Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the

son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to

pray for. Teresa today is one of my favorite feast days. It's the feast of the beheading of St. John the Baptist.

And today is a special day where I bring out one of my favorite icons from my little chapel in my house and I place

it in the kitchen, the icon of John the Baptist holding his head on a platter.

And it's my favorite day where mom then freaks out and takes it from the kitchen because that's

not where an image like that belongs.

What a beautiful feast day because it teaches us about heroism. So let's begin in the

name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's call to mind all those

we've promised to pray for. Now

heroism means being willing to sacrifice great goods and great pleasures for the sake of a greater good and a greater joy.

And Christ is the supreme hero.

He lays down his life. He allows all respect for his dignity and his physical

integrity to be taken from him. He is willing to let go of all physical comfort and the very breath of his lungs.

He does that in order to save the world, which is to him a greater good.

He dies so that he can rise again

and lead all willing men and women with him to heaven.

The most vivid and striking form of heroism comes in the act of a physical martyrdom,

where the saint imitates Christ by preferring death to sin. This is the Christian's greatest

triumph and very few people have the opportunity to realize this kind of

heroism. But all of us, every Christian, is called

to the heroism of living our sexuality in a chaste and holy way. And down through the ages, the world shows its

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