Off with his head

Today is the memorial of the Passion of John the Baptist.  Some will call the day by its less euphemistic title: the Beheading of John the Baptist.  We've seen more than our share of the horrors of beheading in recent years, brought to us by the profoundly evil, the cold-blooded.  John's beheading was no less terrible, the result of evil at its most capricious.

Of course, I can't say how John reacted to being led to the executioner.  Nonetheless, John was a man who lived to disappear into his vocation, a vocation that was his from the moment of his conception.  He leapt in his mother's womb at the meeting of Mary and the miraculously pregnant Elizabeth.  He famously declared his desire to "...decrease that he might increase."  He saw his life as pointing constantly to Christ.  He baptized the Savior for whom he made ready the path.  He heard the voice of the Father, saw the Holy Spirit's descent.  It was what he was born for.  I have to believe that he saw his death the same way.

In many respects, he represents what we should strive to be: attached only to Christ.  Dedicated to Christ, we should strive to decrease so that he might increase, preparing for his return.

I look to get out of my own way, to find a calling that leads me -- no, compels me -- to how he wants me to make the path ready.  To find myself living a life that is motivated by the polar opposite of a cold-blooded idea, to know that I could do nothing else.

Thanks, Colin.