Homily for the Passion of St. John the Baptist

Homily for the Memorial of the
Passion of St. John the Baptist

August 29, 2018

Collect
Don Bosco Cristo Rey, Takoma Park, Md.

The Collect for this memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist, i.e., his martyrdom, recalls that he was “a martyr for truth and justice” and then asks for us the grace to “fight hard for the confession” of divine teachings.

The Beheading of St. John the Baptist

(Pierre Puvis de Chavannes)

In our time there’s certainly a mass of divine teaching under assault, maybe none more than the teaching that figured in John’s martyrdom.  That’s the divine teaching about chastity.  Recent events bring home to us that church people must model that virtue.  But it’s not only a matter of protecting God’s children, as important as that is.  It’s that we have to show them the beauty, the wholesomeness of chastity in itself, and its place in the divine plan for our happiness.  Chastity isn’t only priestly celibacy but also marital chastity and the chastity of teenagers and single young adults.  Chastity is safeguarded by such old-fashioned practices as modesty in dress and manner and custody of the eyes and ears and thoughts.  In our age, these are hard teachings—not as hard as John’s preaching to King Herod, to be sure.  But it seems like an uphill battle to teach them, preach them, and practice them in our culture.

Our teaching begins with our own manner of life, our own example, in our interactions with our students, with each other, in our families:  the language we use, what we watch on TV, the movies we see, how we use social media, the respect we give to one another.  Against the prevailing culture, it’s a kind of martyrdom.  But as you know, martyr means “witness.”  Like John the Baptist, we bear witness to the truth:  the truth of who we are as God’s children, to how Jesus teaches us to live.