(The Decollation Of Saint John The Baptist).
Artist: Caravaggio (1571–1610).
Date: 1608.
Collection:
St. John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta.
Source/Photographer: St John’s Co-Cathedral
(Wikimedia Commons)
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume `4.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
For Herod feared John, knowing him to be a Just and Holy man, and kept him, and when he heard him did many things; and he heard him willingly.
And when a convenient day was come, Herod made a supper for his birthday, for the Princes, and Tribunes, and Chief Men of Galilee.
And when the daughter of the same Herodius had come in, and had danced, and pleased Herod, and them that were at table with him, the King said to the damsel: “Ask of me what thou wilt, and I will give it thee”. And he swore to her: “Whatsoever thou shalt ask, I will give thee; though it be the half of my Kingdom”.
Who, when she was gone out, said to her mother: “What shall I ask ?” But she said: “The head of John the Baptist”. And when she was come in immediately with haste to the King, she asked, saying: “I will that forthwith thou give me in a dish the head of John the Baptist”.
And the King was struck sad. Yet, because of his oath, and because of them that were with him at table, he would not displease her. But, sending an executioner, he commanded that his head should be brought in a dish.
And he beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a dish, and gave it to the damsel, and the damsel gave it to her mother.
Which, his disciples hearing, came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.
Thus died the greatest of “them that are born of women”. Without witnesses, the prisoner of a petty tyrant, the victim of the vilest of passions, the wages of a dancing girl !
Rather than keep silence in the presence of crime, although there were no hope of converting the sinner, or give up his liberty, even when in chains.
The Herald of The Word Made Flesh was ready to die. How beautiful, as Saint John Chrysostom remarks, is this liberty of speech, when it is truly the liberty of God’s Word, when it is an echo of Heaven’s language !
Then, indeed, it is a stumbling-block to tyranny, the safe-guard of the World and of God’s rights, the bulwark of a Nation’s honour as well as its temporal and eternal interests.
Death has no power over it. To the weak murderer of Saint John the Baptist, and to all who would imitate him to the end of time, a thousand tongues, instead of one, repeat in all languages and in all places: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife”.
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