Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
“And he kept trying to see him.”
Why couldn’t Herod see him? Certainly, the tetrarch could have sent his loyal retinue of soldiers to gather Jesus and bring him for an appearance. Herod, of course, did not have eyes to see. They were blinded by his self-serving life, expressed most inimically in his beheading of John the Baptist, a man he admired and whom he killed in sacrifice to his own ego. The palace of the king was unlikely to be the place of insight into the nature of God, for that requires pondering and receptivity, the very opposite of the twin vices of the tyrant: gloating and consumption.
Nevertheless, Herod desired to see the Lord. Perhaps the weight of his murderous deed still weighed on him, and the regretful grief that only the guilty experience sought resolution in a “healer.” Even if it wasn’t clear to him, Herod felt he was sick, and maybe the cure could be found in gazing on this man who, unlike Herod, was rumored to be free. The end of Herod’s life is unknown, but there is great hope that, just as he did with Matthew, the Lord entered his world of darkness and brought him light.