Homily for the Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist St. Thomas the Apostle Church – West Springfield, Massachusetts August 29, 2019
Scripture Readings: 1 Thessalonians 3:7-13 X Psalm 90:3-5a, 12-13, 14, 17 X Mark 6:17-29
any churches throughout the world have paintings and mosaics of John the Baptist M baptizing Jesus. Within a few short years of their meeting in the waters of the Jordan, both of them would be dead, victims of execution. First, John the Baptist would be beheaded in a spiteful act of revenge by the wife of Herod, who requested his head on a platter, and so, Herod ordered the execution. Jesus was crucified by order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea. Jesus foresaw his own destiny in the death of John the Baptist. John died for declaring that Herod had broken God’s Law by marrying his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias. John is a beacon of light against the darkness of the others in the story: King Herod, his wife, Herodias, and her daughter. By their combined actions, they killed one whom the king admitted was a righteous and holy man, just as Jesus, the ultimate righteous and holy man, would be killed by another alliance of darkness.
The light of faith shines in the darkness of death and destruction. The light of the LORD’S presence shines in our own experience of the darkness and difficult experiences of life. Jesus called John the Baptist a “burning and shining lamp.”1 John’s life is a model for us to let the light of our faith shine forth in the darkness, to live the Gospel in a world that often contradicts it, even when it puts us in conflict with those around us. Our vocation as Christians is to let the light we have received to shine brightly in every situation.
In his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), our Holy Father, Pope Francis wrote that “there is an urgent need to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God.”2
1 John 5:35 2 Lumen Fidei, ¶ 4