Today the Catholic Church celebrates the beheading of St. John the Baptist, one of my favorite feasts.
John the Baptist was not afraid to speak the truth and stand up for justice – and so he alienated political and civil leaders, as well as people like Herodias, Herod’s “wife.”
For this, he lost his head.
Would that we had more prophets like John the Baptist, unafraid to speak up clearly.
As Albert Camus said in a speech to a group of Dominican friars in 1948:
“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest [person]. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the bloodstained face history has taken on today.”
