Our gospel this morning begins with “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself” (Matt 14:13). What Jesus had just heard, was what had happened to John the Baptist, murdered by Herod Antipas in fulfilment of a vain promise made to his step-daughter Salome; anything she asked for was hers. With the connivance of her mother Herodias, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter and got it (Mat 14:1-2).
I think that when Jesus heard, he would have been greatly saddened and grieved. A man who was not only a blood relation but a man whom Jesus had described as the greatest of all the prophets sent by God, had been foully murdered.