Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist
Today is the memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist. Recently, a few professional and amateur theologians, bloggers, Facebook activists, and twitter activists have compared the so-called John the Baptist’s method and Jesus’s method. John the Baptist’s method was conversion first, community second. For Jesus, however, it was community first, conversion second. So there is a contrast between a fierce John the Baptist who was mainly on purification and a meek Jesus, who was mainly on mercy. Today is a good day to reflect on whether the martyrdom of the John the Baptist is still meaningful? Is his death something that we should celebrate? After all, maybe he was just an unmerciful man who did not care about community.
St. Augustine, whose feast we celebrated yesterday, was an admirer of John the Baptist. From the Augustine sermons that still exist, he produced 12 sermons on John the Baptist and a particular sermon on comparison between Christ and John. In his particular sermon on the martyrdom of John the Baptist (Sermon: 94A), St. Augustine began with a question, “so what makes this man a martyr?” His answer was, “by telling the truth to the king who had become his wife, telling him it was not lawful for him to have his brother’s wife. It was truth that earned him hatred.” St. Augustine then proceeded with another issue, “You have heard that John underwent martyrdom; and if you consider the matter truly, he died for Christ. How, you ask ‘did he die for Christ seeing that he wasn’t interrogated about Christ or forced to deny Christ?’ Listen to Christ himself saying, I am the way and the truth and the life (Jn 14: 6). If Christ is the truth, anyone who is condemned to death for the truth suffers for Christ and is correctly awarded the prize.”
In his different sermon (Sermon 293:1-3), St. Augustine said, “Admire John and marvel him as much as you can.” Why? Because John the Baptist prefiguring the role of a priest. John is the voice preceding the Word in the Fourth Gospel; he is the vox before the verbum. The role of a priest is to be like John, a voice for the Word. The voice is mediator, helping the Word to enter the heart of another. If a priest has lost any sense of the truth, he is like the voice that enters the heart of another without the Word. So admire John and marvel him as much as you can.