There is a kind of interest that never becomes a visit. We follow news of a person for years, we know the name and most of the story, and we never once cross the street to meet them. Today's Gospel is three verses long, and it is entirely about a man in that condition.
Now Herod the tetrarch heard about all the things that were being done by him, but he doubted, because it was said by some, "For John has risen from the dead," yet truly, by others, "For Elijah has appeared," and by still others, "For one of the prophets from of old has risen again." And Herod said: "I beheaded John. So then, who is this, about whom I hear such things?" And he sought to see him. (Lk 9:7-9)
Luke tells us almost nothing else about the scene. Three rumours are circulating, a ruler is unsettled by them, he asks a question, and he wants a look. Yet notice who this man is. Herod Antipas governs the very territory in which all of it is happening. He has soldiers, informers, a palace and a treasury. And he is the worst informed person in the chapter, reduced to picking up news of Jesus through gossip he cannot sort out.
The word Luke chooses for his reaction is stronger than doubt. It means to be at a loss, thrown, unable to find a way through. Herod is not troubled because the truth frightens him; he is troubled because none of his categories fit. A risen prophet, a returning Elijah, the ghost of a murdered preacher — he turns the possibilities over the way we turn over an object we cannot name. What he is looking for is not conversion. It is a classification.
Then comes the one flat sentence in his mouth. I beheaded John. He says it himself, in the first person, without excuse and without sorrow. It is simply a fact he has filed. Something has happened between this man and the messenger God sent him, and rather than being repented of, it has been absorbed; it now sits inside him as a piece of information. A person can carry that and still be genuinely curious about religion.
And then the last line, which Luke will not let us forget: he sought to see him. The Greek suggests a continuing effort, something Herod kept trying to arrange. Much later, at the very end of the story, Jesus will finally be sent to him, and Luke tells us the tetrarch was very glad, because he had wanted to see him for a long time and hoped to watch him work some sign. He gets his interview at last. He asks many questions. And Jesus answers him nothing. A curiosity that has waited years is still not the same thing as seeking.
It helps to put Herod beside the others in Luke who wanted to see. Zacchaeus also wanted to see who Jesus was, and he ran ahead down the road and climbed a tree and made himself ridiculous in front of a whole town. The shepherds said, let us go over and see this word that has come to pass, and they walked through the night to do it. In both cases the wanting cost something and changed an address. Herod wants the same thing from a chair, with the expenses paid.
The first reading puts a frame around all of this. Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, and everything is vanity. The Hebrew word is closer to breath, or vapour: the small cloud you see on a cold morning and then do not. Generations come and generations go, the sun rises and hurries back to where it rose, the rivers all run to the sea and the sea is never full. What has been is what will be. There is nothing new under the sun.
Qoheleth is not a cynic, and he is not depressed. He is an honest man who has looked steadily at everything available under the sun and found that none of it will carry the weight we keep putting on it. That is exactly the world Herod governs: a closed circuit of rumours, ambitions, banquets and executions, where things circulate endlessly and nothing is finally new. Inside such a world even Jesus can only register as the latest item — another prophet, or possibly a repeat of one we have already had.
The real sting of the reading is in a line we tend to skim: there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any of the things to come. That is what purely horizontal existence does with all of us, kings included. Which is why the newness we need can never arrive from under the sun. It has to come into it, from somewhere else.
And it did — though not at all in the form Herod was watching for. The genuinely new thing did not appear as a wonder hanging above the crowd. It appeared as a body, in a poor village, inside a family, in a life so ordinary that a tetrarch could hear accurate reports of it and still be unable to classify it. God's newness is not louder than the world. It is smaller. And that is precisely what makes it impossible to consume from a distance.
This is the heart of what the Missionaries of Bethlehem have been given to live. The God who comes as a child overwhelms nobody. He can be looked at and missed. He can be the subject of correct information that changes nothing at all. What he asks of us is not more data but nearness, and nearness is something we can only give by moving — by going where he actually is, which is nearly always a small place, a poor place, a hidden one. The shepherds did not understand more than Herod did. They simply went.
So today's work can be very concrete. There is probably one person we have been following at a distance: hearing about them, wondering about them, meaning to go and never going. Today, go. Make the call, walk down the corridor, sit with them. And there may be one thing in our own past that we have learned to state as a fact, the way Herod states his, without ever letting it become sorrow. Bring that into prayer and let it stop being information.
Qoheleth is right about everything under the sun, and that is why today's psalm asks for the one thing that breaks the circle: fill us at daybreak with your love, and we shall exult all our days. Herod wanted to see Jesus and never did. The door he could not find is still standing open — and it is low, the way doors are in Bethlehem.
Scripture text: Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV), public domain.
Prayer of the Day
Father, you know how easily we settle for hearing about you. Like Herod we gather reports, turn them over, and never rise from where we are sitting. Break open the closed circle of our days, where nothing under the sun seems new and the years pass like breath. Give us the courage of the shepherds, who got up in the night and went, and of Zacchaeus, who did not mind being seen climbing a tree. Take from us the facts we have quietly filed away instead of grieving, and turn them into repentance. Fill us at daybreak with your love, that we may recognise your Son where he truly stands: small, poor and very near. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Meditation
- Whom have we been following at a distance for years, meaning to go and never going, and could we go today?
- What have we filed away as a fact about ourselves that has never been allowed to become sorrowful?
- Where are we waiting for God to do something spectacular, while he is already standing near us in something small?
