Today is the Feast of the Passion, or Beheading of St John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus.
St Francis de Sales remarks about this Saint:
I have often thought what was the greatest mortification of all the Saints in whose lives I have come across, and after several considerations I found this one. Saint John the Baptist went to the desert at the age of five, and knew that our Savior had been born very close to him. God knows if this heart of Saint John, touched by the love of his Savior from his mother’s womb, would have wanted to enjoy His sweet presence. He nevertheless spends twenty-five years there in the desert, without coming once to see Our Lord and, going out, stops to catechize without coming to Our Lord, and waits for him to come to him. After that, having baptized him, he does not follow him, but remains to do his office (Mt, 3; Lk, 3). O God, what mortification of the spirit. To be so close to his Savior and not to see him, to have him so close and not to enjoy him. And what is that if not to have his mind disengaged from everything, and from God himself, to do the will of God and to serve him; to leave God for God, and not to love God in order to love him so much the better and more purely? This example stifles my mind with its greatness. I forgot to say that not only the will of God is known by necessity and charity, but by obedience; so that whoever receives a command must believe that it is the will of God.