When I was a child, birthday parties were fairly simple. Instead of bouncy castles, pony rides and pizza, we had cake with ice cream, soda, plastic cups filled with candies and a rollicking game of pin the tail on the donkey.
There were always cousins at my parties because in Italian families, they are often as close as siblings. I was too young to realize my birthday came on an auspicious date in the church calendar, Aug. 29, which commemorates the beheading of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist.
Years later, I learned that the story about John in the Bible has the elements of a blockbuster movie — lust, deceit, cowardice and bloody revenge.
John was a Jewish preacher and prophet, who led a simple life in the wilderness, where he subsisted on locusts and wild honey. I picture him somewhat shaggy in his rough camel-skin cloak and leather belt, which he wore in imitation of the prophet Elijah.
Praised by Jesus as a “burning and shining light,” John drew large crowds with his message of repentance and hope —and baptized many people in the Jordan River.
John was a strong, no-nonsense preacher, whose dedication to the truth led to a gruesome death. You see, he landed in prison for telling King Herod that divorcing his wife and bedding his sister-in-law, Herodias, was immoral.
His courage reminds me of another man of strong faith imprisoned for his beliefs. In 1975, Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan was imprisoned in Vietnam for 13 years — spending nine in solitary confinement — after the Communists came into power and began repressing the Catholic Church.
Thuan managed to smuggle out his reflections about prison on scraps of paper that eventually became a book “The Road of Hope.”
And in “A Prayer after the Heart of John the Baptist,” he wrote, “There are so many confused feelings in my head: sadness, fear, tension, my heart is torn to pieces for having been taken away from my people.”
While John was chained in his cell, isolated from his followers, Herod was throwing a birthday party for himself, featuring a dance by Herodias’ daughter, which so enchanted him that he promised the girl whatever gift she wanted.
At the bequest of her mother, the girl asked for John’s head on a platter. And although Herod considered John a holy man, he was a coward and dreaded losing face with his guests, so he ordered the beheading.
No details are provided about the event, but we can imagine John’s shock when the guards wrenched open his cell, pulled him out and thrust his neck on the chopping block.
In a scene straight out of a mobster movie, the bloody head was carried in on a platter and presented to the girl, who gave it to her mother.
John was imprisoned because he wouldn’t back down from the truth about Herod’s immoral actions, which was also the case for Thuan, who wouldn’t renounce Christ’s teachings.
Thuan wrote, “Along the road to captivity I prayed: ‘You are my God and my all.’”
John’s imprisonment happened long ago, but the consequences of selfishness and violence still darken headlines today.
Herod put his own quest for happiness above the religious laws about marriage, and took an innocent life rather than repent. He remains a bleak figure in history, whose name evokes evil, while John the Baptist is venerated as a holy and hopeful man, who walked in the light.
Each year, I reflect on this Bible story and pray to be illuminated by the shining grace of heaven, rather than dwelling in the darkness of sin. And to never give up the truth of Christ, who is everything to me.
