Friday of the 21st Week in Course: Memorial of Martyrdom of St. John Baptist
Today’s Gospel is so widely known and so memorable that most preachers focus on that tale of the Herodian plot to murder John the Baptist, the Elijah-like saint who went before Our Lord Jesus Christ. But to do that would be to maybe follow a movie script rather than to dig into the deep meaning of today’s Scriptures. Particularly we should reread the first lesson from what is likely the first letter St. Paul wrote, and maybe the first work of the New Testament, his words to the church at Thessalonica.
Paul was preaching Christ and the Church in the first century. The Roman empire during those times was particularly hedonic. Now the lowest classes were slaves, so they had little money or leisure. But the upper classes, who had the leisure to consider their final end and the means to arrive at the highest good, God, were totally distracted by the pursuit of feeling good. That meant for them, sexual immorality and drunkenness. Disordered life looking for pleasure, with minimal self-control.
Paul reminded them that if they want to attain union with God in the image of Jesus, they had to conduct themselves to please God, not themselves. God’s will for them is holiness, which means acting in ways that the culture doesn’t understand. He tells them to refrain from immorality. The use of sex is especially reserved. He is explicit there for the men: you know how to acquire a wife for yourself in holiness and honor, not lustful passion. That alone set the Christians apart from the culture, the “Gentiles who do not know God.” He reminds them that Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ, so they should never consider “taking advantage of or exploiting” their brothers or sisters. He even warns them that “the Lord is an avenger in all these things,” something he had preached to them when he visited Thessalonica. He wraps up with a statement we should all remember, one derived directly from the Sermon on the Mount, “God did not call us to impurity but to holiness.” Turning their backs on that is a direct insult to God. Turning our backs on that is a direct insult to God, something we know as mortal sin.
Our psalm today says that in a more artistic way: “The Lord loves those who hate evil.” God will protect us if we are faithful, especially from evil conduct, and will deliver us out of the hands of a hostile culture.
St. Luke’s Gospel tells the story of John the Baptist’s martyrdom. We don’t need to rehash the narrative, but we should tie in Paul’s warnings to that story. Herod had stolen the heart of his brother’s wife. We don’t know how and Luke doesn’t care how. But there, at the very foundation of the tale, we see lust and adultery in Herod, and anger and murderous intent in Herodias. It led to the terrible consequence of the unjust execution of the prophet. We must learn from the story. No matter how pleasant the unjust plan seems before we do it, the result will always be awful, for ourself and pretty much everyone around us.
Do good; avoid evil. Praise God.
