Gospel – Mark vi. 17‒29
At that time, Herod sent and apprehended John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, the wife of Philip his brother, because he had married her. For John said to Herod, “it is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” Now Herodias laid snares for him, and was desirous to put him to death, and could not. For Herod feared John, knowing him to be a just and holy man, and kept him, and when he heard him did many things, and he heard him willingly. And when a convenient day was come, Herod made a supper for his birthday, for the princes, and tribunes, and chief men of Galilee. And when the daughter of the same Herodias had come in, and had danced, and pleased Herod, and them that were at table with him, the king said to the damsel, “Ask of me what you will, and I will give it you.” And he swore to her,” Whatever you will ask, I will give you, though it be the half of my kingdom.” Who, when she was gone out, said to her mother, “What shall I ask?” But she said, “the head of John the Baptist.” And when she was come in immediately with haste to the king, she asked, saying, “I will that forthwith you give me in a dish the head of John the Baptist.” And the king was struck sad. Yet because of his oath, and because of them who were with him at table he would not displease her. But sending an executioner he commanded that his head should be brought in a dish. And he beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a dish, and gave it to the damsel, and the damsel gave it to her mother. Which this his disciples hearing, came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Thus died the greatest of them that are born of women: without witnesses, the prisoner of a petty tyrant, the victim of the vilest of passions, the wages of a dancing girl! Rather than keep silence in the presence of crime, although there was no hope of converting the sinner or give up his liberty, even when in chains: the herald of the Word made flesh was ready to die. How beautiful, as Saint John Chrysostom remarks, is this liberty of speech when it is truly the liberty of God’s Word, when it is an echo of Heaven’s language! Then, indeed, it is a stumbling-block to tyranny, the safeguard of the world and of God’s rights, the bulwark of a nation’s honour as well as of its temporal and eternal interests. Death has no power over it. To the weak murderer of John the Baptist, and to all who would imitate him to the end of time, a thousand tongues instead of one, repeat in all languages and in all places: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”
“O great and admirable mystery!” cries out Saint Augustine. “He must increase, but I must decrease, said John, said the Voice which personified all the voices that had gone before announcing the Father’s Word Incarnate in his Christ. Every word, in that it signifies something, in that it is an idea, an internal word, is independent of the number of syllables, of the various letters and sounds. It remains unchangeable in the heart that conceives it, however numerous may be the words that give it outward existence, the voices that utter it, the languages, Greek, Latin and the rest, into which it may be translated. To him who knows the word, expressions and voices are useless. The Prophets were voices, the Apostles were voices. Voices are in the Psalms, voices in the Gospel. But let the Word come, the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God, the Word who was God. When we will see Him as He is, will we hear the Gospel repeated? Will we listen to the Prophets? Will we read the Epistles of the Apostles? The Voice fails where the Word increases... Not that in Himself the Word can either diminish or increase. But He is said to grow in us, when we grow in Him. To him, then, who draws near to Christ, to him who makes progress in the contemplation of Wisdom, words are of little use. Of necessity they tend to fail altogether. Thus the ministry of the voice falls short in proportion as the soul progresses towards the Word. It is thus that Christ must increase and John decrease. The same is indicated by the decollation of John, and the exaltation of Christ upon the Cross, as it had already been shown by their birthdays for, from the birth of John the days begin to shorten, and from the birth of our Lord they begin to grow longer.”
The holy Doctor here gives a useful lesson to those who guide souls along the path of perfection. If, from the very beginning, they must respectfully observe the movements of grace in each of them in order to second the Holy Ghost and not to supplant him, so also in proportion as these souls advance, the directors must be careful not to impede the Word by the abundance of their own speech. Moreover, they must discreetly respect the ever-growing powerlessness of those souls to express what our Lord is working in them. Happy to have led the bride to the Bridegroom, let them learn to say with John: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
The sacred cycle itself seems to convey to us too a similar lesson for, during the following days, we will see its teaching as it were tempered down, by the fewness of the feasts and the disappearance of great solemnities until November. The school of the holy Liturgy aims at adapting the soul more surely and more fully than could any other school to the interior teaching of the Spouse. Like John, the Church would be glad to let God alone speak always, if that were possible here below. At least, towards the end of the way, she loves to moderate her voice, and sometimes even to keep silence, in order to give her children an opportunity of showing that they know how to listen inwardly to Him who is both her and their sole love. Let those who interpret her thought first understand it well. The friend of the Bridegroom, who, until the Nuptial day walked before him, now stands and listens. And the voice of the Bridegroom, which silences his own, fills him with immense joy: “This my joy therefore is fulfilled,” said the Precursor (John iii. 29).
