BEHEADING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
According to the ancient tradition of the Church, the âYear of the Lordâ ends with the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist on September 11 (August 29). Thatâs right, âThe Year of the Lordâ is what the church year is called in the language of Orthodox liturgy. Since the church new year is celebrated three days later, September 14 (1), a unique time is created between it and the Beheading. Indeed, in relation to the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist, the Church New Year falls on the third day. Thus, in the minds of the faithful, the great reminiscent image of the sacred rest of the Lord Jesus in the tomb is recreated. Thus, at the beginning of autumn, the period of silence and reflection on time, as in the saving time of Easter, is again reproduced.
The end of John’s journey is extremely sad. But it is precisely this that marks the end. After all, this is how the line of biblical prophets who proclaimed the Victory of God, passing through thousands of years of sacred history, ends. It ends with John the Beheaded.
Calling John âthe greatest of those born of womenâ (Matthew 11:11), the Lord Jesus reveals the true face of the Biblical God. Because He Himself, the Coming One, expected in glory, comes in obscurity and triumphs in ignominy. Expected in the liberation of the people, it is revealed in his own captivity from the people. Our Lord ascended the Cross of Infamy. In the greatest culmination of the event of the cross, by which the world was saved, the true Face of the Biblical God was revealed.
Therefore, Johnâs proclamation is not only in his words about the Coming Messiah, but in the image of dishonor, humiliation, humility and meekness of the Lord that he reveals in himself. Thus foreshadowing what will happen to the One Whom he foretells. Thus, the Lord Jesus and His Prophet John stand before us in their sorrows, in the greatness of what is called âdivine exhaustionâ (cf. Phil. 2:6-11).
Faith in the Holy Scriptures has a threefold dimension: to believe God, to believe in God, and to follow Him. God brought John closer to Himself in a special, unique, inimitable, amazing way. After all, completing the History of the Testament, He made John a partaker of His humility in order to introduce to glory those who believed his call to repentance and followed Jesus Christ.
The Beheading of John the Baptist is one of the four major feasts of the Orthodox liturgical calendar. In Russian and Slavic traditions, a fifth is added: the Protection of the Virgin Mary. Easter, the twelve main feasts and the four other major feasts form a particular structure which gives the whole of the âYear of Graceâ a particular sacramental dynamic.
1. Only recently, one of the major rivers in one of the major Asian countries was legally recognized as a living entity. It seems that, among other things, this decision was motivated by the desire to emphasize that, despite the “mechanization” of everything and everyone in modern Western civilization, nature deserves more attention because it is truly alive. If such a thing were possible in Christianity, then perhaps time should be recognized as a living entity. We Christians are very dependent on time.
2. On September 11, the Orthodox Church celebrates the beheading of John the Baptist. Since the difference between the church calendar and the civil calendar in the local churches of the Julian calendar is thirteen days, the beheading falls on August 29. September 1, which “in our time” is September 14, marks the beginning of the new church year. In liturgical language, it is aptly called the “Year of the Lord.”
3 “I believe in the Lord Jesus, who rose on the third day according to the Scriptures,” states the Creed. “First of all, I delivered to you that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” states Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). The beheading of John the Baptist ends the church year. September 1, which marks the beginning of the Orthodox New Year, falls on the third day after the beheading. Therefore, the two days following the beheading represent a special time of rest, a time of timelessness, a reminder of biblical rest from God in Scripture and history. “He who has entered his rest also rests from his labors, just as God did from his,” states the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 4:10).
4 “John is a prophet and more than a prophet,” Jesus says in the Gospel (Matthew 11:1). John ended his days with a tragic and at the same time highly absurd death. This death became a prophecy of the death of the Messiah, to which he pointed. From this point, in the liturgical calendar, the days of mortal rest begin after John’s death and until the beginning of the new liturgical year. This death was a harbinger of the death of the Messiah, which he announced. Thus, the days of mortal rest that followed John’s death and lasted until the beginning of the new liturgical year already represent for the believers of the New Testament a reminder of the content of their faith and thus of the central mystery of their lives: the death on the cross and the resurrection of the Lord.
5 Time is indeed alive. It is now suspended. With the death of John the Baptist, the liturgical year ends. The greatest of the prophets, the fulfillment of the Old Testament writings, is beheaded. John the Baptist was killed at a private banquet in Herod’s house; the exact date and time of his death are unknown. Placing the liturgical commemoration of John’s beheading at the end of the year was a highly symbolic decision for the early Church. We humans are deeply dependent on time. We are temporal, we are time, and as Saint Augustine wrote: “Since God stood outside of time, the Son of God became temporal in Jesus Christ; God became time for us in order to free us from time.”