When you prayerfully reflect on the image of John the Baptist, as though focusing your gaze on his icon, you understand that he is some entirely special person. After all, the Gospel contains many remarkable people, kind and sincerely loving the Lord... But in John there is something that...
When you prayerfully reflect on the image of John the Baptist, as though focusing your gaze on his icon, you understand that he is some entirely special person. After all, the Gospel contains many remarkable people, kind and sincerely loving the Lord... But in John there is something that seems to separate him from everyone, to set him a little aside. “Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist...” (Matt. 11:11) — perhaps precisely here lies the reason for this feeling of inaccessibility, of remoteness.
And yet he was only a human being. There is one other human being before whom we have a similar feeling of inaccessibility: Mary. She is simply a woman, and at the same time She is far greater than any woman, for She carried in Her womb the Son of God Himself. This is what unites these two people, apart from blood kinship. But not only this: both became those through whom the birth of Christ was accomplished, in the flesh through Mary, and in the Spirit through John. And both at the same time felt themselves to be humble, unworthy witnesses of the miracle taking place before their eyes.
This is probably why these three icons stand at the center of the Deesis row: Mary, the Savior, and John. And the words of the prayer become somehow especially understandable: “As by natural kinship and by prayerful concord you are one, Mother of the King of all and divine Forerunner, offer together a supplication for the servant who has greatly angered the All-merciful One, that He may show mercy and save, bowing to your intercessions, and change me from my fiery kinship.”
14
14:1 At that time - When our Lord had spent about a year in his public ministry. Tetrarch - King of a fourth part of his father's dominions. Mar 6:14.
14:2 He is risen from the dead - Herod was a Sadducee: and the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead. But Sadduceeism staggers when conscience awakes.
14:3 His brother Philip's wife - Who was still alive. Mar 6:17.
14:4 It is not lawful for thee to have her - It was not lawful indeed for either of them to have her. For her father Aristobulus was their own brother. John's words were rough, like his raiment.He would not break the force of truth by using soft words, even to a king.
14:5 He would have put him to death - ln his fit of passion; but he was then restrained by fear of the multitude; and afterward by the reverence he bore him.
14:6 The daughter of Herodias - Afterward infamous for a life suitable to this beginning.
14:8 Being before instructed by her mother - Both as to the matter and manner of her petition: She said, Give me here - Fearing if he had time to consider, he would not do it: John the Baptist's head in a charger - A large dish or bowl.
14:9 And the king was sorry - Knowing that John was a good man.Yet for the oath's sake - So he murdered an innocent man from mere tenderness of conscience.
14:10 And he sent and beheaded John in the prison, and his head was given to the damsel - How mysterious is the providence, which left the life of so holy a man in such infamous hands! which permitted it to be sacrificed to the malice of an abandoned harlot, the petulancy of a vain girl, and the rashness of a foolish, perhaps drunken prince, who made a prophet's head the reward of a dance! But we are sure the Almighty will repay his servants in another world for what ever they suffer in this.