The Martyrdom of John the Baptist

Today in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is the commemoration of the Beheading of the Holy Forerunner John the Baptist.

St. John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus due to his mother Elizabeth’s relation to Jesus’s Mother Mary; the unborn John leapt for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice (Lk. 1:41, 44), recognizing the mother of the Messiah. John’s birth was miraculously foretold to his father, the priest Zachary, and he grew up to be the last of the Old Testament prophets, living on locusts and honey and wearing a hair shirt (Matt. 3:4), preaching repentance. The angelic prophecy to Zachary said of John (Luke 1:15-17):

“For he shall be great before the Lord; and shall drink no wine nor strong drink: and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And he shall convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias; that he may turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom of the just, to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people.”

John prophesied the Christ’s coming, baptized Jesus, and pointed Him out as the “Lamb of God…who taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Today however is the commemoration of the martyrdom of John the Baptist.

John denounced the sinful “marriage” between King Herod and Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother. So Herod, though he liked John, imprisoned him, even as Herodias sought to kill John. Herodias’s daughter performed a dance on Herod’s birthday that so pleased the king he promised her whatever she wished, and at her mother’s instruction she asked for John’s head. Herod, though saddened, complied (Mark 6:27-28):

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.

Jesus later testified of John (Lk. 7:28), “Amongst those that are born of women, there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist.”