Kept Firm to the End, Passion of St. John the Baptist, August 29, 2024

Fr Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist
Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
August 29, 2024
1 Cor 1:1-9, Ps 145, 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, through the paranoia of a guilty conscience, viewed 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). This feast used to be called the “Beheading of St. John the Baptist,” but in the updated Roman Missal of 2011, it was changed to “Passion,” specifically to link it to Christ’s Passion. So today 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.
• 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 anything she wanted. It was an incredible promise and Salome would ask for far more than half his kingdom. She would ask for Herod’s soul. She would demand that he 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 Herod 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. 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 entire existence 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, point him out, bring others to him, and help 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, his willingness courageously to announce the truth, to speak and live seeking to please God rather than men, to give ourselves along with the message, even if suffering and death be required. In today’s first reading, from the beginning of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians which we will be hearing for the next three-plus weeks at daily Mass (through Sept 20), the apostle tells us that God who calls us, like John the Baptist, “to be holy” has “enriched [us] in every way, with all discourse and knowledge … so that [we] are not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and he promises, “[God] will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Just like John the Baptist, we are called to be precursors, preparing people for the revelation of the living presence of the Lamb of God in our midst, and, even though we may suffer for it, God will keep us firm to the end if we allow him, too. We, like John, will encounter many whose consciences are deadened, who may seek to do to us what was done to John and to Jesus so that they don’t hear our words and example the call to repent and believe, 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 resonate 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 he enriches us in every way, where he fills us with every spiritual gift, where he makes us firm so that we may persevere irreproachable to the end. This is where we receive something far more valuable than even 100 kingdoms of Herod!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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