John the Baptist and the Vocation of the Foolish, Weak, Lowly and Despised of the World, Passion of Saint John the Baptist, August 29, 2020

Fr Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Memorial of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist
August 29, 2020
1 Cor 1:26-31, Ps 33, Mk 6:17-29

To listen to an audio recording of today’s 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 Christ’s presence. He was his forerunner in preaching the message of conversion, with the Word made flesh eventually echoing what the “Voice of One crying out in the wilderness” was crying out: repent, change your ways, have a revolution in your conduct. He was his predecessor in the work of baptizing, showing in a non-sacramental anticipation what Christ himself would sacramentally institute, do and send his Church to continue to do to the ends of the earth and the end of time. 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 Jesus whom he viewed in the paranoia coming from a guilty conscience as 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 and in a Christian key, because all of his actions point to Christ and insofar as our actions are meant to flow from our following and our union with Christ, John’s actions also implicate us just as much as they implicated Herod, Herodias, Salome and all Herod’s courtiers, military officials and the leading figures of Galilee.
• We can also understand them from the perspective of St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians about those he calls to his kingdom. In one of the most consoling passages in Sacred Scripture. St. Paul said, “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” It’s tempting for us to picture St. John the Baptist as one of the giants of all time, of the greatest born of woman, as the son and heir of one of the 20,000 priests of the Temple, but to the world, he was foolish, weak, lowly and despised. He lived not among the rich, famous and powerful but in the desert eating locusts and wild honey. While the meek and lowly came to him in great numbers, the connected classes thought him a madman. The only way he got invited to the meet the somebodies of the world was through being arrested and he was paraded before them almost as entertainment. But there’s a truth here we can’t miss. The reason why God ordinarily chooses those whom the world discredits is precisely so that they will be far more dependent on him. When we’re spiritually poor, we’re more aware of our dependence on God. When we’re weak, we’re strong. When we’re humble, as St. Paul says at the end of the passage, we recognize that Christ indeed is our “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” That’s why we prayed today at the beginning of Mass that the same Lord “who willed that Saint John the Baptist should go ahead of [his] Son both in his birth and in his death,” might grant us, in our worldly foolishness, weakness and lowliness, “that as he died a Martyr for truth and justice, we, too, may fight hard for the confession of what you teach.” That truth, in all its simplicity, was to conversion and holiness, for us to point to Jesus as the “Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world,” as one who had come, like John, to give his life in witness to that truth and by that truth set us free from sin, from living a lie, from the father of lies (the devil) and ultimately from hell.
• The martyrdom of the Friend of the Bridegroom happened because he pointed out the truth about Herod and Herodias’ putative marriage: John was trying to prepare even Herod and Herodias through conversion for the real love they were seeking down a dead end: to marry the true Bridegroom. What John preached by his suffering and death 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. And Herodias absolutely wanted him dead and was constantly looking to kill him. Eventually Herod 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 half his kingdom, to treat her as if she were his consort. It was an incredible promise and Salome would ask for far more than half his kingdom. She would ask for his soul. She would ask for him to murder an innocent man. As Jesus himself would ask later, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mt 16:26), and Salome was asking him to surrender his conscience and bring John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Herod gave the command. He had already refused to convert upon listening to John. Though troubled, he didn’t act. He put his own desires above the law, above conscience, about God, as had Herodias. And we can imagine 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. As Michael Pakaluk commented, almost all of the capital sins were being indulged at the party: “Lust, excited by the daughter’s dance; gluttony, indulged at the feast; pride, casting Herod to suppose himself exempt from the law; vainglory, keeping Herod from retreating from his rash oath in the presence of his lords; anger, stoking Herodias’ burning grudge against John; and envy, fueling Herodias’ resentment toward women who have their men without the reproach of adultery.” 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.
• John the Baptist’s whole life was a witness to Christ Crucified, to the Lamb of God who takes away sins, to the love of the Bridegroom who would lay down his life to save his Bride’s. He tried to get the Bride ready to receive the love of the Bridegroom. His whole life was directed toward Christ and toward this mission, a mission he was willing to decrease in fulfilling so that Christ would increase to become all in all. His life is a challenge for our own, for us to examine whether we’re really living in a way in which we point to Christ, whether we are living for him and dying for him, whether we seek to give voice to his Word, pointing him out, bringing others to him, helping others receive his love. In a special way, in today’s confusion concerning the truth about marriage, family, love, sexuality and even what it means to be a man or woman, it’s key for us to ponder John’s triumphant death today, despite the fact that the worldly elites don’t accept the truth, the one who enfleshes it and those who give witness to it, to commit ourselves, like John, to announce it. We, like John, will encounter many whose consciences are deadened, who will seek to do to us what was done to John and to Jesus so that they don’t hear the maternal words calling them conversion and holiness, and we need to be ready for it, just as John and Jesus were, for as we see on this day, if we die it witness to Christ that message will never stop echoing until Christ comes again.
• 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 become one with the Word we announce. This is where we receive the Body and Blood of the Bridegroom in the one-flesh and even one-Spirit consummation of his spousal union with the Bride. This is where we decrease so that he may increase. This is where we are strengthened to become martyrs, witnesses, to Christ. This is where we’re learn how to give our lives for the truth and together with the Truth, for justice for God and others. This is where we receive something far more valuable than even 100 kingdoms of Herod!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1 1 COR 1:26-31

Responsorial Psalm PS 33:12-13, 18-19, 20-21

Alleluia MT 5:10

Gospel MK 6:17-29

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