The Precursor in Power and Wisdom, Beheading of St. John the Baptist, August 29, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, Summit, NJ
Memorial of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist
Friday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II (First Reading)
August 29, 2014
1 Cor 1:17-25, Ps 33, Mk 6:17-29

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we celebrate the final way by which St. John the Baptist made straight the paths of the Lord. He had been his precursor in birth, making a joy-filled in utero proclamation of his presence. He was his forerunner in preaching the message of conversion. He was his predecessor in the work of baptizing. And today we mark how he was his precursor in imprisonment, death and in a vague sense his resurrection, with Herod saying of Jesus the very words that the angels at the tomb would say, “He has been raised from the dead,” applying them to John the Baptist redivivus. 
• Tertullian said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of future Christians, and the blood of this protomartyr was what prepared the way for Christ’s own martyrdom and the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the apostles, and so many others after Christ. Christ himself made that link after the Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John asked him about whether Elijah whom they had just seen speaking to Jesus would precede Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus replied, “I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12).
• So we need to look at John the Baptist’s martyrdom in a Christological key. On the one hand John’s beheading seems like a sickening tragedy. But it contains within a power and a wisdom, as St. Paul would write in today’s first reading talking about Christ crucified. The martyrdom of the Friend of the Bridegroom because he pointed out the truth about Herod and Herodias’ putative marriage was a culmination of how John was trying to prepare even Herod and Herodias to marry the true Bridegroom through calling them to conversion. What he suffered was a foretelling of what Jesus himself would do out of love for the Bride.
• John had reminded Herod Antipas that it was not lawful for him to marry his brother Philip’s wife. The book of Leviticus had said clearly, “You shall not have intercourse with your brother’s wife, for that would be a disgrace to your brother” (Lev 18:16). Herod had gone to Rome to visit his brother and while there seduced his sister-in-law, persuaded her to leave his brother, divorced his own wife and married her. To make the incestuous matters worse, Herodias was Philip’s and Herod’s niece as well. For all these reasons it was not right for Herod to have Herodias as his wife. With a string of violent verbs, the evangelist tells us that Herod had John arrested, bound, and imprisoned. He wanted to kill him, St. Matthew tells us, but he feared the people. But eventually he would kill him when his vindictive bride pimped her princess daughter to do a striptease before her step-father and uncle and all his drunken courtiers to seduce him into vowing to give her anything she wanted. And when she asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter, Herod gave the command. And to the Aramaic tune of Happy Birthday to You, the soldiers brought in, instead of birthday cake, the Baptist’s severed head and presented it to this lustful, power-hungry, self-important little assassin. But while that day was a tragedy for Herod and all those participating in his Satanic liturgy where lust ruled instead of sacrificial love, where immoral oaths dominated over the truth, it was a triumph for John the Baptist, in essence, his spiritual birthday in which he was born into eternity and we believe leaped for joy again
• What John the Baptist suffered on account of his mission as Friend of the Bridegroom, as a witness to the truth, what Christ’s power and wisdom shows, leads us to a question Pope Francis asked two weeks ago in Korea: what are we willing to die for? What are we willing to suffer for? Do we believe that these sufferings for and in union with Christ, although they’re foolish and scandalous to the world, are the source of our spiritual wisdom and power?
• The Mass, in which John the Baptist’s words echo until the end of time indicating to us the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, is where we enter into communion with Christ and through, with and in him, with the power and glory of the Cross. We’ll be hearing much more about this on Sunday as Jesus predicts his Passion and our own through our following him down the path of self-denial, assumption of the Cross and following. It’s in the Mass that we will do what St. Paul tells us on Sunday, to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, our spiritual worship. This is where we become martyrs, witnesses, to Christ. This is where he decrease so that he may increase. This is where we’re strengthened to go out in love for the Bridegroom.

The readings for today’s Mass were: