[Hey, folks. Deacon Mick Fornelli hit another one out of the park this weekend. I do like to hear him preach. Here is the vid of his homily on what we are to make of Jesus words about the tribulations in his age and in our own.
My own musings on the same readings, albeit with a very different take, are below.]
BECAUSE OF THE NAME
Fall is football season. With football comes pre-game. With pre-game, comes pep talks.
The purpose of a pep talk is to inspire the squad to achieve higher than their expectations of others and perhaps even of themselves. Pep talks inspire confidence, build courage, unite teammates and set the heart on fire to aspire to great deeds. They usually have a great punchline like, “Win one for the Gipper!”
Today in the gospel, Jesus is also giving a kind of pep talk. He mentions how his disciples will be betrayed by those closest to them. How they will be dragged before religious and civil authorities because of his name. And so what is his punchline?
“You will be hated by all because of my name!”
What’s up with that?!
Unlike the first Christians, we have the benefit of history. We know what happened in the three centuries following Pentecost. Almost immediately, Christians were persecuted, first in the synagogues, and then at various times in the Roman Empire until Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD. (Ironically, because they did not sacrifice to the gods, the early Christians were persecuted as atheists.)
But it has not stopped there. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 900,000 Christians were killed in the last decade, about one every six minutes. Fortunately, this is down by about half from the previous decade that saw 1.9 million Christians killed in various parts of the world. These are sobering numbers.
Jesus was not being morbid, he was simply being realistic. It’s no different today than it was then. The simple fact of the matter is this. In today’s world, to be Christian, and especially to be Catholic, is to put a target on your back. If the political climate of the last few years in this country has taught us anything, it is that if you try to live your faith, even if you do it poorly, there are those in society who will find this very annoying. Finding it very annoying, they seek to remove us from the public square.
In this country, this has taken on the guise of the privatization of religious sentiment. Briefly put, it goes thus: “You may believe what you want, but don’t bring the insights or collective wisdom of your faith into polite public discourse. I find it offensive that your faith might seek to make a contribution to public discourse, let alone public policy.”
The fallacy of such a position seems obvious. Is this the only age in which human beings have existed in history? Could we not learn from the lived experience of our forebears? Are we doomed to simply repeat the errors of history, content in our own self-aggrandizement?
Hardly. For the past 2100 years, the Church is the only institution which has seen every political power and social movement come and go. We are not going anywhere. We have a place in the public square. As we have spoken in every age, we have a sacred duty to speak to the present age. A polite silence helps no one, saves no one.
Catholics in America are no strangers to subtle, polite persecution.
The question is, will we speak or remain silent?