29 August 2018
Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist
King Herod was not blind: he was deaf: “When [Herod] heard [John] speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked tolisten to him.”
This deafness of Herod, or even the hard-heartedness of Herodias, can be something any of us struggle with. How often do we hear a powerful, stirring homily, perhaps even one that gives us chills, and it results in absolutely no change in how we live our life? Or how often do we hear what the Church teaches, or what Christ says in the Gospels, and our hearts recoil in anger, hatred, or self-assurance that “we know better?” Or we play it off, thinking, “The Church needs to get with the times” or “God understands me.” Making oneself God does not absolve sin; it compounds it. Herod was king: who was this skin-clad locust-eater to tell the king that his marriage is unlawful? Herodias was queen, wed to the half-brother of her previous husband (whom she divorced): who was this celibate, desert hermit to criticize her remarriage?
Herodias was her own god: she knew her marriage was unlawful and not only did not care, but would not suffer anyone to question it. But if she was so sure of her own righteousness in the matter, why such a drastic reaction? Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen shares a story that can give us insight not only into these two Biblical characters but also into our own struggles with accepting the will of God and the wisdom of the Church, of listening to both:
“I remember a stewardess on an international airline who began instructions [in Catholicism]. When we came to the subject of confession and sin, she said that she could not continue. I begged her to take one more hour of instruction, and then if she did not like what was said, she could leave. At the end of the second hour on that subject, she became almost violent and shouted: “Now I’ll never join the Church after what I have heard about confessing sin.” I said to her: “There is no proportion whatever between what you have heard and the way you are acting. Have you ever had an abortion?” She hung her head in shame and admitted that she had. That was the difficulty; it was not the sacrament of Penance. Later on I received her into the Church and baptized her first child. From my experience it is always well never to pay attention to whatpeople say, but rather whythey say it. So often there is a rationalization of the way they live.”
How often, in an effort to avoid the hardship of repentance and conversion, do we rationalize our sins and trap ourselves in them! Herod’s pride in his own power trapped him: he offered so much to his daughter, yet it was his pride and fear of losing face before his friends that trapped him into granting her sick wish. It was Herodias’s rationalization for her divorce and remarriage that trapped her in a prison of such wrath that she would manipulate her daughter into asking for the murder of an innocent man. St. John the Baptist, seeking always the will of God, though in prison, though slain, was the freest of them all. In the silence of the desert he listened to the voice of God; he’d have shared his wisdom, his secret to freedom, had the king and queen the ears to hear it. Let us be attentive!