Beheading of St. John the Baptist

Reflections on the possibility that the crises in the Church will not be resolved in my lifetime

Introitus - Ps 118:46-47.

Loquébar de testimóniis tuis in conspéctu regum, et non confundébar: et meditábar in mandátis tuis, quæ diléxi nimis (I will speak of Your decrees before kings without being ashamed. And I will delight in Your commands, which I love exceedingly.)

Lesson from the book of Jeremias - Jer 1:17-19

In those days, the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Gird your loins; stand up and tell Juda all that I command you. Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; for it is I this day Who have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land; against Juda’s kings and princes, against its priests and people. They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

I am not an old man. In many ways I am still at the beginning of my adult life, four little children and, please God, counting. I yearn and long and pray for an end to the current crises in the Church – the destruction of the liturgy, the infiltration of modernism and all her rotten fruits, the scourge of homosexual and abusive clergy, not really knowing who is the Pope (two Bishops in white), cowardly prelates and laity, etc.…etc.…etc.…

Of late, a disturbing thought has crept up – what if these crises are not resolved in my lifetime? What if I do live to see 70 or 80 years and no answers/clarity/resolutions visibly come?

My confirmation Saint is St. John the Baptist. I’ve always loved that I have two feast days to celebrate, his birthday and his beheading. As a young barbarian-descended man I’ve always been particularly proud of the virility inherent in celebrating a Saint’s beheading. Hoo-rah! But this year, the feast has more poignant meaning. I know that St. John fully trusted the Lord and, I am sure, that he was at peace in those last moments. But it strikes me that he did not get to see, while walking the Earth, the final fruits of our Lord’s triumph. Obviously, united to Christ in death he did. But in those last moments in the prison cell, in those last moments before the beheading, he had not been to the Last Supper, he had not seen the Crucifixion, he had not been able to talk to and see Our Risen Lord. Yet, he trusted, he loved Jesus, he laid down his life for his beloved Cousin, for the Truth, in opposition to those who would later have a hand and a part in killing Him.

When you think about it though, this is the story of nearly all the Faithful departed. The Old Testament Patriarchs, Prophets, and Faithful lived all their days, and died, waiting… Both in the overall sense of awaiting the Messiah, but even, many times, concerning the immediate resolution of the issues of their days. I think of Moses, dying just outside of the Promised Land, as one of many examples. The Apostles too, having seen and known the Lord, still had to live and die in trust. There was no Earthly triumph that they experienced. Martyred all, save the Beloved Disciple – who died an old exiled man during the beginning of some of the worst persecutions the Church has ever known. The Fathers too. How many died before the heresies of their day were stamped out and ultimately defeated? How many Faithful died during the height of Arianism, buried as a member of a small minority of what seemed to be a finished Church? How many died in England and Europe in the midst of the persecutions of the Reformation?  Many. So many. More recently, how many have lived and died since Vatican II, between the suppression of the Mass and the hope of Summorum Pontificum?

To be frank, I do not deserve better than St. John the Baptist or any of the Faithful Departed, whether Church Triumphant or Church Suffering. I deserve much worse really. But in the past few weeks, a dread, a terror really, had started to creep into my thoughts, what if none of this is resolved in my lifetime? What if I must raise my children, and later support them in raising their children, without the benefit of clarity in the Church, without the visible Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart I so long for? Even if the entire world remains against us, and starts to persecute us, I think I could bear it if there was just clarity and faithfulness in the Church again. But without it? It seems too much to bear, too much a weight, too hard. I am too weak a man. How will I, how will my wife, how will my children, and my children’s children, make it Heaven in this culture, in these times, if there is no visible reconciliation of what it even means to be a Catholic. I need help. I need good clergy and bishops and cardinals and a holy Pope! Daily I see family and friends led astray. Souls put on the path to perdition. A thousand fall at my side, ten thousand at my right hand! And I am fearful the arrow will come nigh.  

But today, I remember my patron: St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the Lord. I recall that he was beheaded in a dark prison cell, his last moments pure trust in God, and then his head paraded around in giddiness. Murdered, surrounded in darkness – physical and spiritual. The ultimate cliffhanger. The ultimate “to be continued.” But, he knew and trusted the Lord, and I am sure he had the Lord’s consolation in those moments – but so do I. I am ready to resign - in trust, in love, in hope - to a life of waiting, of not seeing, of unknown, if that is the path that my Beloved Lord and His Dear Mother has chosen for me. And I will, by the grace of God, teach my little ones the same, in word and deed. I hope and pray that all is resolved tomorrow in the Church. And I will fight to see it happen in as much as I can. But even if it does not happen tomorrow, or the next, or in 50 years from now, well...at least today, on the memorial of St. John’s death, I will sing with his father St. Zacharias, who sang at his birth:

(Canticle of Zacharias: Luke 1:68-79)

1:68 Blessed be the Lord ☩ God of Israel; * because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:

1:69 And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, * in the house of David his servant:

1:70 As he spoke by the mouth of his holy Prophets, * who are from the beginning:

1:71 Salvation from our enemies, * and from the hand of all that hate us:

1:72 To perform mercy to our fathers, * and to remember his holy testament,

1:73 The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father, * that he would grant to us,

1:74 That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, * we may serve him without fear,

1:75 In holiness and justice before him, * all our days.

1:76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: * for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:

1:77 To give knowledge of salvation to his people, * unto the remission of their sins:

1:78 Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, * in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:

1:79 To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: * to direct our feet into the way of peace.

{Antiphon from the Proper of Saints} Herod sent * an executioner, and commanded that John's head should be cut off in the prison. And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.