A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Herod was one was the one who had ordered John arrested, chained, and imprisoned. And all of this on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, his sister-in-law, whom he, Herod, had married. That was because John had said to Herod, it is not right for you to live with your brother's wife. Herodias harbored a grudge against John on account of this, and wanted to kill him, but was unable to do so.
Herod, for his part, feared John, knowing John to be an upright and holy man, and so he kept him in jail. When Herod heard him speak, he was very much much disturbed. Yet he felt the attraction of John's words. Herodias had her chance one day when Herod held a birthday dinner for the entire court circle, military officers, and all the leading men of Galilee. Herodias' own daughter came in at one point during the banquet and performed a dance, which delighted Herod and his guests.
Herod said to the girl, ask anything you want, and I will give it to you. And then he went on so far as to swear that he would do so. I will grant you whatever you ask, even to half of my kingdom. Of course, it wasn't his to give. The girl went out and went to her mother, and said to Herodias, what shall I ask for?
Now you can guess what the mother asked for. The mother answered, the head of John the Baptist. At that, the girl hurried back to the king's presence, back to Herod, and made her request. I want you to give me at once the head of John the baptized on a platter. Notice that was not exactly Roman justice.
Herod, for his part, bitterly regretted the request. Yet because of his oath, and the presence of guests, he did not find it possible really to deny her. So he dispatched an executioner ordering the man to bring back the head of John the Baptist. The executioner went and beheaded John in the prison, brought in the head of John on a platter, and then gave it to the girl. And the girl gave it to her darling mother Herodias.
Nice lady. Later, when his disciples, that is John's disciples, heard about this, they came and carried his body away and buried it in a tomb. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Yesterday, speaking of Saint Augustine of Hippo, notice that Saint Augustine of Hippo died 04/2030.
I mentioned on Poisson, the inclination, the atmosphere, the climate of our contemporary world to eliminate eliminate extremes extremes of of truth truth and and morality, morality. And to tell us, well, you know, things are not black or white. There's so much gray in between, and who are we to judge? See, this is the you hear it, you hear it all the time. Hear it all the time.
Well, today we are celebrating the memory and the present existence. A man in our life named John the Baptist, he's no angel, who had none of that. He called adultery adultery and said adultery is wrong. Today, of course, we we speak of it as being sexually active. And in turn, notice in turn, Herod was startled and astonished by his words.
He just didn't know what to do about John. Now you can build up a great edifice of what went on in Herod's mind and all of that. I don't know. But the point is, Herod was started. Herod took John seriously, and with the utmost reluctance, the man of no backbone had him executed at the whim of Herodias.
Then they speak of men as the stronger sex of course. Now there's a tremendous lesson here for us. In certain parts of the world, this is a great feast. We we don't make much of it. John the Baptist does have some generally speaking, doesn't rank very high in our, echelon of saints, saints.
But he should. He should. He is the precursor of Jesus Christ, and we don't know an awful lot about it. But notice they said his disciples came and took the body. And there are little references here and there to John, to John to the baptism that John used and dispensed.
John was a big figure. And of course, today there's a great deal of fictionalizing, guesswork about him, that he belonged to a very aesthetic group, and on and on. But we actually know very little, but we know enough to know he was a most significant figure. As I say, he was not only the precursor of Christ in the sense of what we know from the early gospels, but he was an active man. He was well known.
He was a man of influence and a man of follower had followers. Because one of the objections to Christ was, why don't you baptize the way John did? So there are little hints in the new testament in the gospels of the influence of John. But and notice, he must have been a man of considerable public weight to be treated seriously by Herod. You don't treat a mosquito as you treat a lion.
And Herod hesitated to execute John because of the crowd and because of the people. We know that. So here's a man who had some kind of what we today would say national prestige, who stood up and told Herod, the great Herod, who was a very inflated Herod, he had no authority to give away anything. It belonged to Rome. Here he is in direct violation of Rome's very high esteem of justice.
And here's Herod who pays very serious attention to John when he tells him, it's wrong for you to have your brother's wife as as your wife. And for that statement, for that attitude, John lost his head because of a woman's whim, and hate, hate, and and hate. Hate. Now notice, John, today we would say, oh, well now, wait a minute. John, you don't have to stand up against it.
Who are you to talk to Herod? You what obligation do you have? And after and all, who knows what's right or wrong? A little bit of adultery. What's what?
You know, God will understand. He sees our inmost hearts. He knows that I am oriented to him, but but this little picadillo that comes along, I handle that. He'll understand because he loves me, and God is love. God is love.
We hear that ad nauseam. But ask him what you mean by love. What is love? Well, read Saint Paul. Read Saint Paul where he where he said, this is love.
Let's forget the word and go to what it signifies. There's a tremendous today, we right in right in the Roman Catholic church, we're facing a situation. Take this attitude towards homosexuality. We we have with it we we have this thing called dignity. We have an we have a weak attitude.
Now notice, back of this all is a very weak attitude towards logic. Because the most people today are incapacitated to make a distinction between the person and his action. And you talk about the action, and they immediately say you're condemning the person, which is of course ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd. And they tell us because I can't judge the person, I shouldn't judge his actions.
Because they'll say you can never, humanly speaking, enter into a man or a woman's psychological system and say you are guilty of that, you are responsible of that. Transient. That may may well be true, but that's not the issue. I'm not talking about the person. I'm talking about adultery.
I'm talking about fornication. I'm talking about active homosexuality, sodomy. I'm not talking about the person. When I say murder is a mortal sin, that'll send you to hell. I'm not saying that John Jones is guilty of it.
I'm not even talking about John Jones. But today, people don't make this distinction. They're incapable of these distinctions. They'll say, Oh, that's semantics. You're just cutting the baloney thin.
Well, as I say, if it's good baloney, the best way of cutting it is to keep it thin. And so today we have a man who stood up tall for God's truth, and said to the great Herod, it is not right for you to have your brother's wife. And he paid for that with his head. But with that action, he is crowned forever as a saint of God. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.