out. (The nettle has it’s own brand of healing, so I’ll count this as the active ingredient in my St. John’s water.)
It’s no coincidence that St. John’s feast day is near the summer solstice, the same way Christmas represents the arrival of light at the darkest time of the year. St. John’s day is also one of the only Catholic feast days that celebrate a holy person’s birth rather than their death.1 This feels important, like the institution of the Catholic Church is grabbing me by the shoulders and saying, “Hey, pay attention!”
The deeper I grow into my spirituality, the more Catholicism feels like magic . . . the more God feels like magic. Solstices, equinoxes, seasons, they all matter. They were all woven by the Divine into the rhythm of creation, so I pause to honor it. When I think of God this way, it feels like all of nature is an enchantment running on love.
At least that’s how it feels during the good moments. When I walk my dog at 6:00 a.m. and the world still feels slow and still, not yet woken up to the heartbreak of the day’s headlines. When I watch my kids run through the sprinkler, the water washing popsicle juice off their faces. When I clip flowers for an ancient ritual because I think it’s beautiful, and couldn’t the world do with more beauty?
Not all moments are good. These days, it feels like every instance of joy and delight is tempered by a haze, a heaviness. The knowledge of evil stretching its fingers, grasping for a chokehold on us.
So of course I’m going to fill my favorite pottery bowl with water and foliage and leave it out to mingle with the midsummer dew. It’s what centuries of Italian women have done before me.
Last night I imagined us all as God could see us, the Divine outside of time, watching this unending line of matriarchs walking barefoot on the land to gather creation. We hold our breath on a deep inhale, and that breath contains our trepidation, our fear and hope, our particular moment in history. Exhale: all of us joining St. John to baptize the earth.
The other is the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
This is lovely thank you 💜