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August 29, 2022The Feast the Church celebrates today, the Passion of St. John the Baptist, is one of the oldest feasts recognized by the early Church. St. John the Baptist, the cousin of the Lord Jesus, was truly the precursor of the Savior. He went before the Lord in birth & death. John was murdered, executed, as was his cousin, Jesus. John the Baptist, “the greatest one born of woman,” is how Jesus characterizes his cousin, John, the forerunner and prophet who “prepared the way of the Lord.”
Baptist begins in his own heart. Can we imagine the humility it took John, who many believed and proclaimed was the Messiah, to point away from himself and to Jesus, “Behold, there is the Lamb of God?” The humility of John is a daily dying that every disciple of Jesus must pray for in our journey. The penance John endured as he lived in the wilderness and fed on locusts and wild honey was another level of his passion. The final stage of John the Baptist’s passion was his unjust imprisonment and beheading at the hands of King Herod. What was the ultimate factor that had Herod execute John? It was the fact that John told Herod that marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias, was wrong. John is in fact a martyr to the sanctity of marriage & to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
If we ran into John the Baptist today, in our modern world, most of us would dismiss him as a crazy man who lives in the woods. The reality is that there are prophets around us and many can be found in the places and forms we would most easily dismiss. A prophet wakes up our souls and consciences so that we can see differently. A prophet, like John the Baptist, lives a bit differently than the world. We are all called to live differently than the secular way of life we see in a world of hedonism or materialism. John the Baptist literally died for Jesus and for the truth that this world is not the end of the journey. John believed in Jesus, the Way, the Truth, & the Life. If we orient our lives in such a way that we live believing that love is eternal, then our priorities and judgements will be put into perspective. John the Baptist pointed always to Jesus and feared no earthly suffering, I pray we all can live without fear.
