Persecution is something that you can talk about all you want.
It tends to ring hollow unless you yourself have been subject to it. It is the same way that someone can talk about the Sistine Chapel and you will never have a very real sense of what it is like until you experience it for yourself.
Persecution is to be subjected to hostility and and ill treatment. In the case of the beatitude, it specifically refers to those who are persecuted for the sake of Jesus Christ.
How safe is your faith?
How dangerous are you as a saint?
For the last 39 days we have talked about a number of different elements of what it takes to be a saint. Of the type of person that Jesus wants with him in Heaven. This is like an online match-maker and the other person you are trying to match up with is Heaven! A top indicator of someone who is on the road to sainthood is persecution.
This means that you are so dangerous and your faith is so dangerous to people that they choose to remove things from you that make you feel good in order to bully you, to get you to stop proclaiming the truth. Because of this, here is the only guarantee of the sainthood project or challenge.
If you desire sainthood with your whole heart, you are going to have enemies.
This is simply due to the fact that you are putting yourself in the line of fire. You are putting yourself in the cross hairs of Satan. You are putting yourself in the trenches to be a part of the war on evil with Jesus himself.
And Jesus himself was persecuted.
How do we expect any less?
I always get a kick out of people who complain that following Jesus is hard. Being a Christian is unpopular. It doesn't seem like anyone wants to be a part of what they are doing. It is so hard to be successful when you are speaking and living the truth.
Did we think that Jesus was lying or joking when he spoke this beatitude? Did we think he had his fingers crossed? Jesus was serious!
There is nothing that you are going to do on the path to sainthood that is not going to be questioned or persecuted in some sense. This is where it is a tremendous asset to not suffer from Gluttony. If we are not dependent on deriving our greatest pleasure from things like food and other sources, then it is difficult for persecution to have much of an effect.
Are you feeling called to do something with your faith to help other people?
Expect others to say no, tell you that you are out of your mind, and assault you with the logistics on how it cannot happen.
Pray about it and do it anyway. If it doesn't work out, then pray some more and move on to something else.
Are you feeling that you will never get the people you love to be as passionate about the faith as you are?
Expect them to completely and utterly reject you based on your faith. In another time you could have even expected death.
Pray about your faith and believe anyway. Do not back down and continue to live every day with a passion for sainthood. You gain nothing through a compromise.
If everyone was a fan, if everyone thought that this Christianity thing was the best thing in the world, then it would be a lot more popular and there wouldn't be eight beatitudes. Jesus wouldn't have died on the cross and he wouldn't have entered Jerusalem on a donkey.
The reason that we can expect persecution is that when an animal is cornered, it fights harder. In this case, the animal is cornered because Christ has already won. That is why the persecutions of the last 2000 years have become so extreme at certain points and seemed to reach a peak in the 20th century.
We Christians have been spoiled in the last 200 years with a country that allows us to worship as we choose. More likely than not this ability to worship unabated has lead to a certain amount of complacency. Every generation has had to pay the price of its faith. Persecution takes many forms. Today it is the influence of a secular society that seeks to undermine what God has given us and replace it with the worship of false idols in media and government.
This isn't new.
We should rejoice.
We should rejoice every time a media outlet takes a shot at Christianity or the Church.
We should rejoice every time a lawmaker tries to pass some type of law that we have to fight against because it limits our ability to practice our faith.
We should rejoice every time someone offers a verbal barrage about our faith and the way that we choose to worship and our life.
We should rejoice because God is allowing us not to fall into complacency. God is allowing us not to fall into mediocrity. God is reminding us through these persecutions that come that we are in the midst of a war. A war that has taken on a subtle character in these last few decades.
Evil is not so obvious as a Holocaust any more. Evil doesn't kill Christians by the millions as Communism did.
Evil infects our Churches when we compromise what is important and focus on the things that don't matter, that are going to pass away. Evil infects our souls when we allow ourselves to no longer focus on Heaven, but focus on a Heaven that we are trying to create now, which becomes a fertile soil for Hell.
One thing we can know.
One thing we can be assured of.
Persecution reminds us that we are not in control. Persecution reminds us that we are on the right path.
Rejoice, you persecuted. Be happy!
Questions for Reflection:
- Why does our society put so much stock in being popular? Why is following the popular crowd mostly a bad idea?
- In your own life, how have you experience persecution? How have you seen it around you?
- What would be the best response to persecution if one wanted to evangelize in the midst of it?
- How have you persecuted others? How might you repair that relationship?
- What can you do to stand up to persecution, while at the same time accepting it as a standard of being a Christian?
- There is something small that you have not done for Christ because you are afraid. Do it.
- You have put off an uncomfortable conversation for fear of persecution. Have the conversation.
- What if you could do what you dream of doing without the risk of rejection? This week, start to put that plan into action. Brainstorm what you need to do and start doing it. When rejection happens, pray.
- There have probably been times in the last 39 days when you have experienced some type of persecution. Be sure that you have not only forgiven the person, but that you have thanked them for the chance to be humble.
- Make a list of all the things that you are thankful for that you wouldn't normally thank God for. This may be a list of things that are considered "persecutions." Think of it as God allowing the tree to be pruned.
Pray one of the four groups of five decades of the rosary: Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, Glorious
Ask for the intercession of St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, who suffered intense temptations of gluttony for five years during what can only be referred to as her "dark night of the soul" whenever you feel the temptation to fill that God-shaped hole with food or other physical things.
Prayer to Saint Joseph
Glorious Saint Joseph, pattern of all who are devoted to toil, obtain for me the grace to toil in the spirit of penance, in order thereby to atone for my many sins; to toil conscientiously, putting devotion to duty before my own inclinations; to labour with thankfulness and joy, deeming it an honour to employ and to develop,
by my labour, the gifts that I have received from Almighty God; to work with order, peace, moderation, and patience, without ever shrinking from weariness and difficulties; to work above all with a pure intention
and with detachment from self, having always before my eyes the hour of death and the accounting which I must then render of time ill-spent, of talents unemployed, of good undone, and of my empty pride in success,
which is so fatal to the work of God. All for Jesus, all through Mary, all in imitation of thee, O Patriarch Joseph! This shall be my motto in life and in death. Amen.
Act of Entrustment to Mary #3
Today we wish to entrust to you the future that awaits us,
and we ask you to be with us on our way.
We are the men and women of an extraordinary time,
exhilarating yet full of contradictions.
Humanity now has instruments of unprecedented power:
we can turn this world into a garden,
or reduce it to a pile of rubble.
We have devised the astounding capacity
to intervene in the very well-springs of life:
man can use this power for good, within the bounds of the moral law,
or he can succumb to the short-sighted pride
of a science which accepts no limits,
but tramples on the respect due to every human being.
Today as never before in the past,
humanity stands at a crossroads.
And once again, O Virgin Most Holy,
salvation lies fully and uniquely in Jesus, your Son.
