Hardened Hearts and Falsehoods

Saturday, August 3rd Readings Reflection: Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s Gospel recounts the death of St. John the Baptist. King Herod, who had ordered John’s death, thought that Jesus was St. John the Baptist raised from the dead.

Rabanus Maurus, an archbishop from the Carolingian period in the 9th century, wrote a brief commentary about today’s Gospel passage. In this commentary, Rabanus noted the irony of how Herod so readily believed that St. John the Baptist had risen from the dead, yet the Jews refused to believe Christ’s Resurrection, which had been foretold by the Prophets. Many people testified to Christ’s Resurrection, while no one besides Herod suspected that John the Baptist had risen from the dead.

The irony of these situations, which Rabanus pointed out, shows the effects of hardening one’s heart to the truth. In Herod’s case, he did not want to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. His own father had ordered the massacre of the Holy Innocents in an attempt to prevent a Messiah from rising to power and overthrowing him.

A few years later, when the Sanhedrin ordered Christ to be put to death, many people refused to believe that He had risen from the dead. The chief priests bribed the Roman soldiers to spread the lie that the Apostles stole Christ’s body while the guards were sleeping (see Mt 28:12-15 DRB). Some people claimed that the disciples were hallucinating the risen Jesus; others tried to argue that Christ did not actually die but merely fainted and pretended to rise from the dead three days later. There is seemingly no limit to the attempts to disprove Christ’s Resurrection, the truth of which is foundational to Christianity.

In today’s Gospel, Herodias wanted St. John the Baptist to be put to death because the prophet denounced her adulterous marriage to Herod. Herodias and Herod did not want to accept the truth of John’s message, which called them to repent and change their sinful ways. Likewise, those who rejected Christ’s Resurrection did not want to accept the truth of salvation and change their ways to follow Christ.

We continue to see this mentality even in our own day. Countless people continue to reject the truth of the Catholic Church’s teachings, because they know that they would need to repent and change their ways in order to follow Christ. The world hardens its heart and chooses sin, instant gratification, and pleasure over the eternal salvation that comes from faithfully following Christ.

Even though we have received the grace of Baptism and the other sacraments, we must nonetheless remain vigilant, lest we too fall into the same mentality. We are not guaranteed salvation just because we have been baptized; we can use our free wills to reject the truth and fall into unrepentant mortal sin. May God give us the grace to continually repent and set aside our sinful ways, not hardening our hearts like Herod, but always embracing the truth that is found in Christ and His Church.

Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist. Public domain