... was part of God's saving plan
that the Coming of the Savior
might be announced even to those in the Abyss.
Weep, then, Herodias,
that you asked for a wicked murder,
because you loved neither God's law
nor eternal life.
— Kontakion from the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist.
Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957), wrote a number of fine essays and homilies about John the Baptist (a couple of them are in the collection, Pastoral and Occasional Sermons), including, "Our Devotion to St. John the Baptist", available in full on the Ronald Knox Society of North America website. Here is part of it:
St John is to meet his death before his Master. And for what a cause! The tragedy of St John is not that he was persecuted, nor that he met a violent death: people built as he was do get persecuted, do meet a violent death: but that he died too soon to witness the glories of the Resurrection, too soon to strengthen and promote the faith of the infant Church. “There hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist; yet he that is the lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” So said our Lord, meaning, as usual, the Church, when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven. The crown of St John’s whole career of self-effacement is that, because he rebuked an unheeding tyrant for his loose morals, because he earned a woman’s hatred, because a girl danced and an oath was taken in a hurry, the Church of Christ was destined to lose its first, its most obvious missionary. In him is summed up that long line of prophets and patriarchs who lived for the sake of the promises they were never to see fulfilled, dwelling in tents as strangers upon earth, because they looked for the recompense of the reward. “Prophets and kings desired it long, and died before the sight”, God having provided some better thing for us, that without us they should not be perfected. The greatest of mankind and yet not destined to hear the full Gospel preached: the friend of the Bridegroom, doomed to perish before he claimed his bride and took her to himself.
He must increase, but I must decrease; I wonder what St John meant by must? Did he mean “this thing has got to happen”, as when we say, “Death must come to every man”? Or did he mean, “I have got to make this happen”, as when we say: “this letter must go tonight”? I don’t think with St John the Baptist there would be much difference between the two; from his earliest years he had been so distinctly conscious of a mission, felt so certain that he was merely an instrument being used by God to further the ends of his Providence, that he wouldn’t make much distinction between the destiny God had for him and the commands God laid upon him; the whole of his career is one great “must”. One of the Fathers, I think, suggests that St John decreased because he was beheaded, while our Lord increased because he was lifted up upon a cross. I don’t think that we need attach so literal a sense to the words as that, but certainly the manner of St John’s death was characteristic – a murder carried out in hugger-mugger within the walls of a prison; the gossip about it hushed up, as Court gossip is apt to be; the hasty removal and burial of the body by his own disciples. To drop more and more out of view, and let others profit by the beginnings we have made and the experience we have won for them; to make way for our children to succeed in the world better than we did, to see our pupils outshine us, or our rivals outstrip us, or the job we thought we could do so well handed over to another, who makes even a better job of it than we could – what a common experience that is in life, what a natural one, and yet, how hard to sit down under it! How we always want to see our name mentioned, our works recognized, our help indispensable! Every parent, I suppose, has to go through something of that sort when the children grow up, and nearly everybody as years go on, and it is time for us to be laid on the shelf: and, you know, we can make a lot of difference to the happiness and the quietness of the world, according as we determine to make ourselves unpleasant about it or determine to take it in St John the Baptist’s spirit. Let us make him our model, the man who was the prophet of a nation at thirty years old, and died almost unknown, a mere historical memory, a year or so later.
“He must increase, but I must decrease” – there is a more intimate sense in which the words concern us. For the business of our life in this world, after all, is not to leave a mark on it behind us or to take an honoured name away from it with us, but to make our peace with God before he calls us to a better one. And what is it, making our peace with God, but letting the influence of our Lord grow more and more in us, dominating our lives and throwing self into the background? He must increase; whenever he comes to me in Holy Communion, whenever he draws close to me in prayer, what is his purpose but that my will should be more his will, my life more his life? “I must decrease” – this self that struggles so against the supernatural influence of his grace, that makes me so proud, so grasping, so quick to take offense: only as it decreases will he increase; only as he increases will it decrease. Thus would I live, yet now not I, but he in all his power and love henceforth alive in me. May he give us all, in life and death, the spirit of his holy fore-runner.
More by and about Monsignor Knox:
• Monsignor Ronald Knox | Ignatius Insight Author Page
• The Church and Human Progress | Ronald A. Knox
• The Modern Distaste for Religion | Ronald A. Knox
• The Decline of Dogma and the Decline of Church Membership | Ronald A. Knox
• The Four Marks of the Church | Ronald A. Knox
• The Mind of Knox | Preface to The Wine of Certitude: A Literary Biography of Ronald Knox | David Rooney
• Monsignor Ronald Knox: Convert, Priest, Apologist | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh
• Experience, Reason, and Authority in the Apologetics of Ronald Knox | Milton Walsh | From Ronald Knox As Apologist
• Review of The Belief of Catholics | Carl E. Olson
• A Lesson Learned From Monsignor Ronald A. Knox | Carl E. Olson
• Ronald Knox, Apologist | Carl E. Olson
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