We celebrate liturgically the births of Our Lord (December 25), His Blessed Mother (September 8) and the prophet who was more than a prophet, the greatest man ever born of a woman (Matthew 11:9-11; Luke 7:28), St John the Baptist (June 24; d AD 28-29). On August 29 we celebrate the Beheading of St John, murdered by a feckless politician, the pusillanimous Tetrarch Herod.
John was imprisoned because he denounced Herod’s illicit, sinful “marriage”. Herod then had John killed because, blinded by lust for his niece, he was too craven to back down from a rash promise he blurted out to her in his lechery.
