The Passion of St. John the Baptist

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Now it was this same Herod who had sent to have John arrested, and had him chained up in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he had married. For John had told Herod, It is against the law for you to have your brother's wife.

As for Herodias, she was furious with him and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to do so because Herod was in awe of John, knowing him to be a good and upright man, and gave him his protection. When he had heard him speak, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.

Today is the Feast of the Passion or the Beheading of John the Baptist.

His life was fuelled with one burning passion: to point others to Jesus Christ and to the coming of His kingdom.

With our baptism, we all have received a vocation to do apostolate[—]{.mark}the goals of our baptism: personal holiness and apostolate.

You could say that we are continuing on that Passion of John the Baptist, to point others to Jesus Christ and the coming of His kingdom. This is one of the purposes of our whole existence. It gives meaning to our life.

Scripture tells us that John was filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. When Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, John leaped in her womb as he was filled with the Holy Spirit.

He could not speak verbally, but he speaks by leaping, ever-sensitive to the voice of the Mother of God and of God Himself.

The fire of the Spirit dwelt in John, and made him the Forerunner of the coming Messiah. He's often called the Forerunner or the Precursor, the one who paves the way.

We could ask Our Lord in our prayer today: Jesus, help me to have the fire of the Spirit when I'm talking to people, the fruit of my personal prayer that leads me to have courageous initiative, to stand up for truth, to promote apostolic initiatives and activities; and to spend myself in making the goal of my life to bring other souls to God, concerning myself for their spiritual welfare, going out of my way, seeking them out in all sorts of places and ways, and very much living the vocation of the layman in the middle of the world.

This is where God has placed me. This is where He wants me to be effective and to do things.

It's here He wants me to cast my net. And often when we cast our net, we take in many fish. And of this fish, there may be special fish that God has chosen for us to meet or come in contact with, who, in their turn, have to have a profound influence in society.

Why did thousands come out to hear John the Baptist and to listen to him? What was so unusual about his message? Luke says that John preached good news to the people.

The angels at Bethlehem said, We bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people. We have beautiful things to say to people that enrich their lives.

I heard of a fellow from a very deprived background who recently was helped to get to school by a lady in a country area who looks after a number of students. She helps them to go to the local school, feeds them, and teaches them how to milk the cow, collect the tea, pick the tea, and other agricultural practices, and has helped maybe 70 kids in the last 10 years to get through school.

Well, one of the sons of this lady got diabetes recently and went into renal failure and needed a kidney transplant. No member of the family was able to be a suitable match.

But three of the kids who had passed through that homestead, who are now in university, offered themselves to see if they might be a match. And one of them was a match.

That 22-year-old kid, as an expression of gratitude for what he had received, gave his kidney to the member of that family that had hosted him for so many years.

It's a very beautiful gesture of authentic generosity and kindness. It's one thing to give your money or your time or your energy. But to give your kidney, it's no joke.

There is an inherent goodness in every human person. You have to try and foster that with formation, with Christian formation. From the things we do, from the things we say, from the way we live, we spread the truth.

People recognize John as an extraordinary man of God and a prophet for their times. He came from the wilderness and the spirit and power of Elijah.

We're told in the Book of Kings about the power of Elijah, and later, how John was led by the spirit into the wilderness prior to his ministry.

He was tested and grew in the Word of God. He exposed himself to be formed by God in mind and in heart. John's clothing was reminiscent of the prophet Elijah. He led a life of penance.

And then he proclaims the truth, and that gets him into hot water.

We're told in St. Mark that an opportunity came on Herod's birthday, when he gave a banquet for the nobles of his court, his army officers, and the leading figures in Galilee.

When the daughter of this same Herodias came in and danced, she delighted Herod and his guests. So the king said to the girl, Ask me anything you like and I will give it to you. He swore her an oath: I will give you anything you ask, even half my kingdom.

She went out and said to her mother, What shall I ask for? She replied, The head of John the Baptist.

