To Be Brave Witnesses to God’s Truth!

Friday, August 29, 2025

The Passion of St. John the Baptist

1 Thess 4:1-8; Mk 6:17-29

The passion of John the Baptist invites us to reflect on our response to the truth of God. 

We may reflect on the three principal characters of today’s Gospel, namely Herodias, Herod, and John the Baptist.

1. Herodias opposed and fought the truth. We come across Herodias as someone who challenged the truth of her unlawful marriage to Herod and willfully rejected it. She was offended by the truth that she was living in adultery through her unlawful marriage. However, instead of being moved to repentance and conversion, she hardened her heart so that she wanted to silence the man who fearlessly spoke the truth. Thus, the one who hated the truth also hated the one who spoke it. Herodias lets us understand what happens when our conscience gets silenced by pride and sin and how low one could stoop if a person resists the light of truth. In sum, her hatred for truth makes her choose vengeance over repentance. Truth was her enemy, or she found her enemy in truth. 

2. Herod heard the truth but feared its consequences. Unlike Herodias, Herod shows greater willingness to ‘only’ hear the truth. But his attitude and behaviour reveal reluctance, indecision, and unwillingness to act on it. He went so far as to admire John because his heart was stirred in some way whenever he listened to the prophet. Nevertheless, his obsession with power, status, and lust makes him blind to a possible new life with repentance and conversion. If Herod was torn by the recognition of truth and his own inability to act on it, the same continues when he makes a reckless promise in front of his guests because of which he was forced to behead John, whom he admired. We may believe that Herod was distressed when he was demanded the head of John the Baptist. However, we can see that he was distressed but ‘not enough’ to do the right thing. In sum, Herod fails as a man without the moral courage to act on what he believed to be true. 

3. John the Baptist lived the truth and died for it. The death of John reminds us of what it means to confront the powerful in society. However, John proclaimed the truth from his conscience and dared to die for it when his life was demanded as the price for the truth he spoke. Was John’s death a failure? Should he have avoided confrontation and acted more prudently? While these questions could have easily confused any reasonable person, John, who was known for his uncompromising witness to truth, settled for a victory of moral integrity over compromise and prophetic courage over fear. John teaches us that truth is not something we believe but something we must be willing to suffer for. It is because of his readiness to sacrifice his life to defend God’s truth that his voice still echoes through history. Also, it is not an exaggeration to claim that the forerunner of Christ was like him in every way. John preceded Jesus in birth, preaching, and baptizing; so too, he preceded Jesus in death, dying as a prefiguration of the one who would sacrifice himself on the cross. In sum, the brave witness of John shows what it means to serve God in truth and sincerity. 

Let us pray that, imitating the Baptizer’s example, we may bravely witness to God’s truth in word and life. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar