The Beheading of St John the Baptist

This feast gathers St John the Baptist's whole mission into its last witness. John stands first on the banks of the Jordan: austere, urgent, preaching repentance, and calling men to prepare for the One who is coming after him. He is not the Christ, nor Elijah returned in person, but the voice crying in the wilderness and the prophet who points directly to Jesus as the Lamb of God. That office leads naturally to martyrdom. Herod Antipas had dismissed his wife and was living with Herodias, the wife of his own half-brother, and John told him openly that such a union was unlawful. Herod feared John and even recognized him as a holy man, yet he did not want to yield to the rebuke, while Herodias wanted him silenced altogether.

So John was imprisoned in the fortress of Machaerus near the Dead Sea. The end came at Herod's birthday feast, when Salome danced, a reckless oath was made, and at her mother's prompting the Baptist's head was demanded at once on a dish. The horror of the scene lies partly in that false sense of honor: the oath was sinful in its making and sinful in its keeping. John was beheaded in prison, his disciples buried the body, and the news was brought to Jesus. The witness of Josephus, who admired John's virtue and linked Herod's later troubles with this murder, gives the event an additional historical gravity. The feast therefore keeps both the whole line of John's mission and its climax: he prepared the way, named Christ, rebuked sin without fear, and died rather than flatter power.