St John

you are that John who baptized God;
you were praised by an archangel
before you were begotten by your father;
for you were full of God
before you were born of your mother;
you knew God before you knew the world;
you showed your mother the mother bearing God
before the mother who bore you within her
showed you the day.
It was of you that God said:
'Among them that are born of women
there has not risen a greater'.

To you, sir, who are so great, holy and blessed,comes a guilty, creeping thing,a wretched little man
whose senses are almost dead with grief,and, what grieves him even more, a sinner with a dead soul.

-Anselm
Prayer to John the Baptist
The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm