This is the edited text of the homily given by Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP for the memorial of the Passion of St John the Baptist and Australian Catholic Communications Congress, St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 29 August 2024.
“Don’t shoot the messenger” is a popular saying, said to go all the way back to 441 BC when the great Sophocles wrote his tragedy Antigone. In one scene, a guard brings unwelcome news to Creon, King of Thebes and, fearful of the king’s reaction, the man says in his defence: “No one loves the bearer of bad news.” In Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, written at the beginning of the second century AD, we are told “when news of the Roman general Lucullus’ approach was brought to Tigranes the Great of Armenia (who humbly styled himself King of Kings and King of the Four-Corners of the World), he was so displeased he had the messenger beheaded; after that no-one dared bring further information. Surrounded by flatterers and receiving no true intelligence, Tigranes sat on his throne unaware of the war blazing around him.
Shooting the messenger is of course a metaphor for blaming the bearer of bad tidings, even though they have no responsibility for the events reported. In some countries journalists and media organisations are persecuted by wrathful governments or crowds. Even in free and peaceful Australia, people can take out their negative emotions about unwelcome news upon the journo, whistle-blower, friend or other informant.
In today’s Gospel (Mk 6:17-29) we meet Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, puppet of the Roman occupiers, and son of Herod the Great who had famously ordered the slaughter of babies on hearing unwelcome news that a rival king of the Jews, had been born (Mt ch 2). This family isn’t fond of hard truths. Antipas holds court, surrounded by sycophants, charmed by the erotic dancing of his daughter and niece Salome, and egged on by Herodias, his second wife; Herod had thrown off his first one so as to marry the wife of his own half-brother. Flaunting his power, Herod offers Salome whatever she wants. Her mum suggests a macabre wish that must have shocked Herod, who had a love-hate relationship with the prisoner, John the Baptist. “Mum and I don’t like that John fellow sitting in your cell. We don’t like his dress sense and eating habits. We don’t like his influence over the people and even you. Most of all, we don’t like him calling out the family’s infidelities, divorces and incest. I want his head on a silver platter!”
Throughout the Gospels, John is described as an ἄγγελόν (angelon) or messenger—the very word Sophocles used when saying we shouldn’t kill the messenger; he’s a voice for repentance in preparation for Jesus’ coming. He was a bold truth-teller, no “suck up” to the elites, and had no care for self-advancement or accolades. He just told it as he saw it, even if that would predictably land him in trouble. But what was the source of his courage?
Well, while not a “yes-man” in the worldly sense, John was unashamedly a “yes to God” man. In reading the riot act to Herod and Herodias, he wasn’t moralising or communicating ill-feeling about their marital choices, let alone making himself their judge: he was simply drawing attention to the facts of their situation and the relevant divine law. His comms are not ultimately his own: they are prophetic words, not in the sense of confronting, predictive or wise, but in the sense of real and God-given (Jn 1:32-34).
As the messenger, his brief was clear: “You shall be a prophet of the Most High God, forerunner of the Lord, preparing his ways before him, proclaiming salvation, forgiveness, tenderness and peace” (Lk 1:76-79). Sounds good on the jd. But as Herod the Great demonstrated, news even of a Prince of Peace is not always welcome; and as his son’s gang highlighted, news of a need to convert can be even less popular. Telling people to have a good look at themselves and turn away from anything that separates them from God was bound to ruffle feathers. Yet John reported it anyway.
There are lessons here for Christian communicators. First, that the business of reporting facts and offering opinions through a Gospel lens can be a dangerous one. In Australia working in Catholic comms might not endanger your life, but there will be those who impugn your objectivity, credibility, or woke acceptability. While the red martyrs pay with their deaths for witnessing to truth, the white martyrs do so with their lives.
But God doesn’t ask such things of us without also equipping us with the intellectual, moral and spiritual tools we need. As we cultivate the skills of a consummate comms professional, the virtues of a truly good person, and the spiritual life of a saint-in-the making, God gives us the wherewithal for our vocation. When Jeremiah is first approached to be God’s prophet, his instinctive response was “No, Lord, I’m too young, too uneducated. I don’t know what to say.” But God reaches out to touch Jeremiah’s mouth, pen, keyboard; tells him to stand up for the truth and not to be deflected by the critics; and promises to fortify this comms man, inspire his words, and deliver him from harm (Jer 1:5-19).
In Jeremiah’s “why me?” and John the Baptist’s “I’m unworthy even to untie Jesus’ sandal” we see exemplified, alongside the passion for truth and trust in God’s help, a proper humility about ourselves. None of us knows it all. Like the prophets we must let God’s truth do the work. That might be challenging in a culture that like Herodias and Salome denies the very notion of objective truth and sees comms as an opportunity to spin, exploit, deceive. But the humble “voice of one crying in the wilderness” knows her or his own limits, that with God all things are possible, and that by His grace we can still demonstrate some excellence in our craft, some commitment in our hearts, some contribution to our culture and to building up God’s kingdom.
There’s lots more to learn from John’s life and death. But a last takeaway for those participating in our Catholic Communications Congress—and indeed for all the rest of us—is that we are part of the greatest comms team of all, the church, with Christ the Logos, word, argument of God as our editor-in-chief, with the prophets and evangelists as our mentors, with our pastors and lay faithful as fellow missionaries. We gather as a team at Mass and in so many other ways to proclaim in dying John’s words: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (Jn 1:29)