The path to the tomb

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Mark 6: 14-29) recounts the events leading up to the beheading of John the Baptist. Herod first imprisoned John for denouncing his marital arrangements, held him prisoner but kept him alive, despite his murderous wife’s desires, and finally – ensnared, like many an arrogant and unwise braggart, by his own words – orders the execution of the herald of the Christ to satisfy the whims of his latest object of lust. For who can believe Herod had no plans for his dancing stepdaughter Salome? She may of course have appeared slightly less desirable with rivulets of blood running down her arms, as she held the decapitated head of the Baptist aloft for everyone to see.

The events of those days and of the fateful night of John’s death are not for the squeamish. They are especially not for the casuists who have not the daring or the desire to go where John’s courage took him. For let us not forget: John was tough on doctrine. His pastoral touch had little to do with soft soaping the consciences of the wayward. He was not in search of accommodations, nor of compromises, nor indeed of finding the good in Herod’s and Herodias’s connubial settlement which was, for all we know, one of gently courtesy and attentive, mutual support; John knew full well that while the light shines in the darkness, the darkness does not comprehend it (John 1:5). For his part, Herod, St Mark tells us, was greatly perplexed and yet heard him gladly, like the sinner who has some kind of relish for the truth but perhaps not the courage yet to do anything about it. Do not extinguish the smoking flax (Matthew 12:20).  

Yet in these events, there are also signs of our own struggles, even if our experiences lie far from the glorious palaces of Herod or the dungeon in which John met his death. Their struggles are ours, for we are on a battleground, or indeed that battleground lies within us. The peace of God in this life is not the peace we will know in heaven but rather the clarity He grants us in the chaos of this life: the chaos in us and the chaos around us. Our call to be contemplative is at once to know the peace within but also to know what and who its enemies are. For they are closer to us than we often are aware of.

Thus, the enmity of the world runs through this gospel. Herod himself is a worldly power run wild, while his morals and expectations are those of the fallen world: the world structured by standards other than God’s. It is not just that the events that unfold are immoral; it is also that the context in which they unfold seems irresistible, unless you have the moral fibre of a man like John. How many parallels there are here with our own situation! It is not just the written laws of the world that surround us; it is all the unspoken norms and expectations that play on our instincts as social animals to fall in and not to stand out. There is only one solution, and it is John’s solution. Speak the truth to power when power confronts us. We must not elect our own martyrdom; but neither must we avoid it if it comes to our door – a door which, for all our outward facing charity, we must allow God to keep watch over.

For, in the end, the enmity of the world would not be half so troublesome to us if it did not find an ally in the enmity of our flesh. The philosopher Immanuel Kant waxed lyrical about the starry heavens above and the moral law within, but the inner man’s lawfulness is dubious at best. The battleground extends within us, and if we have no awareness of it, that is simply because we have been concussed by our own surrender. Herod and Herodias are driven on by their lusts, even if, in Herod’s refusal to recant his rash vow of giving Salome anything she wanted, he showed himself the victim of the expectations of the world, just like every other moral invertebrate. Yet his was fallen flesh, like our own. If we think we are above Herod’s disorders, we might be in for a rude awakening. Original sin weakens every faculty within us, and grace, while it heals, does not take away that thorn in the flesh. Lord, don’t trust Philip, as St Philip Neri prayed, and St Therese of Lisieux towards the end of her life was less and less disturbed by her sins, not because they were little but because they reminded her of her dependence on her redeeming God. She too was a fallen child. Sorrow goes with humility and confidence. John probably invited Herod down to the Jordan for baptism and repentance; if only he had gone. If only he had gone.

The enmity of this world and the enmity of our own flesh, however, might yet be easier to fight were it not for the enmity of the devil. Our media is full of every conspiracy theory going except the one which is a dead cert: the conspiracy of the devil against every single one of us. Are we loved by God? We are hated by the devil – loathed with a loathing that proceeds from an incalculable malice and jealousy, a drive to destroy and despair alike. But then, here’s the thing. Unlike in the movies where the devil speaks in pantomimic guttural tones, the voice of the devil is mostly as sweet and seductive as Salome’s dancing. He uses fear when he needs to: fear of God and fear of sin, as well as fear of the world or fear of superstitions such as Herod entertained. He uses above all deceit, for as God is the author of truth, the devil is the counterfeiter of truth, the extraordinary minister of unholy miscommunication. So, Jerome calls him the ape of God for St Michael’s question Quis ut Deus? Who is like unto God? was only a response to the devil’s pretension of being like God.

For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

And our first parents would be like the devil too, believing they were like God. The devil runs through today’s gospel scene, whispering at Herod’s ear and in Herodias’s plotting, titivating this palace of certain damnation, and murmuring, murmuring, murmuring in the ear of John who sits in the dungeon where the darkness corrodes his human confidence and leaves him naked and bereft of consolation.

When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb, like that of Jesus. For, in the end, there is only one solution in our fight against the three enemies, and it is the path that Jesus took, the path to the cross, and the path to the tomb where John preceded Him: there to await the resurrection to life that is ours for the asking, if only we ask, if only we say ‘yes’ to it, at every moment of our lives.