Sermon on the Beheading of St. John the Baptist

Sermon given on August 29, for the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist

By Fr. Richard Cipolla

Today is the feast day of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. I want to say that
there are very few people who do not know the details of the story surrounding the
beheading—which actually has a proper English word derived from the Latin—the
“decollation” of St. John the Baptist. But we live in a culture in which stories from
the Bible no longer form an integral part of the culture. It would be interesting to do
a survey in Grand Central Station at rush hour and ask people if they have ever
heard of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, or even, whether they have heard of
St. John the Baptist.
But those possessing an aesthetic sensibility would know about this event, for the
story, with its lurid details, has been the basis of paintings by artists from Fra Lippo
Lippi to Titian and Caravaggio. Oscar Wilde’s play in French called Salomé, which he
(of course) wrote before his death- bed conversion, was notorious in its day. The
script was made into an opera by Richard Strauss that still plays in opera houses
throughout the world, its most famous scene being the Dance of the Seven Veils.
Why do we celebrate this feast? We celebrate this feast for the same reason we
celebrate the birth of John the Baptist in June as a first class feast. Because of who
he is in salvation history. John the Baptist is not only the forerunner of Christ. He
comes out of the desert preaching repentance for sin is the last of the prophets, that
majestic line including Moses and Elijah and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Zephaniah and
Malachi. And the role of the prophet was to speak the word of the Lord God to his
people and, most often, to tell the people that they had turned their backs on the law
of God and were sinning grievously and if they did not repent, terrible things would
happen to them. Most of the prophets were reluctant to take on this mantle. Moses
demurred on the basis of a speech impediment, Isaiah claimed unworthiness, Jonah
tried to get out of it by running away by ship– with disastrous results. The calling of
Jeremiah is one of the most moving of prophetic calling:
The word of the Lord came to me thus: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew
you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed
you”.
“Ah, Lord God”, I said, “I know not how to speak; I am too young”.
Say not “I am too young”. To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I
command you, you shall speak. Have no fear before them. Because I am with you to
deliver you, says the Lord. Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my
mouth! See I place my words in your mouth. This day I set you over nations and
over kingdoms, to root up and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and
to plant….But do you gird your loins; stand up and tell them all that I command
you…They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to
deliver you, says the Lord.
Jeremiah’s pleas for a return to God by the kings and people of Judah went
unheeded, and Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon in the sixth century B.C. and

Jeremiah was forced into exile into Egypt and some say was murdered there by his
own countrymen, Not a happy ending.
But neither was the ending of the last of the prophets, John the Baptist. What did
John die for? He died for the truth. And truth, when one dies for it, is never general,
it is never an abstraction. It is always specific. John declared that King Herod’s
marriage was unlawful and the relationship was adulterous. This stung Herod’s
wife deeply, and when the opportunity came, she demanded John’s death. We all
know the story about Herod’s big banquet for all the important people in Jerusalem
and how Herod’ wife’s daughter from her previous marriage danced and delighted
the inebriated king who promised her anything she wanted. And what her mother
wanted, asked for and got was John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Not a happy
ending.
But prophets never have happy endings. For their job is to shout clearly the reality
of the state of affairs: that the people have strayed from the paths of righteousness,
they have strayed from the Commandments of God, that the way they worship has
become corrupt and syncretistic, worshipping other gods in the name of tolerance
and fitting in. It is true that there were times when the prophet’s voice was heeded
and reform accepted, but those times are the great exception.
And what of the prophetic voice of the Catholic Church today? That prophetic voice
is growing dimmer as society rushes toward a hell- bent individualistic liberalism
that is intolerant to any voice raised in opposition. The prophet always speaks
directly to those involved in the corrupt society: to the king, to the priests, to the
people. The true prophet would thunder and ask Joe Biden directly: : what does it
mean to call yourself a Catholic Christian and support abortion as a right? How is
this consonant with the Catholic moral teaching that declares that all life is a gift
from God and demands our love? But the same question could be asked of many of
the candidates of both parties at this time. We are all forced to watch the posturing
of candidates for the coming election in November, for they have all bought these
ads with the cash raised to get them elected. But everything is presented in terms of
political terns of left and right and appeals to what will make the people happy.
There is no appeal based on the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But
you say: what does politic have to do with my faith? I choose the candidate that
most fits my point of view about how things should be done. It’s not my job as a
voter to be a prophet. I am just an ordinary person trying to get on with life. To be a
prophet is not my job.
Perhaps it is not. Prophets and their message have been rejected over and over
again. That is a constant in human history. That is not pessimism. That is reality. The
world will always be in opposition to the law of God, which is the law of love. But we
must beware that we do not shirk our responsibility to witness to our Catholic faith
by the decisions we make in the secular world as well as in our families.

May I suggest this to you: that what we do here today in the celebration of the
Traditional Roman Mass is a prophetic statement. The celebration of this Mass
thunders against the noise and babble of the world, the noise that fills so many of
our churches as well, this Mass thunders against the noise with its silence. This
Mass that is the distillation of centuries of worship prophesizes against the cult of
the new that drives so many of us to distraction. The beauty of this Mass, with its
choreography that points ineffably away from itself, prophesizes against a society
awash in the destructive forces of pornography and sexual license and in the
forgetting of the Christian and classical understanding of beauty, a society that has
forgotten what beauty is. This Mass is a prophetic gesture not only to the world but
to the Church which like the Israelites of old wants to be relevant to the world by
playing catch-up with a society that increasingly hates all that the Church stands for
and is. And so it is no wonder that there is hostility within the Church to this Mass
among her bishops and priests, for a prophet is never welcome in his own house.
We can thank God, in some sense that we have not been called to be Jeremiah to this
culture. The truth is that most of us wear ear plugs to avoid hearing that call. For to
hear that call would indeed be difficult and would risk an unhappy ending. But we
can and do thank God that He gives us grace and strength each day to choose to be
faithful to his Word and to his Church, and that we are fed in this place at this time
in Word and Sacrament. And for that we say: Deo gratias.