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Saint John the Baptist was
called by God to be the precursor of His divine Son. In order to preserve
his innocence spotless, and to improve upon the extraordinary graces which
he had received in his earliest infancy, he was directed by the Holy
Spirit to lead an austere and contemplative life in the wilderness. There
he devoted himself to the continuous exercise of devout prayer and
penance.
When Saint John was thirty years old, the faithful minister of the Lord
began to discharge his mission. Clothed with the garments of penance, he
announced to all men the obligation weighing upon them of washing away
their iniquities with the tears of sincere compunction. He proclaimed the
Messiah, who was of his own age but whom he had never seen, when one day
Jesus came to be baptized by him in the Jordan. Saint John was received by
the poor folk as the true herald of the Most High God, and his voice was,
as it were, a trumpet sounding from heaven to summon all men to avert the
divine judgments. Souls were exhorted by him to prepare themselves to reap
the benefit of the mercy offered them.
When the tetrarch Herod Antipas, in defiance of all laws divine and human,
married Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip who was yet living, Saint
John the Baptist boldly reprimanded the tetrarch and his accomplice for so
scandalous an adultery. Herod, motivated by his lust and his anger, cast
the Saint into prison. About a year after Saint John had been made a
prisoner, Herod gave a splendid entertainment to the official world of
Galilee. Salome, a daughter of Herodias by her lawful husband, pleased
Herod by her dancing, to the point that he made her the foolish promise of
granting whatever she might ask. Salome consulted with her mother as to
what to ask, and that immoral woman instructed her daughter to demand the
death of John the Baptist, and that the head of the prisoner should be
immediately brought to her on a platter. This barbaric request startled
the tyrant himself; but governed by human respect he assented and sent a
soldier of his guard to behead the Saint in prison. Thus died the great
forerunner of our blessed Savior, some two years after his entrance upon
his public ministry, and a year before the death of the One he announced.
source:
http://magnificat.ca/cal/engl/08-29.htm
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