29 August – Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist: Corruption exposed

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.  That’s their brass ring.

Korásion occurs 8 times in the Synoptic Gospels involving two events, the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Matthew 9:24-25; Mark 5:41-42) and the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:11; Mark 6:22, and in v. 28 two times).   Both events involve a young girl.  One ends in life, the other in death.