Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 1:17-25; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 10-11; Mark 6:17-29
What do we make of this seemingly
macabre memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist today?
The readings we hear today are curious.
We pray in response to our Psalm, “The earth is full of the goodness of the
Lord.” But then St. Paul opens his first letter to the Corinthians with a
challenge to the people of Corinth of his time and to us. St. Paul writes that
“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ
crucified.” Paul knows that his message will be widely rejected as “stumbling
block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” but he proclaims it anyway.
First, how many of us have asked God,
perhaps in prayer, for some kind of consolation; some sign of God’s presence
and goodness? Second, does it not seem to trivialize evil and suffering in our
world to pray, in spite of this evil and suffering, in the words of our Psalm:
“The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord”?
We pray in thanksgiving that “the earth
is full of the goodness of the Lord.” And yet we, as Christians, are baptized
into the vocation to “preach Christ crucified”; to recognize and to mourn the
persecution of many because of their faith that continues and has become more
frequent now than at any time previously in our Church’s history. We, like St.
Paul, “preach Christ crucified.” We remember and celebrate today the martyrdom
of St. John the Baptist. We acknowledge that “the blood of martyrs is the seed
of the Church.” We call the day on which Christ died for us “Good Friday.”
Surely this is “foolishness” and “weakness” in our time just as it was in St.
Paul’s time, so why do we as Church mark martyrdom; death; suffering with a
feast day such as the one today?
Without trivializing suffering and
death, especially martyrdom, and without offering any easy but empty answers,
do not we and the Church believe in the death of Christ as the focal point of
our faith? In Christ’s death, “Good Friday,” is our salvation; our promise
that, as we pray beautifully during funeral Masses, “life is changed, not
ended” when we follow Christ into death. The death of all who have lived in and
for Christ; the death of martyrs like John the Baptist; the death of those who
have given their lives freely for their faith; the death of each and every one
of us is and will be a witness to our hope in the resurrection to follow: A
change, not an end.
Surely the realities of suffering and
death are weakness; foolishness; like “a stumbling block” to many people in our
day, as they were in the time of St. Paul or St. John the Baptist or Jesus
himself. But because we hope in the resurrection; in the salvation we have been
promised, we as Christians “preach Christ crucified.” We bear witness with St.
John the Baptist, with St. Paul and with all the martyrs and saints to the “the
goodness of the Lord” shown us in Christ’s death and resurrection. We bear
witness to Christian hope that death is not our end. We bear witness to our
salvation.
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