Thus the feast of the Decollation of Saint John may be considered as one of the landmarks of the Liturgical Year. With the Greeks it is a holiday of obligation. Its great antiquity in the Latin Church is evidenced by the mention made of it in the Martyrology called Saint Jerome’s, and by the place it occupies in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries. The Precursor’s blessed death took place about the feast of the Pasch, but that it might be more freely celebrated, this day was chosen on which his sacred head was discovered at Emesa.
The vengeance of God fell heavily upon Herod Antipas. Josephus relates bow he was overcome by the Arabian Aretea, whose daughter he had repudiated in order to follow his wicked passions, and the Jews attributed the defeat to the murder of Saint John. He was deposed by Rome from his tetrarchate, and banished to Lyons in Gaul, where the ambitious Herodias shared his disgrace. As to her dancing daughter Salome, there is a tradition gathered from ancient authors that, having gone out one winter day to dance on a frozen river, she fell through into the water. The ice, immediately closing round her neck, cut off her head, which bounded upon the surface, thus continuing for some moments the dance of death.
From Macherontis, beyond the Jordan, where their master had suffered martyrdom, John’s disciples carried his body to Sebaste (Samaria), out of the territory of Antipas. It was necessary to save it from the profanations of Herodias who had not spared his august head. The wretched woman did not think her vengeance complete till she had pierced with a hairpin the tongue that had not feared to utter her shame. And that face, which for seven centuries the church of Amiens has offered to the veneration of the world, still bears traces of the violence inflicted by her in her malicious triumph. In the reign of Julian the Apostate, the pagans wished to complete the work of this unworthy descendant of the Machabees by opening the Saint’s tomb at Sebaste in order to burn and scatter his remains. But the empty sepulchre continued to be a terror to the demons, as Saint Paula attested with deep emotion a. few years later. Moreover, some of precious relics were saved, and dispersed throughout the East. Later on, especially at the time of the Crusades, they were brought into the West where many churches glory in possessing them.Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Rome, on the Aventine Hill, the birthday of St. Sabina, martyr. Sabina, the daughter of Herod Metallarius and wife of the Roman senator Valentinus, was converted to Christianity by her young female Greek slave Serapia. For this Serapia was condemned to death and was executed in 119 AD. Sabina took her body and buried it. Sabina, in turn, was brought before Hadrian and was martyred in 126 AD. At first the bodies of Saints Sabina and Serapia were buried in the Vindician field, but in 430 AD their relics were translated to the Basilica built on the Aventine.
Also at Rome, St. Candida, virgin and martyr, whose body was transferred to the church of St. Praxedes by Pope Paschal I.
At Antioch in Syria, the birthday of the holy martyrs Nicaeas and Paul.
At Constantinople, the holy martyrs Hypatius, an Asiatic bishop, and Andrew, a priest, who for the worship of holy images, under Leo the Isaurian, after having their beards besmirched with pitch and set on fire, and the skin of their heads torn off, were beheaded.
At Perugia, St. Euthymius, a Roman, who fled from the persecution of Diocletian with his wife and his son Crescentius, and there rested in the Lord.
At Metz, St. Adelphus, bishop and confessor.
At Paris, the demise of St. Merry, priest.
In England, St. Sebbi, king.
At Smyrna, the birthday of St. Basilla.
In the vicinity of Troyes, St. Sabina, a virgin, celebrated for virtues and miracles.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
