Poor Herod! In today’s short Gospel passage, he seems conflicted at every turn. He wants to kill John but is afraid of the people who revere John as a prophet. He is delighted by Salome’s dance, but after an intemperate promise, he is distressed when John’s beheading is demanded. He is caught when his public oath must be kept because his guests overheard the promise he had made. Herod seems completely paralysed by the opinions of others.
Life is exhausting when you need to please everyone, when you need to check which way the wind is blowing before stepping outside, when you are aware of conflicting loyalties, when doing the right thing or speaking the truth yields to the desire to be recognized and valued.
We used to call this malady—this excessive regard for the opinion or esteem of others—“human respect.” It’s interesting that the phrase seems to have disappeared from our moral vocabulary, though the practice has not. We just psychologise about this behavior rather than calling it for what it is, namely, the making of choices based on pleasing others rather than pleasing God. For the term “human respect” suggests its opposite—let’s call it “divine respect”—when our actions are motivated not by the opinions of others, but by the desire to please God in all things.
A prayer by Thomas Merton asks this grace: “. . . I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. . . . I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Sr. Kathleen Hughes

Kathleen Hughes, a Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (RSCJ), has written extensively on sacraments, liturgy, and spirituality.