The Death of John the Baptist

What inexpressible joy a person experiences who was banished from home or led away into captivity, when told that they may return to their own country, to their families and friends!  The same happiness awaits a soul which loves God and languishes in the ardent desire of seeking him in heaven in the midst of the saints, who are our real family and friends.

Death, my friends, is to the just man what sleep is to the tired laborer who is glad of the approach of night, which will bring him rest after the hardships of the day.  Death delivers the just man from the prison of his body, as Saint Paul says:  "Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"  "Deliver me, my God," said the holy King David, "deliver my soul from the prison of this body.  Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?"... 

How happy, then, is a Christian when he follows in the footsteps of the divine master!

But in what consists the life of Jesus Christ?  Listen, my good friends.  It consists of three things - namely: prayer, good deeds, and suffering.  You know that the Redeemer often withdrew from public life to pray and that he was always active in the salvation of souls.  The thought of God should come as natural to us as breathing.  During his life of prayer and good deeds Jesus Christ had to suffer much.  Now, poverty, now persecution, now humiliations, and then all kinds of harsh treatment.  "My life," he says through his prophet, "is wasted with grief: and my years in sighs.  My strength is weakened through poverty" (Ps 30: 2).  Can the life of a good Christian be any other than that of a man who is nailed to the cross with his master?  The righteous man is a crucified man.

Saint John Vianney, The Cure of Ars

-Saint John Vianney (1859) is the patron of parish priests.