3rd Sunday of Easter Year C:
We gave you strict orders, did we
not, to stop speaking in that name. The
stakes were high. The apostles were
given strict orders. They knew what they
were up against. By now they were
already starting to feel the effects of this pressure. They had been harassed and imprisoned; soon
they will start getting flogged, abused, attacked, and even killed. They are certainly becoming more and more
unpopular. Why not just go with the
flow? Why not just adapt their message
to their modern audience? Why not just
conduct a poll to see what ideas are current, what are they trying to do?
The apostles would have made
terrible politicians. I’m sure none of
them would have been able to be elected to any office or political
position. The apostles stubbornly
refused to compromise, refused to back down.
They laughed in the face of pressure and oppression. And their response today is so telling: We
must obey God rather than men.
Either the Apostles were wise,
virtuous, inspired disciples of Jesus Christ, willing to offer their lives in
witness to the God made man. Or they
were foolish, silly followers of a traveling preacher, all of whom end up dying
because they refused to get with the times.
Our opinion of the Apostles rises and falls with the truth of the
faith. If Jesus Christ is really God
made man, if he really came to set us free, if he really rose from the dead and
is sitting at the right hand of the Father, if we are really united to him by
baptism, and if we will really participate in eternal life by following him,
then the apostles are amazing examples, saints worthy of emulation and
exaltation. But, if Jesus was just some
guy, just some teacher, if Jesus is not what he said he was, then the apostles
were fools. They should have simply
caved in and yielded to the pressures they faced. But, they didn’t. They refused.
They were stubborn, almost every one of them gladly died rather than to
cave in to the pressures of the majority around them.
What about us? Obviously we must have accepted the truth of
the gospel or else we wouldn’t be here. How
do we respond to pressure? How do we
respond to persecution? Are we willing
to suffer and to die rather than deny the truth?
There is a profound crisis of truth
in our modern world. No longer do people
see the truth as something objective, something received. Rather, many people see the truth as
something personal, something subjective, something each one of us gets to
create. What is true for me is not true
for you. I have to say I ranged between
slightly amused to kind of annoyed during the election of the pope. Many of the media types were saying that
perhaps a new pope would set about changing a bunch of things in the
church. Now, it is certainly the case
that Pope Francis will make a number of changes, but he will certainly not
change the essentials of the faith; because the faith is not made up, it is not
subject to opinion polls or the whim of the majority. I always find it fascinating when people say:
I know the church teaches x, but I just don’t believe that. The apostles would have been baffled by this
kind of thinking. They did not invent
the gospel, they did not invent the resurrection. They were witnesses of the resurrection and
they accepted the gospel as being true.
They gladly suffered persecution, even to the point of death, because
they could not deny this truth. Amazing!
No wonder we admire the
apostles. They are Christian
superheroes. And if we want to be like
them we need to rely on the same source of strength that they did. Simon, son of John, do you love me? It has to be our relationship with Christ
that gives us the strength to endure persecution, to overcome societal
pressure, to be stouthearted disciples of Jesus who would rather die than to
deny the truth of our faith. What a
privilege it is for us then to gather here at Mass and to hear the voice of
Christ speak to each one of us again: do you love me? Feed my sheep.
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