Reader Timothy Zelinski
Aug. 29/Sep. 11, 2024
Holy Trinity Monastery
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the heart of every man, there is a great conflict between good and evil, between light and darkness, between serving God, and serving the devil. No man walking the path of life on this earth is wholly on one side or the other. Rather, he fights a constant battle either to serve the Creator who loves him, nurtures him, and died on the Cross for him, or to serve the one who hates him and seeks to make him suffer in hell along with himself.
Rightly did St John of the Ladder say, “A true Christian is he who fights with himself and against himself as if with an enemy.” This is true of all men, and all men either win this battle and enjoy their reward in heaven, or lose it, and suffer eternally for it.
Today, we commemorate an event that tells us the story of a winner and loser of this battle. We appeal to the winner, John the Baptist, in our prayers, asking him to intercede for us before the Lord Whom he baptized in the Jordan. The loser, Herod, we look to as a dread warning of how our passions can possess us, and drag us to hell.
The holy fathers who wrote the hymns of today’s feast chose to focus on the latter of the two, exposing the madness of Herod’s sin, showing how we ourselves can descend into similar madness, and striking fear into us, lest we find ourselves committing other extreme sins amid the revelry of the world.
Was Herod altogether an evil man? Certainly, he was not a beloved ruler. He was precisely the type that God raises up as a punishment for his people for their sins. Herod was no Israelite — he was a descendent of the hated Edomites, placed in his role as king by the Romans deliberately to mock and shame the Jews.
He hardly could be called a co-religionist of his own subjects, following only the most surface-level requirements of the Hebrew faith to make a show of being their “true” ruler. Imagine an Orthodox Christians being forced to live under the rule of Jehovah’s Witness or a Pentecostal while being told their leader was just as much of an Orthodox Christian as they are!
There was, however, something in Herod’s heart that did tell him that there might be more to life than luxury. As the Gospel says,“Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just and holy man, and he protected him. And when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly.” (Mk. 6:20). He feared him for his fiery preaching which he knew, deep down, was true, and he respected him for his austere life, which he could feel, at least one some level, was holier and closer to God than his own.
So, we see that there was a time when Herod listened to John’s preaching, and maybe even made a few feeble attempts to reform himself. Perhaps he tried for a day or two to follow the dietary laws a bit more strictly. Perhaps he attended the Synagogue and tried for a moment to listen to the Scriptures and take to heart what it said.
But, we then see how quickly that interest faded back into obscurity. The seed of the Word of fell among the thorns of his heart mired in a life of opulence. Soon, it would lure him into increasingly insane disorders, from drunkenness, to incest, and finally, murder.
The worst thing about this miserable man, perhaps, is the fact that all along, he did not lose his conscience at all, but rather continually violated it, knowing full well that what he was doing was wrong. This is what separates a figure like Herod from the criminally insane, who kill without feeling any remorse, without it even registering in their minds that they ended someone’s life. Herod knew what he did was wrong, and he did it anyway. As the Scripture tells us, when he first heard of the great miracles Jesus was doing, he was overcome with terror, thinking St John had come back from the dead. The trauma from this event was so serious that it ruined his mental health, driving him into a delusion of seeing ghosts, not unlike the mad visions of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov.
How did he allow his conscience to be overcome? Quite simply, he voluntarily gave into his passions, and allowed them to be the governing principle of his life, rather than the commandments of God. This infamous murder began with his vanity, and the occasion for the crime was a birthday celebration. In our own times, birthday celebrations have become so common that it’s considered strange not to celebrate them. People in the old world, however, were much more austere. Most people did not even keep track of their birthdays, usually only knowing which season when they were born in, and, in Orthodox Russia, celebrating the feast day of their patron saint by attending Church and receiving communion.
To celebrate one’s own birthday, of all things, displayed a ridiculous level of self-aggrandizement in the ancient world. Only the Emperor’s birthday, if anything, was a public celebration, much less than that of a provincial king of a vassal state.
