Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist

Lectionary: 427/634

The king said to the girl,

"Ask of me whatever you wish and I will grant it to you."

John the Baptist died when a child delighted an intoxicated ruler, a puppet of the Roman emperor. He was beheaded because the ruler's wife resented his questioning her position in the government. Although he was resolutely faithful to the Spirit that moved him, and he spoke the truth which tradition and the Spirit had revealed to him, he was martyred by the whim of a child, the caprice of her mother, the intoxication of a king, and for the entertainment of drunken men. His execution was peremptory; most of the dinner guests might not have remembered it in the harsh light of morning. Only his disciples -- with Herod's servants among them -- would have noticed his absence.

The gospels describe Jesus' death with more ceremony. There is his last supper with his cryptic remarks about bread and wine, flesh and blood; his midnight arrest and sentencing by a kangaroo court; his audience before Pilate and Herod and their unexpected alliance, the procession outside the city to Calvary, and his very public death. None of that drama accompanied John's death.

I think we should expect the same lack of drama around our own Christian witness. We act in the Spirit of God daily with courage and integrity and no one notices, even when it involves great sacrifice and considerable risk.

The Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins describes our mysterious way of life with his poem,

  As Kingfishers Catch Fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Every person "deals out" the self; we act as we are. The Christian deals out that being -- the Holy Spirit -- who dwells indoors; that is, within our hearts.  We do "one thing and the same" which is Christ.

We justice -- or "do justice" -- in season and out of season, when people are watching and when they're not. This is not something we can turn off and on. We don't become Christian when we enter the Church, and shed it at the door. The Spirit of God and the Word of God penetrate our indoors daily, step by step, prayer by prayer, act by act, until our good deeds appear natural and habitual. Some might call them instinctual but they are not "second nature;" they are our true nature.

During a crisis our true nature appears. We remember with distress and shame that first crisis: the disciples fled the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter denied knowing the Lord and Judas betrayed him. Despite their bravado and good intentions, they were not half so courageous as they thought they might be. In fact they had not yet received the Spirit which Jesus would breathe into them on the third day, that Easter Sunday. Nothing but cowardice can be expected of uninspired disciples.

None of us can measure the depths of the Spirit within us; but most of us are pretty sure we don't have much. We remember too many moments when we fled the Garden of Truth to take shelter in conformity.

But we can celebrate the courage of Saint John the Baptist who spoke the truth at a most inconvenient time to a most unfriendly power -- and paid the price. And we can pray that our courageous prayers, inspired by a courageous spirit, penetrating indoors and appearing outdoors, might become natural, habitual and instinctive.