Homily for Thursday, 29 August 2019‒ Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:17-19; Psalm 17:1-2, 3-4a, 5-6ab, 15ab, 17; Mark 6:17-29

Thursday of the 21st week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

How many saints get two feast days, one to commemorate their birth and another to commemorate their death, in our Church?

The answer to this question is that two saints are commemorated in our Church both on their dates of birth and dates of death: Mary, mother of God, and John the Baptist. But why, when our Church already offers us the beautiful Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist, which we celebrate on June 24, do we add this memorial of his brutal death by beheading at the hands of King Herod Antipas, who caves in to the demands of his wife Herodias and daughter Salome to put John to death?

Today’s memorial of the Passion of John the Baptist dates back to the earliest centuries of the Church. It is almost as old as the Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist, and is one of the few feasts to have been celebrated in both Eastern and Western Christianity that early in the Church’s history.

Today, I think, this memorial of the Passion of John the Baptist serves as an “echo” celebration to that of the Passion of Jesus Christ, which we commemorate through Holy Thursday and Good Friday. But it also serves as a reminder of our sisters and brothers in faith who continue to give their lives for their faith and for its truths, moral or otherwise. This reality may seem distant to us here in a place like Canada, but perhaps a greater proportion of the world’s total number of Christians are subject to anti-Christian violence or give their lives for their faith than at any time in history.

People of faith, not only Christians, are harmed and killed simply for being who they are; for the most part they are not people who preach religious faith or its teachings in a way that would upset people. They are not the likes of John the Baptist, who as we know from our Gospel confronted Herod Antipas over his wrongful marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias, and so drew the ire of Herodias, who wanted John dead.

The martyrs of today are, by and large, silent witnesses; prophets more by the integrity of their lives than by their words of teaching or preaching. So how can we, here in a place where it is quite safe to practice our Christian faith, live in solidarity with our sisters and brothers today whose faith leaves them in harm’s way?

Like our sisters and brothers in faith who continue to suffer violence and even give their lives for their faith in our world, our first way of living in solidarity with them will usually be to live as they do: Quietly, humbly, but with integrity. Some of us, though, may be called to proclaim truths that will cause discomfort; cause us to be ridiculed, even in our personal and social interactions. We will be called to defend the dignity of all human life, from the first moments of conception to natural death. We are and will be called to live and speak to the truth of the dignity of all creation, against unchecked concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, which breeds (if we are hearing the news reports just within these latest weeks) the evils of greed, nationalism, racism and other forms of xenophobia; the destruction of forests and the accelerated extinction of species.

John the Baptist lived and gave his life for the truths he discerned by faith in his time. In solidarity with John and many people of faith who live and give their lives in similar ways still today, we are and will be called to do the same.

Homily for Monday, 29 August 2016‒ Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:17-19; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5-6. 15ab, 17; Mark 6:17-29

This homily was given at Anglin House, Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.

What would have been the response of John the Baptist’s and of Jesus’ disciples to the news of John’s death at the hands of Herod? I imagine John’s and Jesus’ disciples as having been heartbroken and probably afraid. John’s beheading would have been a great blow to the earliest Church, second only in devastation to Jesus’ own death.

Might we not imagine John’s and Jesus’ disciples thinking about abandoning their lives as disciples out of fear; wanting to return to their former livelihoods; wondering whether their own deaths at the hands of the authorities of their time and place were at hand? This was certainly the case for these same disciples after Jesus’ death.  But, had the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus fled after John was killed, their story and ours as Christians would have ended there. And even though most of Jesus’ disciples fled after his death, they reassembled, even if in fear at first, to witness to Jesus’ resurrection and to take up the Christian mission with the strength of the Holy Spirit.

These first disciples’ story; our Christian story continues because these first disciples, of John and then of Jesus, did not give into fear. They accepted their own vulnerability, the finiteness of their own earthly lives, their sin and their need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. The disciples’ example is in marked contrast to that of Herod, who would not accept his own vulnerability and finiteness of his rule or his life. He would not accept John’s speaking truth to Herod’s wrongful marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias, beyond a superficial level of liking “to listen to” John. Herod’s lack of acceptance of vulnerability and of truth led him to commit murder.

John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ disciples’ example of acceptance of vulnerability and of their need for God is an invitation to us to follow suit. Our world gives us many reasons to be afraid. Over this summer, while I have taught in Edmonton and so far travelled here to Toronto, I have been asked many times about the response in France to several terrorist attacks: Those in Paris last November; the killing of Fr. Jacques Hamel in July while he was presiding at Mass near Rouen; the Bastille Day attack in Nice… I have been encouraged that many French have not retreated in fear after these attacks; they have back out on the café terraces, living as French people do, within days of these awful events.

This is not to say that the French, nor we nor anybody, are or should be completely without fear. But may we not allow our fear, our vulnerability, even our sin to break us. May what could break us instead be what brings us together and brings us closer to God, after the example of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus, and of John and Jesus themselves.    

Homily for Friday, 29 August 2014– Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

Friday of the 21st week in Ordinary Time 

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.