5 April 2019
Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent
“To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us, Because his life is not like that of others, and different are his ways. He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.” (Wis 2:14-16) When we walk according to the path of the Lord, the works that we do witness to the divine origin of the life of love that we live in the ordinariness of the world. We need not insist on the difference, or even be aware of it. If we live according to the grace that God offers us, others will notice it. They will sense that we live, in their midst, from a different source, on the basis of a different freedom. Some will rejoice and enter into the space of liberty that opens around us. But some will hate this because they will think this freedom to be simple-minded and even deluded, since they believe it not to exist at all.
At one time, I was the one who was politely persecuting the simple Christians, more implicitly than overtly. It was through the resilience and reality of grace at work through them in the face of my passive-aggressive behavior that I came to know the one whom I was truly persecuting: Jesus Christ. It seemed like the poor Christians lost all the time when faced with the powers of the world, but in losing, Christ won, as at the cross, and he won me over, too. The world mocks them, saying, “for if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience” (Wis 2:18-19). But in “losing” Christ wins. May he win each of us over when we insist on crucifying him through his disciples and when he, proving his patience, lets us do so.