In the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit! I congratulate you on the great feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist! Today, the greatest born of women falls victim to female deceit. Ever since the time of John Chrysostom, it has been customary in the Church to dedicate two sermons to women: one laudatory - on the feast of the myrrh-bearing women, and one abusive - on the feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. I will not do this today, although this tradition is sanctified by the example of a great saint and is worthy of all reverence and respect. The gospel reading tells about an amazing collision of two very interesting things. The prophet Micah has these words:”The breaker is come up before them: they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them”(Mic.2:13). This wall-breaker who walks before the eyes of God is, of course, John the Baptist, who breaks down every barrier of evil. And here there is a clash of God's truth and human politeness. John never put up with breaking the will of God, not because he was a dumb fanatic, but because he understood the meaning of God's law. The law of God is right, beautiful and holy.The stars exist by the law of God. The law of God is a reflection of the harmony of God in our world. When John the Baptist said that all people, regardless of social status, must fulfill the commandments of the Creator, he thereby tried to guide people so that they would become worthy of their calling. There are people who think that all the commandments are invented in order to torment people, and that fulfilling them only makes things worse (although practice itself shows that the one who fulfills the commandments feels much better than the one who does not). John the Baptist fought for the law of God for the sake of man, so that man would be prepared for the onset of the Kingdom of God. John the Baptist was not a bawler who fought for social rights (as many people imagine him to be).He fought for the righteousness of God, which is necessary in order to make a person worthy of the coming of the Kingdom of God. It is important that a person straighten his heart according to the law of God, and it becomes a straight path for God to walk. This is what John preached for, and this is what he proclaimed:”And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”(Matt.3:2).”And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire”(Matt.3:10). Therefore, John was not afraid to fight for the soul of Herod, he wanted to save both Herod and Herodias. And these people repaid him with hatred and murder. When we denounce heretics or sectarians, we must denounce them with love so that they cease to be heretics and sectarians. Our task is to make the sectarians our brothers. In the same way, when we rebuke Muslims, we want them all to be baptized and enter the Church. We do not want anyone to perish, just as the Lord, who created all people, wants everyone to be saved. Similarly, John goes as a wall-breaker and fights on behalf of God for the soul of every person, and the obvious sin of Herodias and Herod confronts him. But he is driven to death by the female deceit and cowardice of Herod, who was subject to imaginary conventions. The truth of man is incompatible with the truth of God, it would have been better if King Herod had broken his word given to Herodias and not killed John, he would have been known as a liar among people, but he would not have destroyed his soul before God. The death of John the Baptist shows that all human conventions are a direct violation of the will of God. I have heard that in our country in the 1950s and 1960s it was customary to give birth to one or two children, and if suddenly there were more children, the neighbors poked their fingers, and women went to the abortion clinic to kill unborn babies. Such human conventions as: “What will the neighbors think?”, “What will mom and dad think?” ended in the murder of innocent children. The same thing is happening now.We must remember that a Christian should not care about people's opinions! He should only listen to God's point of view. Not your point of view, not those around you, but the point of view of God, otherwise it may end in murder, as the life of John the Baptist ended in murder. The righteous man was killed by human convention and by the fact that a person did not want to give up a stupid, stupid oath. The greatest prophet was killed by false human shame. And this is an example of the danger that faces us. And this happens to us too often. When I was still serving at the Krutitsy Compound, a woman came to me and said that she could not go to church regularly, because her children would not let her. To my remarks that children should obey their mother, and not vice versa, she began to say that it was somehow inconvenient for her to contradict them. This is a terrible state when conventions, unwillingness to quarrel with people leads to the death of both the soul and the body, as happened with Herod and Herodias. This terrible example should teach us to be free from human conventions in the name of God's unconditional law, in the name of God's unconditional love. Let's learn this and pray to John the Baptist to give us the courage to always live according to the commandments of God, and then the love of Christ the Savior will be with us! May the Lord save you all! Amen. Translated from Russian