One of the leading figures in this whole story is Herodias. She's a classic example of freedom to choose. She could be the patron saint of all radical feminists.

She wanted freedom to choose to marry whoever she wanted. She wanted freedom to choose not to give any moral formation to her daughter. Her daughter was a temptress.

She wanted freedom to choose to hate religion. She wanted the head of John the Baptist.

Whenever we hear the phrase, freedom to choose, it's important to finish the slogan. Freedom to choose what? Very often it's freedom to choose to murder human beings.

John broke the prophetic silence of the previous centuries and he began to speak the Word of God to the people of Israel.

His message was similar to the message of the Old Testament prophets who chided the people for their unfaithfulness and who tried to awaken true repentance in them.

When we look at the life and teachings of John the Baptist, we could ask Our Lord: Lord, give me the grace of true repentance. Help me to recognize myself as a sinner.

All the saints had a great awareness that they were sinners first and foremost, and therefore they wanted to make amends for their sins.

Among a people unconcerned with the things of God, it was John’s work to awaken their interest, unsettle them from their complacency, and arouse in them enough goodwill to recognize and receive Christ when He came.

Now, 2,000 years later, our situation is not all that different. We're here also to awaken people's interests, unsettle them from their complacency, to drown evil in an abundance of good.

John the Baptist, and his Passion or Beheading, have a lot to say to us.

When God acts to save us, He graciously fills us with His Holy Spirit and makes our faith alive to His promises. God wants to fill us with His glory all the days of our life, from birth until death.

We could look at the Passion and Death of John the Baptist and we might be tempted to say, But what a waste! What was the fruitfulness of all of this?

In an encyclical of Pope Francis called Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), in chapter 279, he says some very interesting things in this regard.

He says, “Because we do not always see these seeds growing, we need an interior certainty, a conviction that God is able to act in every situation, even amid apparent setbacks: ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels.’ This certainty is often called ‘a sense of mystery.’”

When we look at the difficulties and the challenges, and maybe the sorrows and the loss occasioned by this current pandemic, we also have faith and hope and trust that God is going to bring great good out of all of this; that many souls will come to see the fleeting nature of this life and learn to put their trust more in spiritual things, and put their souls in order, and come to live the life of grace.

When we see things that may be apparently fruitless, we know that the seeds have been sown and they’re growing on the inside. Our Lord says, My chosen ones do not work in vain.

Every seed that we sow in souls, every piece of doctrine that we transmit; every piece of good example; every little bit of fidelity to our mission and vocation, like John the Baptist, over time, produces all the fruits in the world.

In Evangelii Gaudium, we’re told, “The sense of mystery involves knowing with certitude that all those who entrust themselves to God in love will bear good fruit. That fruitfulness” of our lives, of our dedication, of our commitment, of our seriousness “is often invisible, elusive, unquantifiable.”

Every little act of virtue that you perform on a daily basis for your family, in your marriage, ultimately this produces immense fruits down through the centuries.

You set in train a whole series of values that get passed on from generation to generation; hence the importance of corresponding to our baptismal vocation with all the effort that we can. “We can know quite well that our lives will be fruitful, without claiming to know how, or where, or when.”

As John the Baptist was led to his death, such precarious circumstances, in such a trivial way, he must have had great faith and trust: these are the ways of God. I will be like the grain of wheat that falls into the ground. But I know I will bring tremendous fruit.

“We can be sure that none of our acts of love are lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others.”

Christ came to teach us to forget about ourselves. We solve all our own problems by thinking about the others. These times are great times for charity, for kindness, for attentiveness. For seeking out the lost sheep. For going the extra mile.

This great reality encircles our whole life and our world “like a vital force.” The Holy Spirit is at work.

“It might seem at times that our work is fruitless, but mission is not like a business transaction or investment, or even a humanitarian activity,” says Pope Francis. “It's not a show where we count how many people come as a result of our publicity; it is something much deeper, which escapes all measurement.”

Many years ago I was talking to the Archbishop of Singapore. I was alone with him, talking about some matter, and he began to ask me about the activities of Opus Dei in Singapore.

