More Than Thinking

Reflections on surrender, imitation, and holiness based on today's readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020626.cfm

Too often we shrink what it means to believe in Christ to simply being interested in Him; we believe that following Him means thinking or talking about Him often rather than surrendering our lives to Him and living in imitation of Him.

St. James reminds us that merely assenting to His existence, or thinking about His existence, is not enough when he says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!”

The reality is that no one spends more time thinking about Christ than Satan, yet no one is less willing to surrender himself to Him or model himself after His example.

Of course, examples of the devil can become a bit murky because they are abstract in nature and evoke a certain emotional response. But today’s Gospel reading shows that falling away from Christ is often accompanied by an external interest in Him.

Herod, we are told, is very interested in Christ. Actually, you might say he was fascinated by Him! But his interest did not lead him to an internal change (repentance); it led him to double down on his means of external obsession and control.

This disposition was not limited to the Lord alone, but extended to those who followed the Lord in sincerity — to those who were sincerely repentant, who were deeply and radically changed internally by their encounters with the Lord.

There is no one for whom this is truer than St. John the Baptist, who not only led a life of complete and total repentance but preached for others to do the same. Mark says, “Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody.”

Oh, how often do we do the same? How often do we not surrender to the Lord but try to “keep Him in custody”? And how often is the genuine example of repentance not an encouragement for us to do the same, but a threat to our egos? How often do we fear those we know to be holy and righteous?

We see the holiness of Christ, and it interests us, not in a way that makes us change internally, but in a way that challenges our illusions of control and leads us to try to use Him as a means of external control as well. Rather than allowing Christ to lead us to repentance, we try to manipulate faith in Christ to serve our egos.

Then we see those who seem to genuinely follow the Lord, who are not trying to control Him, but are overflowing with the joy of surrendering themselves to Him. There is a certain guilelessness, a straightforward sincerity, and an honest way of living, and this becomes a challenge to the ways in which we are deceitful.

But rather than being encouraged by the sincerity of others to be more sincere ourselves, we try to take the sincere into our custody — if only we can get them to think positively of us, then we would control the narrative!

The foolishness in this entire enterprise is that the proud, the vain, and the double-minded hardly ever realize how easily the pure of heart can perceive their motives. Yet, the pure of heart do not condemn them for this — they recognize this exists within themselves as well, and it leads them to further personal repentance.

Surely, it is a sorrowful thing for the pure of heart to witness how deceptive man can be and to what depths he will stoop in order to uphold his illusions of control and avoid the necessity of repentance. But just because it is sorrowful, it is not surprising.

Those who become conformed to Christ, just like Christ, “know what is in the heart of man.” There is nothing to suggest that John is surprised by the way his life ends. Yet, that does not mean he is not sorrowful over it.

In fact, this deep sorrow at the center of John’s soul may be one of the primary things that separates him from Herod. The proud will not allow themselves to feel sorrow over their sin, and, by failing to allow this, they cause all sorts of sorrow for others.

But the process of growing in humility is particularly marked by an increased sorrow over one’s own insufficiencies, over one’s own narrowness of heart, and an inability to expand this heart by one’s own power. Yet, with this recognition, one is also opened to a more genuine encounter with the Lord.

And the mercy and goodness of the Lord so far surpass any sin we find in ourselves, and His joy is so far greater than any sorrow we experience over our sin, that encounters with Him encourage us to embrace a deeper recognition of our sin and the sorrow that accompanies it, so that we can be drawn closer to His love, His mercy, and His joy.

In the end, Herod takes the life of St. John the Baptist, but he cannot take these things from him — St. John remains eternally resting in the love, mercy, and joy of the Lord. But Herod prevents himself from ever experiencing any of these through his proud insistence upon control and his consistent resistance to repentance.

May we all be encouraged by the example of St. John the Baptist to embrace the call to repentance and to experience all that comes with it — the sorrow and the joy, the discovery of sin and the realization of forgiveness. And may we continue to grow in humility and repentance so that we can continue to encounter the Lord more fully.