Friday, August 29, 2025 - Aug. 29 - The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist
[1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 and Mark 6:17-29]
This is the will of God, your holiness: that you refrain from immorality, that each of you know how to acquire a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion as do the Gentiles who do not know God....[1 Thessalonians]
The title of this feast was once called "the Beheading of St. John the Baptist." When it was changed to "the Passion of St. John the Baptist," the liturgical use of the word "passion," meaning suffering, produced a strange result in English, where that word means more a desire or great interest. And that is what John the Baptist accused Herod of because Herod had divorced one wife and married a relative. This criticism earned him the anger of the new wife who seized the opportunity offered by her dancing daughter to get rid of John the Baptist.
The title of the feast, in English at least, may be misleading but the lessons are clear enough. Human decisions based on unruly desires - "passions" - can result in great damage to oneself or others. As St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, the Lord gave us passions for a positive goal, but they must be governed by reason so that they may always be directed to that goal: eternal life. AMEN
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