At a certain moment, he asked me, How many people attend those meditations for young people on a Saturday afternoon? And sometimes we might have had three and sometimes five. The Work was very much in its infancy in Singapore at the time. On a really good day, we might have had twelve.

But I realized that probably when he heard numbers from other people, from other supernatural families in the Church or in parishes, he would be hearing figures in the hundreds.

I tried to push it as much as I could, and I said, Well, sometimes we might get fifteen, which seemed very paltry, compared to the sort of numbers he was used to hearing.

And then suddenly he commented and said, You're not interested in big numbers, are you? I had to sit back and realize, Well, that's true. We're not interested in big numbers. That's not the way we function. We function with small numbers, but we try to give them a lot of formation.

We know that through those small numbers, the ones and the twos and the threes, at a talk, at a circle, at a recollection, at a meditation, through those, the seed will get transmitted, and the great fruitfulness that God wants will come in this particular way.

“The fruitfulness can escape all measurement. It may be that the Lord,” says Pope Francis, “uses our sacrifices to shower blessings in another part of the world which we will never visit.”

We don't know the fruitfulness that can come from the simple things we do.

I remember a teacher of ours in Rome, a priest, who was commenting on how one day St Josemaría, when he was seven years of age, was taught in a class by an elderly Piarist brother in the school where he was.

That brother wrote the Spiritual Communion on the blackboard to teach all these kids as they prepared for their first Holy Communion. Fifty rough kids in a very rural place in rural Spain.

What he didn't know was that one of those kids was going to become a saint, that he was going to memorize that Spiritual Communion and transmit it to millions and millions and millions of people all over the world, until the end of time.

Each teacher commented that that teacher in that class, that holy brother, could not have had any idea of the fruitfulness that was going to come from that one single action that he did one day in a very ordinary class, in a very hidden and silent classroom.

Likewise, God wants to multiply everything we do, like the grains of sand on the seashore. So, we can dream of all the wonderful things that God wants to do with our correspondence.

Something like these thoughts must have buoyed up John the Baptist in this rather difficult moment from a human point of view.

“The Holy Spirit works as He wills, when He wills, and where He wills. We entrust ourselves without intending to see striking results.”

What did John the Baptist see as he went to his death? Well, probably very little, almost nothing. But he knew that his commitment was necessary.

We can learn from him “to rest in the tenderness of the arms of Our Father God, in the midst of our creative and generous commitment. Lord, teach me to keep marching forward. Help me to give you everything. Help me to allow you to make my efforts bear fruit in your own good time.”

Cardinal Pell, in one of his diaries of the moment, often quotes a phrase that he learned from somebody else, which is “truth is the daughter of time.” Many wonderful things are the daughter of time.

Lord, I want to renew the offering of my life to you and thank you for your mercy towards me.

St. Luke mentions in particular two groups of people who came to John for spiritual advice: tax collectors and Jewish soldiers who belonged to the peacekeeping force.

Both of these groups were questionable by the Pharisees and were treated as outcasts. But John's message of repentance was very practical.

The girl at once rushed back to the king and made her request: I want you to give me John the Baptist's head immediately on a dish.

The king was deeply distressed, thinking of the oaths he had sworn and of his guests, and he was reluctant to break his word to her. At once the king sent one of his bodyguards with orders to bring John's head.

The man went off and beheaded him in the prison. Then he brought the head on a dish and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. When John's disciples heard about this, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

During his life of preaching, John, in principle, told the people three things:

First, they must share their goods with one another, especially with those who lack the necessities of life. Very often this is one of the ways that we put into practice the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. True love is sacrificial and generous.

Secondly, he said, each one must give each person their due, and take no advantage of another because of their position or status. Justice.

He said that those who have the duty to collect money from others must charge no more than what is rightfully due. The tax collectors were often hated by the people because they made handsome profits for themselves by overcharging others. Those who have authority over others should not demand more than what is right and just.

