Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
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Killer of Repentance
Saint John the Baptist was sent by God to call people to repentance: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3, 2). He himself, with his way of life, is the embodiment of repentance. And naturally, he could not even be called by God to preach repentance if he had not experienced all its power perfectly.
In today’s Gospel reading (see: Mark 6, 14–30), it is revealed to us what the main human passions are and what their basic mutual influences are in ourselves. Passion is painful – to the point of depravity, a mental force, which through repentance (change-of-mind) should be transfigured into virtue. The main human passion is self-love, which we need to transfigure into love of God and love of humanity.
In Herod the Tetrarch, we recognise self-love in all three of its manifestations or sub-passions: love of pleasures (desire for bodily pleasures), avariciousness (desire for money and possessions), and vain glory (desire for earthly power and glory). In the works of Venerable John of the Ladder, we read that human passions often collide with each other, and that, one passion suppresses the other at the appropriate moment. Thus, we also see with King Herod that these three passions at the same time do not have the same intensity and strength, and we see how the stronger passion suppresses the weaker one.
Particularly, at the moment when the daughter of Herodias dances and satisfies his passion “love of pleasures” with her dance, Herod is prepared to give her whatever she wants, even half of the kingdom that belongs to him: “Ask of me what you want and I will give it to you !” And he swore to her: “Whatever you ask of me, I will give you, even up to half of my kingdom.”
So, at that moment, passion of “love of pleasures” suppressed the passion of “avariciousness” in him. Moreover, we see that it is precisely because of his passion of “love of pleasures” that Herod keeps Saint John in prison, because he rebuked him that he must not take his brother’s wife: “For Herod himself had sent to arrest John, bound him and threw him into prison, for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for he had married her. Because John said to Herod: ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife!'”
In spite of everything, neither “love of pleasures” nor “avariciousness” forced him to kill Saint John, but only to keep him imprisoned, although he was still afraid of him, and even felt the need to listen to what he was saying: “For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just and holy man, and he protected him; he did many things out of obedience to him, and he listened to him gladly”
But after King Herod promised the girl and gave her his word that he would give her anything she wanted, even half of his kingdom, she, instructed by her mother, asked for the head of St. John the Baptist: “Immediately she came in with haste to the king and asked, saying: ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter!'”
Although he was exceedingly sorry because of it, we see that his passion of “vain glory” does not allow him to retract the word he gave before the guests: “The king was exceedingly sorry, yet, because of the oaths and because of his guests he did not want to refuse her. And immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded his head to be brought. And he went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took away his body and laid it in a tomb.”
It is clearly evident that, above all, Herod holds true to his word, to his own “I”, to his pride and high opinion of himself. So, his passions of vainglory and pride kill Saint John the Baptist, that is, these two passions finally kill the possibility of repentance in him, himself. Obviously, no one can harm a man as much as he can harm himself.
In a similar way to King Herod, we also harm our repentance with our passions of “covetousness” and “love of pleasures”, but in such a way that we keep them closed and suppressed somewhere inside us. But with our vainglorious loving and proud mind we kill repentance, which is given to us as the greatest gift in Christ the God-Man, in the Church.
It is the property of pride to establish our mind as the criterion of all things visible and invisible. This happens for everything that a person sees, hears, reads, feels, touches, and for everything that he contemplates, and also for everything that faith reveals to him, if for all of this, I say, man as a criterion has solely and only his fallen mind and no one and nothing else. How he will receive all that, how he will understand it, how he will decide and conclude – that, that is how it is and there is no other way. This is the basic manifestation of pride of the mind.
But pride can also manifest itself as a high opinion of ourselves and as a shameless struggle for human power and glory (vainglory), and this, on the other hand, depends very much on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If we have a slightly higher position of power, if we have a little more of something, or to be more gifted than others – herein lies pride in its demonic dimensions.
And to conclude – the strongest passion that kills repentance in us is the love of glory (vainglory), the pride of the mind; especially if it is related to a position of power and wealth. We, on the other hand, instead of transfiguring that passion into humility, continue to nurture it. And how do we nurture it? Well, we want to be first in all things, we want everyone to praise us, celebrate us and love us – just like the false prophets behaved.
People who offend and hurt us, whom God allows in our lives to help us see what is the strongest passion from which we need to cleanse our heart – people who are, in fact, God’s gift to us – we hate them, we hold grudges against them and we repay them with evil for “evil”. By doing so, we reject the gift of God and God’s providence for our transfiguration and salvation.
At the end, God wonders what to do with us!? If He does not allow a person to hurts us, we will remain trapped by the passion without even knowing what our heart is defiled by. If He allows a person to hurt us, instead of humbling ourselves, seeing what we carry in our heart and repenting, we reject the gift of God and move further away from God. To behave in such a manner only means feeding and developing the passion of vainglory, to its very demonic dimensions.
We have a nice opportunity today, on this feast, to ask ourselves: Are we the bearers of the gift of the prayer of the mind in the heart, that is, can our mind prayerfully stay in our heart inasmuch as we want, i.e. have we changed-our-minds? In other words, are we the bearers of the eschatological, royal, New Testament priesthood, internal and the only eternal priesthood? Obviously, we are not. What, then, is the reason?
The captivity of our heart by irrational passions. And we know very well that, above all, it is the irrational passion of vainglory, of a high opinion of ourselves; or, at the very least, the fact that we put our mind and nous as the criterion of everything – that which, from our level of spiritual development and with the enlightened state of mind we have, we conclude to be so, that is, for us there is no other way.
That is all well and good, but what if it is not like that, we do not ask ourselves about the consequences of the wrong conclusion to our spiritual development. At best, one day we will become aware of those consequences such as the closure of the heart to the prayer of the mind within it.
That is why I always emphasise, and this is the order established by the Holy Fathers in the Church, that our mind, after we become members of the Church, should first go through a process of healing by bringing it into obedience, that is, change-of-mind, i.e. repentance.
No one has ever been able to silence the voice of the Prophet. The words of Saint John – “repent yee” will echo until the end of the world and unto ages in the hearts of Christians, through their living conscience, which is the seal of God in every person.
Saint John the Forerunner, Baptist of Christ, preacher of repentance and authentic bearer of the New Testament priesthood, royal and eschatological priesthood, pray to God to grant us effective repentance…!
Metropolitan of Strumica Nahum
(10.09.2022 15:45)