Pride thus provided the occasion for this murder, a pointless birthday part, and it would be its final end. This pride then led to gluttony, for the feast became completely wild, with food and drink flowing abundantly, with everyone “eating the whole of Egypt and drinking the entire Nile”.1
Gluttony, as the fathers of our Church teach, always precedes lust, and this wild party compounded his sin of incest. Having married his brother’s wife while his brother was still alive (otherwise, the marriage would not have been unlawful), he did not stop there, but even began to turn his attention to his niece, a full-blood relative. Finding himself so completely possessed of this passion, he promised to give her absolutely anything she asked, even half his kingdom. Well does the canon of this feast say, “The wretched voluptuary, sick with spiritually harmful drunkenness and the burning of fornication, having been bound by the dancing of a girl’s feet, became the murderer of the prophet; for he conceived drunkenness, the mother of fornication, and begat grievous iniquity.”2
This party, originally beginning as “innocent” fun, became stranger and stranger. One can imagine what the guests must have thought seeing the night go completely out of control. What began as a somewhat normal event — everyone enjoying food, drink and entertainment from a host they pretended to like — continuing to devolve until Herodias made her infamous request for the head of St John on a platter, to the final horror that Herod actually followed through with it. All to save face, prove his reputation, and show that he was a true “strong man”, a proper leader who wasn’t afraid of anything, even of one-upping himself with increase bizarre deeds. He let his conscience be sidelined, and let himself put to death an innocent man who was loved and venerated by all but his his own backwards and immoral paramours.
Well does this hymns at the Vigil paint the picture, “Joy was joined to grief and laughter transformed into bitter lamentation. For, bearing the head of the Baptist on a platter, the girl entered in among them all, as she said. And because of Herod’s oath lamentation fell upon all who reclined there with the king. She did not gladden them, nor even Herod himself.”3
After murdering St John, Herod’s heart became so hardened that he had no interest in things religious any longer. He only wanted to see Jesus so that he could enjoy the spectacle of some miracle (cf. Lk. 23:8), thinking the Savior to be even less than a prophet and only an entertainer, not believing His works not to be glorious wonders, but sideshows for his own amusement.
But within all of this depravity, the plan of God became manifest, for, as the Apostle Paul says, “where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20). The death of St John marked the final conclusion of the age of prophets. Christ had now come, and John had paved the way for Him on earth through his baptizing and preaching. This work continued in Hades, as the St John then began preaching the same message of the coming Savior to those who had departed this earthly life before the Advent of God the Word.
The devil’s plan was overturned — instead of eliminating the prophet who was bringing the people to repentance, he found him in his own backyard. There he won the souls of those in hades, and prepared them for the glorious day of the Resurrection, when Christ would empty the chambers of darkness and bring the souls of those who heard St John’s preaching to paradise.
For this reason, the martyrdom of St John holds a special place in our calendar. This is one of the strictest fast days of the year, and thus, it would have commemorated with a Vesperal Liturgy in ancient times, making it the only such Liturgy on the calendar that wasn’t connected to a feast of the Savior. And what could be more appropriate? For among the mourning connected to this day, there is already the hope of the future Pascha. Today, St John takes his place in the icon of the Resurrection, standing before Adam and Eve, David and Solomon, even of the ancient philosophers and seekers of the truth dwelling in hades, promising them that their days of sadness are soon to come to an end, for Christ would soon be breaking the doors through which they had all entered that dark place and granting them the path to salvation.
St John rightly earned his place at the seated before the throne of Christ, “Clad in camels’ hair while in the wilderness, [living] splendidly as a king therein; and bearing royal adornment therein, [he] didst gain dominion over the passions.”4 The earthly king Herod, in fact, became a slave to his passions, and has been stripped of his robes in nethermost regions, whereas the Baptizer of Christ is now a royal king in heaven, and, having the mind of Christ, will judge the world alongside Him at the end of days. May he intercede for us who honor him this day!
Amen.