What Remains

“God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.”

Today is the memorial of the passion of Saint John the Baptist. Just yesterday, Luigi my husband, and I talked about Herod Antipas, tetrarch or King of Judea under the Roman Empire, who had John the Baptist imprisoned and beheaded. In the Bible we read the Herod “feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him.” Imagine that, Herod was a very powerful man but he liked to hear John the Baptist speak! He knew there was something different about John. Perhaps John awoke some good in him, but instead of listening to his conscience, he listened to Herodias who harbored a terrible grudge against John for speaking the truth. Herod had divorced his wife Phasaelis, and John the Baptist rebuked Herod for unlawfully taking Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip I.

Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote “Antiquities of the Jews”, relates that Herod was afraid of John’s great influence on the masses and put him to death because the Jews might raise a rebellion against him. Herod lusted for power and wanted to hold on to it at all cost. He had his wife Mariamme, and three of his sons executed because he accused them of trying to kill him. He confiscated the property of the hostile Jewish upper classes who did not support him, making him exceedingly wealthy. 

With all his wealth and power, Herod made many miserable. Herod’s disease and distemper are described in minute detail by the historian Josephus and many of the Jews believed his pain and suffering were God’s punishment upon him. Herod claimed, “I know the Jews will greet my death with wild rejoicing...” To make sure that there would be mourning in the whole of Judea when he died, he had the most important men of every village in Judea arrested and imprisoned in the hippodrome. He instructed his sister Salome, “These men under guard — as soon as I die, kill them all….” Thankfully, Salome released them all at his death. In Josephus’ words, “Salome ... dismissed those that were shut up in the hippodrome; and told them, that the King ordered them to go away to their own lands, and take care of their own affairs, which was esteemed, by the nation, a great benefit.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem about how might, wealth and power is fleeting, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” 

We can be sure that what remains of a man’s life is that which lives forever in the hearts and souls of those he loved and served.