NUNTIATORIA

The Beheading of St John the Baptist

On 29 August the Church commemorates the Decollatio Sancti Ioannis Baptistae, the Beheading of St John the Baptist, the last and greatest of the prophets, the Forerunner of Christ, and the “voice crying in the wilderness” who prepared the way of the Lord. The feast was observed in both East and West from the fourth century onwards, testimony to the universal veneration of the Prophet who bridged the Old and New Covenants¹.

The Gospel recounts the grim banquet of Herod, the dance of Salome, and the cruel demand of Herodias that silenced the Baptist’s voice. Yet even in death, he continued to speak. John had rebuked Herod for his unlawful union with Herodias, sealing with his blood the sanctity of marriage and the sovereignty of God’s law. “John’s courage in reproving Herod was the very cause of his martyrdom, but this very death became his highest glory,” observes Johann Evangelist Baur, “for he sealed his testimony with blood”².

The Collect of the day petitions God that the faithful may be strengthened by the intercession of him “whose death we venerate,” that we may likewise contend for justice and truth. Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen O.C.D. comments that John’s passion foreshadowed that of Christ: “As the Bridegroom was to be taken away, so too the Friend of the Bridegroom was sacrificed beforehand, foreshadowing the Cross by his fidelity to the divine law”³. The Office echoes the suffering of the just, while the antiphon at Lauds recalls Proverbs: Memoria justi cum laudibus, et impiorum nomen putrescet — “The memory of the just shall be blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot.”

Nor is this day one of mourning only, but of triumph. “The shedding of his blood was his entrance into glory, his prison became a gate into heaven, and his silence before Herod speaks with greater power through the centuries,” writes Leonard Goffine⁴.

The Baptist’s witness is for all times. He died because he would not bend the truth of God’s law to the whims of rulers or the seductions of worldly approval. In an age when fidelity to the natural and divine law is often suppressed, John’s voice still cries out: Non licet tibi — it is not lawful. His feast bids the faithful to imitate his humility before Christ — “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30) — and to embrace constancy in the face of worldly pressure, remembering that truth is worth the cost, that witness requires sacrifice, and that fidelity to God leads, as with John, to eternal life.

¹ Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year: Time After Pentecost, vol. XIV (Dublin: James Duffy & Sons, 1910), pp. 324–327.
² Johann Evangelist Baur, The Light of the World, or the Great Consummation (London: Burns and Oates, 1874), vol. II, p. 278.
³ Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1963), Meditation 270, pp. 874–875.
⁴ Leonard Goffine, The Devout Instructions on the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays and Holydays (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1880), pp. 619–620.