Soldiers in the Roman army were able to compel any citizen to assist them when they needed, such as carrying their weapons for them or giving them food and drink. But they often abused that position, forcing people to do more for them than was necessary. John didn't tell them to leave their profession, but he just told them to be good soldiers.

John also, thirdly, exhorted his listeners to be content with what they had and to avoid coveting what rightfully belonged to another.

Lord, teach me how to be content with what I have, content with what you've given me; to thank you every day of my life for all the good things, particularly when you've blessed me in so many ways.

John, you could say, called the people to turn back to God, to walk in His way of love and righteousness. Whenever the Gospel is preached, it has the power to awaken faith in people and to change their lives for the good.

There may be many lost sheep in our field of vision, but we can have great faith in Our Lord, that His grace can work wonders.

The message of good news that John preached inspired many people to believe that God was about to do extraordinary things among them. They wondered whether in fact John himself might be the promised Messiah, the one who would deliver them from their oppression.

By contrast with the Messiah, John considered himself lower than the lowest slave. Profound humility.

His task was to simply awaken their interest, unsettle them from their complacency, and arouse in them enough goodwill to recognize the Messiah when He came.

With John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit is working. It begins the restoration to the human race of the divine likeness, prefiguring what would be achieved with and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Chiara Lubich, the founder of Focolare, says, If you are suffering, unite your sorrow to His sorrow. Unite your Mass to His Mass, especially at the Consecration.

She said the world would probably not understand this advice, but do not be disturbed. It's enough that Jesus, Mary, and the saints know what is going on. Live in union with them then. Let your blood flow for the benefit of all mankind, just as He did.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, By uniting ourselves with Christ's sacrifice, we can make our lives a sacrifice to God. The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascetical struggle and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes.

The Feast of John the Baptist has particular things to say to us. We can lift up our lives to see new importance in the little things of each day.

In the World Youth Day in 2001, John Paul II told young people, When the Cross is embraced, it becomes a sign of love and of total self-giving. To carry it behind Christ means to be united with Him in offering the greatest proof of love.

The drunken oath of a king with a shallow sense of honor, a seductive dance, and the hateful heart of a queen, all combined to bring about the martyrdom of John the Baptist, the greatest prophet who suffered the fate of so many Old Testament prophets before him: rejection and martyrdom.

“The voice of one crying in the desert” did not hesitate to accuse the guilty, did not hesitate to speak the truth. What possesses a man that he would give up his very life?

This great religious reformer was sent by God to prepare the people for the Messiah. His vocation was one of selfless giving, and the only power that he claimed was the Spirit of Yahweh. “I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

Scripture tells us that many people followed John looking to him for hope, perhaps in anticipation of some great messianic power. But John never allowed himself the false honor of receiving these people for his glory. He knew that his calling was one of preparation.

When the time came, he led his disciples to Jesus. As told in the Gospel of St. John, The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. As he watched Jesus walk by, he said, Behold the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.

It is John the Baptist who has pointed the way to Christ. His life and his death were a giving over of self for God and other people.

His simple style of life was one of complete detachment from earthly possessions. His heart was centered on God and on the call that he heard from the Spirit of God speaking to his heart. Confident of God's grace, he had the courage to speak words of condemnation, repentance, and salvation.

Each of us has a calling to which we must listen. None of us will ever repeat the mission of John, and yet we are called to that very mission. It is the role of the Christian to witness to Jesus.

Whatever our position in the world, we are called to be disciples of Christ. By our words and deeds, others should realize that we live in the joy of knowing that Jesus is Lord.

We don't depend on our own limited resources, but we draw strength from the vastness of Christ's saving grace. “He must increase and I must decrease.”

St. Josemaría says in The Forge, The Cross symbolizes the life of an apostle of Christ, with a strength and a truth that delight both soul and body, though sometimes it is hard, and we can feel its weight.

We could ask Our Lady that from the contemplation of the Passion and Beheading of John the Baptist, we might grow in that courageous initiative that he had to fulfill the mission that God has given to us in a most faithful way.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

PN