Today is a very sobering day. We remember the death of the greatest man born of woman, the holy and righteous John the forerunner and Baptist. It just so happens that we as a country remember this day because of the terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000 people. This latter event is a reminder that this world is not our lasting home, but rather a quickly changing, uncertain, and temporary place that God uses to train and mold us into the Sons of God that He has willed from the beginning of creation. We can also connect the events in the sense that just as on this day that the Church remembers the egregious murder of Saint John the Baptist, who represented God’s law and prophets, who was the voice of God and prepared the way for Christ, the fact that our country is infested with sin and kills the voice of God, God lovingly gave us a wake-up call to remember our sins and to repent. Many did repent and go back to Church and started living better lives, but sadly this did not last.
It is very interesting that the sins that led to the death of John the Baptist were sexual sins. First, St. John was imprisoned for boldly condemning Herod for marrying his brother’s wife. This was adultery, which Gregory Palamas calls the most shameful of sins. Then when Herodias’s daughter lewdly danced at a party for Herod, he was so drunk with lust that he gave way to the beheading of the Holy Forerunner of Christ.
Today, almost every evil is tied to these sins of the flesh. Pornography, abortion, sex-trafficking, homosexuality, transgenderism, adultery, divorce, pre-marital relations, and so on. People have shut up their conscience as Herod did by imprisoning St. John, the voice of God. And sadly, many have gone to their death in sin because they killed their conscience completely as Herodias convinced Herod to kill our God-bearing father, St. John.
But we have the choice to become forerunners for Christ. St. John not only prepared the people for the coming of Christ by his words, but also by his deeds. Far from being enticed by the sinful pleasures of the world, the world unworthy of him, he dwelt in desert places, living a frugal life without worldly concerns or material pleasures that beguile the body and its senses.
Instead of falling into all kinds of sins, we must boldly expose the sins of the world. When we fall into sins, let us punish ourselves with fasting, vigils, prayer, and almsgiving.
St. John lived such a holy life, possibly a sinless life, that St. Gregory Palamas says that it was not fitting that he die naturally since natural death was the sentence of Adam’s transgression, which was not binding on him who was the minister of the commandment and who had obeyed God even from his mother’s womb. The saints of God lay down their life for the sake of virtue and godliness and this is why St. John died this violent death appropriate for the saints. He heralded the death of Christ by his death.
With the world becoming even more intolerant of Christianity, it might be that we must die as martyrs as well. But even if we don’t die as public martyrs, we can be secret martyrs. Just as St. John the theologian and his brother James were told that they would both drink the cup of Christ which was the chalice of suffering, yet only St. James was suffered a violent death. St. John the Theologian was a secret martyr in that had he lived in a time of persecution he would have been a martyr. Secret martyrs endure the assaults of the hidden enemy and resist every carnal desire. By sacrificing themselves to God on the altar of their hearts, they become true martyrs even in times of peace. May God grant us to be counted worthy of such an end. Amen.
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