February 03, 2017, Friday
4th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Heb 13:1-8
Gospel: Mk 6:14–29
King Herod also heard about Jesus because his name had become well-known. Some people said, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” Others thought, “He is Elijah,” and others, “He is a prophet like the prophets of times past.” When Herod was told of this, he thought: “I had John beheaded, yet he has risen from the dead!”
For this is what had happened. Herod had ordered John to be arrested and had him bound and put in prison because of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. Herod had married her and John had told him, “It is not right for you to live with your brother’s wife.” So Herodias held a grudge against John and wanted to kill him, but she could not.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
King Herod thought that by a stroke of an executioner’s sword, he could get rid of John the Baptist. John challenged the morality of Herod’s cohabitation with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. But when Herod had John’s head on a platter, Herod became a bothered man for the rest of his life. With so much power in his hands he couldn’t defend himself this time because the enemy he killed could die only once. Had he kept John alive, John could have disturbed him only by day by his preaching. After he killed him, he was bothered down to his spirit both day and night. Nobody can silence God’s preacher for good!
There were times when we too wanted to do get rid of preachers who hurt us with the truth. To get rid of John, Herod banished him to prison; to banish preachers we desert their parishes and worship God at other churches. Herod ordered the beheading of John; we decapitate these preachers by maligning their reputation. Priests shouldn’t be discouraged. Preaching, after all, necessarily hurts because the Word is a two edged sword. Despite resistance preachers should not give up, for the Word is like rain that never returns to the sky until after it has watered parched land. St. Augustine’s story illustrates the powerful effect of even a single homily. He lived a very bad life but was converted upon hearing one sermon of St. Ambrose.
Preachers shouldn’t be cowed. Has there been any preacher in our time killed in the pulpit? (Political meddling is a separate case). There are other forms of death, of course, that honest preachers undergo. But even if it should come to the point of shedding blood at the pulpit, such death glorifies a preacher and gives him even more power over those who dislike him. Nobody can kill an honest preacher for good. –(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM.
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