I celebrate as my onomastico or “name day” the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist, 29 August. “He must increase,” said the Baptist, “I must decrease” (John 3:30). I need that rule of life.
St Augustine of Hippo (d 430) connected John’s sudden, violent “decrease”, his head’s removal from his shoulders, with the autumnal shortening of daylight, while the feast of John’s birth coincided with the vernal lengthening of days.
In the Art Institute of Chicago, there is a tempera on panel depiction of the Beheading of the Baptist by the Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo (d 1482).
You view the instant after the deed. Seen from outside the prison, John leans out of his window, guillotine like, his headless shoulders and angled arms still in place as a massive gout of blood jets forth the jutting neck. A servant with a platter stoops for his head. The executioner sheathes his man-length blade.
John was not only a martyr for the Truth.
The miraculous son of the elderly priest Zechariah was a priestly martyr.
John stood against Herod and his crony cadre of corrupted priests who backed his violation of the truth of sexuality and marriage.
Herod used his power to sin. John’s blood exposed also priestly corruption in a way that no one could ignore.
By the way, Herod’s command to kill John, the incorruptible priest, came from his lust for a child. Salome was a “little girl” (Greek korásion).
That’s the direction, of course, of the radical and aggressive homosexualist agenda. Their ultimate goal is the lowering of the legal age of consent.
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The sexual revolutionaries like to say “Love is love,” but in practice act like “All’s fair in love and war.” Taking this to its conclusion has sex being a fill in the blanks operation with anything animal, vegetable, or mineral.
A great day indeed. My family has deep connections with the Saint, John the Baptist. I was born in a city named after the Baptizer, St. John’s Newfoundland. My parents were married at the basilica of John the Baptist in the same city. My grandfathers were John. My Dad and a maternal uncle are John. My son is John.
The Basilica, due to the spirit of Herod was nearly sold. Benefactors kept it open. I pray my country and its ecclesiastics can be as courages as the Baptizer and overturn the contract with Herod that was made in the Fort Garry hotel in Winnipeg.
Happy Feast of St John The Baptist. Thankful for the faith of my fathers.
With great sadness,
*not with great sadness. Picked up voice text.
In our homily today it was noted that Herod’s ultimate sin was pride (the mother of all sin).
Herod killed the greatest man ever born, whom he rightly feared, just to keep his lust-fed promise and save face in front of his sycophants. Instead he ought to have heeded John’s call to repent. But he got his reward.
God grant us repentance!
Happy Feast Day, Father!
It was very difficult to contemplate John the Baptist’s plight in the prayers of the day. And I struggle to understand why God allowed it.
That corruption hates being exposed and those engaged in it are murderously territorial of their ill gains and their perverse proclivities is easy to understand.
But why no flaming chariots, an army of avenging angels, storming out of Heaven to the defense of John? Why wasn’t his head miraculously restored? Or better yet, never taken in the first place? Why doesn’t the story end with him triumphantly laughing in the face of the evil king and his concubine….
I just don’t understand….which makes me realize I’ve got a ways to go before I see things God’s way
Something to chew on.
Wait…
……….Is it just that we have to calibrate our sense of timing for Justice to Eternity? The chariots have been sent and are en route?
Oooooh! Now I see! His head will be restored onto his glorified body!
i respectfully disagree, Father, about the goal of the monsters being the lowering of the age of consent, but rather the elimination of the concept of consent itself. i expect their actual goal is to allow certain categories of creatures to claim the right to sexually exploit other categories of creatures ad nutum.
KateD: Just as Christ had to die in order to destroy the reign of Death, so John had to die in order to prepare the way. As he did in life, so he did in death: preaching to those in Hades, he gave the dead the opportunity to believe in Christ and be raised with Him.
“Beheading” is so much more descriptive than “decollation.”
The gospel tells us that Herod was so inflamed by her performance that he had promised whatever she asked for even up to half his kingdom to Herodias’ daughter (presumably his niece) and that when she asked for John’s head on a platter, he felt compelled by his promise and the presence of the guests to follow through and grant her request.
This shows that he considers the summary murder of a prisoner in his custody to be a relatively small matter. Had she asked for half his kingdom, he would have been unable to grant it since his kingship depended on the Roman overlords. There is no way that they would have let him hand over authority to a young dancing girl.
So the fact that he so easily accedes to her actual request says quite a bit about him.
KateD:
*
I can’t explain the method of St. John the Baptist’s passing, but to me his decrease(death) allowed the people to give Jesus their undivided attention. In a similar way the Ascension of Jesus allowed the disciples to give the Holy Spirit their undivided attention at Pentecost. This concerns attachments, things that can stand between us and following God more closely and deeply. Consolations in prayer can become attachments if they are given primacy over cultivating our prayer relationship with God. To me that is why Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to touch Him, so that she would not develop an attachment to His physical presence, to prepare her for His Ascension.
Once the Cho-mos and kiddy diddlers get the age of consent down to eight, all this trans foolishness will dissipate like flatulence in a breeze. It’s always been about the defilement of the children. Christ loved children, so the dark one wants to defile and pervert them. So easy to see if you open your eyes…
Happy belated Feast Day Fr. Z.
I absolutely hated the scene in the series “The Chosen” of the exchange between Jesus and St. John the Baptist when Jesus says somehing akin to “**Sigh** John, John, that zeal is going to get you in trouble some day.” It made it seem like Jesus was not totally on board with John the Baptist’s course of action – like it was somehow John’s fault that he got into trouble.
I’m a really broken person, so I tend to bristle over everything, I get that, but I like to be very careful about who I let influence the idea of Jesus that I hold in my mind. I detest when people put words in Jesus’ mouth. Jesus is way to powerful for you to just sleeve him up your arm like a puppet, and make Him say whatever you want. I think people who do that will have some explaining to do on judgement day.