The Passion and Triumph of John, by Joannie Watson

By Joannie Watson, Integrated Catholic Life, Aug 29, 2025

Joan Watson was born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, but college and graduate school took her to Virginia, Ohio, and Rome. After graduating from Christendom College with a B.A. in History and Franciscan University with a M.A. in Theology, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee to be part of the explosion of Catholic culture in the middle of the Bible Belt. She has been blessed to work for Dr. Scott Hahn at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology …

Why Celebrate a Passion?

Weakness versus power, failure versus victory. The world would tell us a different story than Jesus does. But today we celebrate that God’s ways are not our ways. Where the world sees weakness and suffering and death, we see triumph and victory. 

Today we celebrate one of John the Baptist’s two feasts. John is one of the few people whose births we celebrate (June 24). We only celebrate those who were born without original sin: Jesus, Our Lady, and John, whom tradition holds was cleansed of original sin at the Visitation. Instead, for most saints, we celebrate the day of their birth into heavenly glory: the day of their death.

For John, that is today, the celebration of his “Passion.” This celebration only makes sense to Christians, who know that what the world sees as death and defeat is really triumph.

We see this clearly in today’s Gospel (Mark 6:17-29). The powerful king is really the weakest in the story; the prophet dressed in camel skin with no worldly power is the strongest. We know that “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” (1 Cor. 1:27-28). And that’s our story today. ….

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