St. John the Baptist’s death witnesses to the unity of our life in Christ

The story recounted in today’s Gospel (Mark 6:17-29) is a familiar one for people with a more than passing acquaintance with Our Lord’s life. If we do not know it from the pages of the Bible, we have no doubt seen it depicted in art or drama. John, the cousin of Jesus, has been arrested for condemning the invalid marriage of King Herod to Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. The king, intrigued by John’s teaching, kept him alive in prison for some time. However, at a feast in honor of the king’s birthday, Herodias’ daughter danced before the king and his guests, and he swore an oath to give her whatever she wanted. On the advice of her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Herod ordered the execution rather than go back on his oath.

The story is an all too human one. A political leader is doing something he should not. A figure outside the normal channels of authority dares to “speak truth to power.” This man faces the consequences of that courage and eventually pays for that truth with his life.

The scene continues to get played out repeatedly—for example, when political power and licentiousness conspire to keep abortion legal.

Yet the Christian tradition has always seen the beheading of John as something more than a parable about the perennial struggle between truth and power. The difference, of course, in found in who John is. John is not any political outsider; he is a prophet of the Most High God. Nor is he merely a prophet, though he does stand at the summit of the great prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. John is the forerunner of the Messiah. His entire being is encapsulated when he points to Jesus and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

The Church sees John’s death not as a mere injustice, but as a martyrdom. (Or even a “passion,” using a word often reserved for Our Lord’s own death.) The word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness.” John has been preparing for this moment of witness his entire life. He was a witness to the Messiah when he left for joy in his mother’s womb. He was a witness to Jesus as the Messiah, when he pointed out Our Lord to some of his own disciples. He was a witness to the entire Trinity at work in Jesus when he baptized his cousin in the Jordan.

And he is a witness to Jesus when he is beheaded by Herod.

How so? It is a truth that a validly contracted marriage is indissoluble except by death. Jesus proclaims this in His teachings even more clearly than John. John won the enmity of Herodias for proclaiming this truth, and that enmity led to his death. Because all truth comes from Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, John died as a martyr of Jesus Christ.

Yet I think that even more is going on here. It is a long-established image of the prophets to compare the relation between God and his people with the relation of a husband to a wife. In calling Herod to repent of his unlawful relationship with Herodias, John was giving but a single instance of what he was calling all of God’s people to do: Repent. Reform our lives. To reject the adultery in our lives and return to the God of our youth.

John’s death is a witness to the unity our life in Christ is supposed to have. We can be like Herodias, so lost in our own sins and lists that we call evil good and good evil. We can try to kill the voices that call out our sinfulness. We can be like Herod, people who enjoy hearing about the gospel in the abstract, so long as it does not touch our own sins and failings too closely. People caught in our own indecision and more interested in the opinion of our peers than in the opinion of God.

Or, with the graces of this feast, we can choose to be more like John. We can choose to become people whose words match our lives. We can choose to become people who witness to the unity of Truth. We can choose to point out Jesus to others with our whole being.

In contemporary Western Christianity, there has for some time been a neglect of John the Baptist. This was not always so. The Byzantine tradition celebrates more feasts of John the Baptist than any other saint beside the Mother of God. Hundreds of churches and baptisteries in the Middle Ages were dedicated to St John, not to mention countless guilds and pious associations that considered him their patron. Dante, in his Paradiso, sees John in a special place of the great body of saints in heaven, noting him as sitting on the left hand of Our Lord, mirroring the position of Our Lady on the right. In this, Dante echoes the tradition of the Deesis icon of the Byzantine tradition, an icon of Christ in majesty, flanked by John and the Virgin, who intercede on our behalf. This icon has become foundational to Eastern Church art, thus one will always see images of John the Baptist prominent in Byzantine churches.

Why this focus on John? What did our fathers and mothers in the Faith know that we have forgotten?

I am still rediscovering this for myself, but I am convinced of the following truth: in heaven, the saints do not become less of what they were on earth, but more. Far more. John was the prophet, the voice in the wilderness, the forerunner, the friend of the bridegroom. He is even more all these things as he beholds God in heaven.

On today’s feast, let us pray that St John helps us to see the truth about our lives. Let us ask for his help in hearing Our Lord’s call to deeper and deeper repentance and conversion. May his prayers help us decrease so that Christ can increase in us. And may he thus help us to be as steadfast witnesses to Truth as he was, even if it should cost us our lives.