“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”
(“If” by Rudyard Kipling)
He kept his head, but he wasn’t able to keep it on, that glorious and most precious saint, John the Baptist, whom our Lord called the greatest of any born of woman (Matthew 11:11). But while it was attached to his body, it was always clear, direct and without compromise. There was no way to shut him up other than to put him to death.
The Orthodox Church celebrates his decapitation annually. His head is among the foremost of precious relics cherished by Orthodox Christians. More, we honor with prayer the several findings of that noble memorial to courage and witness to truth in the face of all forms of sin, regardless of the perpetrator, even if he were king. We do this not for his sake. His place is assured in God’s holy kingdom. We do it as a reminder to ourselves that sin has no justification and virtue requires no explanation. We the baptized are from that time full of the grace of discernment. We have all the spiritual equipment to guide us to truth, justice and goodness. The Holy Spirit with which our bodies, hands, feet and facial orifices had been sealed is conditioned to keep out Satan and everything evil.
His times were like ours. Always one can find the weak, the lovers of pleasure, whose lives are spent in search of easy living, acquiring money, power and luxuries, crushing the spirits of those who fall into depression, disgust and resignation. In the Baptist’s time it was the royal family of Herod and Herodias. In our days it’s pandemic. Adultery is rampant. Nobody is disturbed by it anymore. Something as disgusting as pedophilia grasps the attention of the media, and even then if one is sufficiently popular and wealthy, he can be set free by our judicial system. Greed and anger are the norm.
St. John the Baptist came as the harbinger of the Messiah. He set the stage for the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ. Both called for repentance as a condition for salvation. Our times have little place for the Baptist’s tirades against sin. It’s a joy to notice how many Americans are proud to call on the Name of Jesus. However, despite the emphasis on the Bible, there’s not much call for the message or the man of God, John the Baptist. The apostle that our times prefer is the Evangelist John. “God is love,” we learn from the beloved apostle, and that is right—but it’s only part of the gospel.
God loves us and Christ proves it by His cross. But the gift of love demands a response to His love, and that requires repentance, purification and illumination. It’s true: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” However, the Bible also tells me that I must grow in love, take up my own cross and follow Him, take ownership of the society around me and set about restoring it to the idea in God’s mind which He had at the start of creation. By receiving His gifts I accept His imperatives.
It’s a bold and daring statement, but it’s possible for you and me to do even more than St. John the Baptist, because while he baptized, he was not himself baptized in the Holy Spirit the way we were. Christ with us and the Holy Spirit within us provide us with more equipment for the salvation of others and ourselves than was possible before the time of the Messiah Jesus. All the more it does honor to St. John the Baptist, because he was able to stand up to the highest authority in the land and be a beacon of strength and courage to all those who hungered for righteousness. If he could do all that before the appearance of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, how much more is possible for us to accomplish?
Our task is even greater. In his days the center of licentiousness was the palace. In our times we have sinfulness electronically offered in all places of the nation. Indeed, we export sin to the world, which may be one reason why we are both admired and loathed in so many lands. Let the great Baptist be our role model, and while we honor his precious head, may we be ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Christ’s gospel.