Today is a rather special day on the Church calendar. Today is the solemn feast of the Birth of John the Baptist. The Church only celebrates one other birthday, we call that birthday Christmas. No other saint is honored by having the day of their birth remembered in a special mass. They have to be content with having the day of their death memorialized by the Church. So we can see that John must be a very special person indeed.
I remember when I was young, say about ten or eleven, I spent a lot of time with my cousin Skipper. He was actually named after his father as his name was actually Richard and forgive me but I do not know how he came by the nickname Skipper. For a couple of summers, we hung around together and had a lot of fun. One incident comes to mind. We spent all day in our swimming trunks in his backyard playing in a wading pool. When the water in the pool got too warm we would tip the pool over and refill it with fresh water. We would get in the pool and cool ourselves down never realizing that the clear water was acting like a lens and focusing the sun on our bodies. By dinner time we looked like cooked lobsters and when we sat down to dinner, the pain of wearing a shirt and pants was only slightly worse than what his mother cooked for dinner that day, liver and onions, yuck. Back then we were trained to be polite and when we were guests at someone's house we ate what was put in front of us. Between Skipper and I, we used at least half of a bottle of ketchup. The pain of the sunburn we had collected was intense. My aunt did not have anything in the house to soothe the pain. Necessity being the mother of invention, she broke out the Vicks Vapo Rub. This menthol laced petroleum jelly was just the thing to increase the agony on our young backs and chests. Sometimes you just can't win!
While I had a somewhat close relationship with my cousin, it does not appear Jesus spent any time with His cousin John. To my modern way of thinking, John really appears to be somewhat of an oddball. My gosh, who in their right mind would choose to live in the desert, wearing hair shirts and eating locusts and wild honey? Come to think of it, locusts and wild honey have to be better than liver and onions.
Jesus and John, according to the Bible, met only once in their youth and that was before either of them were born. Mary had received word that she was to be the Mother of God and she went to visit Elizabeth, who was described as a relative to her and had conceived John in her old age as a special gift from God. (Children were esteemed as gifts back then.) When Mary approached Elizabeth, John, in his mother's womb, recognized the presence of Jesus, the Son of God, in the womb of Mary His mother. It is written that John stirred in his mother's womb at the presence of Jesus. One translation used a stronger word and said he danced in his mother's womb. The fate of these two children was tightly bound together as John would be the one who would announce the coming of the Messiah and prepare the way of the Lord.
John was a man of great integrity. He strived to achieve no man's favor and preached repentance and the coming of the kingdom to one and all. He called the religious leaders of the day, "broods of vipers" and he actually won the admiration of the king of the land, a vain and lustful man named Herod. Herod made the mistake of choosing for his wife the wife of his brother and John called him out for this adulterous relationship. Herod did not mind so much, but Herodias, the king's illegitimate wife, was less than forgiving for being called a harlot and whore. Yet, John enjoyed the king's favor and protection but even the king could take only so much abuse. His wife continued wailing and whining against John and to quiet her shrill voice Herod had John arrested and lodged him in his dungeon. If Herodias thought that the rigors of the dungeon would quiet the pious prophet down she failed to understand what a diet of locusts and wild honey did to the soul of a man. She also failed to understand what the grace of God could do in strengthening one's soul. John kept his banter against Herod and Herodias up while chained in the charming confines of Herod's dungeon. Not only did he continue berating the couple but he did so almost right under their love nest. Herodias could not take much more of this. She kept asking that John be silenced and buried. The king, however, had an admiration and perhaps a bit of fear of John. He knew the stories that the priests told about the Messiah, and he wondered if the Messiah was locked up in his jail. This thought stayed his hand for the moment. All the while John kept up his preaching against the king and his concubine. Herodias's soul was black with anger and hate of the Baptist and she could not understand why her husband, who respected no man, tolerated the insolence and insults that John never ceased broadcasting day or night. Then Herod himself delivered the fate of John into her hands.
It was the king's birthday, a time when the whole court celebrated with feasting and drinking that made the normal daily debauch pale in comparison. The wine made the king very merry indeed. It was when he was deep into his cups that Herodias snapped the trap closed that would end the scandal of John's accusations against her and Herod forever. Her daughter was extremely beautiful and Herod lusted after her young body. Herodias then announced that as a special gift and tribute to Herod the greatest king of all time that her daughter, Salome, would honor his majesty with a dance. The announcement caused Herod's libido to stir and he watched with amorous wonder as Salome went through her paces. The dance was designed to capture the lowest parts of Herod's imagination and it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The king, loudly and drunkenly, stood and applauded the performance and then uttered words that he would in the next moment regret for all eternity. He offered as payment for the dance anything that Salome wanted even up to half of his kingdom. The courtiers gasped. Salome had in her hands the ticket to a life of independence and great ease, riches beyond what most people could imagine. They waited silently for what she would ask for. Then her mother entered and walked up to her brazen daughter. Herodias smiled at the king and he drunkenly smiled back. She turned and whispered in her daughter's ear. The daughter grinned, then chuckled, then she finally laughed and nodded her head, accepting what her mother had said. She walked closer to the king and bent down, her ample breasts just out of reach. She smiled into his eyes and demanded the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a silver platter. The king was shocked. Surely the girl would want gold or silver, or a palace with servants of her own. Salome once again looked at the king and this time with cold fire in her eyes demanded that he fulfill his promise and to bring her the head of John the Baptist. The king had no desire to kill John for he still retained some fear of the man. But, fear of God was something he had never cultivated and he did not want to appear to be weak in front of all of the assembled dignitaries, some of which had the ear of the emperor in Rome, so with bitterness and a pain that the wine could not cover he sent his guard and had John beheaded and the head brought to his wife and slut of a daughter on a silver charger. After the "gift" was presented, the king weaved his way to bed. His door was locked when Herodias came to check on him and she laughed loudly as she turned and made her way to her chamber.
There is much to admire about John the Baptist. He was a man of principles and he knew the difference between right and wrong and was not afraid to tell a person when they were wrong. Yet, John knew his place and he knew that he would need to decrease as his cousin, Jesus, the Messiah would have to increase. He was to be the best man for the bridegroom and he knew his role was to make an exit at the right moment. Today, the Church honors this man by celebrating his birthday which shows that he is held in great esteem by the Church. His unswerving devotion to God and his testimony to righteousness in spite of personal consequences should serve as an example for us. He was quite bright too, he never ate liver and onions!
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