Friday of Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Jesus is sending His apostles—and us—into a combat zone. We need not be afraid! In the Letter to the Hebrews we read “May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant, Jesus our Lord, furnish you with all that is good, that you may do his will,” (Hebrews 13:20-21). Has not this prayer been answered by Christ, through His Church, by which we receives the Sacraments, Scripture, Apostolic Teaching, and all we need to “fight the good fight?” We have been given all we need to be sent into the midst of wolves, to be as shrewd as serpents, as simple as doves.
So we are brought before kings and courts, powerful men and influential people: what have we to fear when, every Mass, we stand not merely before but as part of the Court of Heaven? What king have we to fear in this world if we are in the good graces of the King of Heaven? So the world judges us prudes, as backwards, as outdated. “What doesn’t the Church get with the times?” the world asks. Because that is not how this works: it is the world that needs to get with God, and the Church is the means by which God desires the world to do so. The world does not understand us: the more and more we ally ourselves to Christ and His Church, the more strange we seem to the world, and this is simply the way things are. “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you,” (John 15:19). Indeed, John writes further in his letter: “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him,” (1 John 3:1).
It is a difficult battle, to overcome the world’s grip on us that Christ may grasp us all the more firmly. But it is not an impossible battle! The world cannot tear us out of Christ’s hands; even He testifies to this: “No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one,” (John 10:28-30). There is only one force powerful enough to remove us from the hand of God, and that is our own will, our own choice to rebel against Our Lord. Barring that, there is no force in the universe that could take us away from Him.
So what have you to fear? Why are you afraid to take that next step into deeper faith, deeper relationship with Him? To surrender even more fully to Him? Jesus calls us to join Him in His Crusade—indeed, the truest and greatest Crusade in all of history!—to completely defeat Satan and his forces, but greater part of that battle is less about winning victories with Our Lord over others and more about surrendering to Him, that He might have complete victory over our own rebellious hearts. We can be so fickle, so afraid: why will we not believe Jesus when He promises to help us in every trial? “…do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say…You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”
No soldier has ever been given such assurance! Shall we trust Him? Shall we endure hatred and estrangement from the world that we might receive the love and closeness of God? Will we lay open the defenses of our hearts to Him, and cast down our crowns of pride at His Feet, that He might raise us up? “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty…”