
Choosing
to be Hated for Christ
“They will put
some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of My Name” (Saint
Luke 21.16-17)
You can be loved for His Name – or Hated
for it
Ultimately you must choose
“You will be hated by all
because of My Name”
Is
this still as true today as it was 2000 years
ago?
Are we naïve in taking Christ at His word — as so many of today's
“progressive” Catholics (clergy and laity alike) appear to suggest?
In our militantly secular society, are these words as prophetic to us
as they were during the great periods of persecution that the nascent
Church suffered under Diocletian? In a word, what is the cost to
a Catholic ... of being a Catholic?
How likely is it that we,
“will be hated
by all because of His Name”?
Until very recently, it had not been our experience to be the
object of malice because of Christ ... for Christ’s sake, for
His Name.
The social and
political climate until recently — which is to say, until the totally
unanticipated emergence of
-
Intolerant
Militant Secular Humanism
-
Intolerant
Militant Homosexuality
-
Intolerant
Militant Feminism
-
the
apalling Decadence within the Church, —
-
and
Islam as a violent repudiation of the stultifying decadence
of the West — and our rather casual association with
Christ and His Church — engendered nothing more than an occasional
distaste for Catholics as so many disagreeable puddings at a polite
table. In fact, our experiences as Catholics, until recently,
had largely been positive — I hasten to add, not in
light of the historical, the authentic Christ — but
rather, in light of that
hermaphroditic
deity we had created in our own effete and dissolute image and christened
as our postmodern “Redeemer”.
You are quite
familiar with the post-Conciliar Church and the stunted image
of Jesus Christ that emerged from it. He is eminently non-judgmental,
terribly sensitive to all our perversity, and totally understanding
— that is to say, possessed of that consummate understanding that ultimately
abolishes or at least reconciles all contradictions — readily expunging
any distinction between good and evil, sanctity and sin. Indeed, He
understands us almost as well as our psychoanalysts and social workers
before whom our conduct is not interpretable in terms of right and wrong,
good and evil ... or even sane and insane. “All-understanding”, in this
context, we must realize, has nothing to do with “understanding”
at all — at least in any epistemological sense. It is much closer to,
if not really synonymous with, “all-accepting”.
Jesus —
“our Jesus” (as distinct from the historical Jesus) —
is all-allowing, unconditionally forgiving, preeminently emotive,
and totally avuncular — and who could possibly be hated for the sake
of so innocuous a being? Emerging from the social milieu of the 60's,
He was effectively construed as a Flower-Child in that epiphanous Age
of Aquarius from which the Conciliar Fathers had derived such impetus
... and that has fallen into well deserved disrepute in the ensuing
years. As the historical Jesus was unrecognizable on the Cross
2000 years ago, He remains, apparently, unrecognizable today.
For the
past 50 years or so, we have, in a sense, made Him up as we have gone
along, embellishing this and trimming that until we no longer remember
the Original — the “stuff” from which we began endlessly re-fabricating
Him closer to our hearts (and often our loins) desires.
Hated for
His Name ...?
Let us be frank.
Today, at best, we are politely tolerated in
spite of the Name of Christ — if ever we are convicted of it, if
ever
“the
Name” is
somehow inadvertently predicated of us — although if there
is a living to be made off it, we can earn theological degrees by “correctly”
articulating the endlessly unfolding metamorphosis of Jesus as the whims
of our culture demand — even take jobs in Catholic schools and social
agencies; become His “Lay Ministers of this, that, and the other” –
and
even get paid for it,
often rather handsomely!
Too many “active
Catholics”, where possible, make a living off the Name — certainly
not his dying on its account.
Like those who
basked in His glory upon His Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, they strum
their guitars and clash their cymbals, robustly singing His praise and
proclaiming His Name when it wins them the adulation of a dwindling
congregation.
But on that lonely
Way to the hill of all our Crosses, littered with insult, abuse, shame
and phlegm — where its costs to be His disciples — we flee, lest
we
“suffer
for the Name”,
still less die for it ... or because of it!
1
The priest in
the aisle (in the repetitive and tiresome style of the television show
host), or on the rare occasion, the bishop at the pulpit, understand
this well.
Fearing that the
authentic challenge of Christ, the inescapable contradiction of Christ
to the world and all that is around them, will alienate the faithful:
-
They
bring to them a Christ with no Cross
-
A promise
with no price
-
A
victory with no battle
-
The certainty
of salvation without the scandal of any sin — lest under the prospect
of that fearful shadow of the Cross, the faithful bolt, leaving
the hireling with no flock.
How many Catholics, after all, wish to learn the most fundamental fact
that they must suffer for Christ ... as Christ suffered for them?
The days of the Martyrs, they would have us believe, had, after
all, ended long ago, no?
The problem with this routine encounter, however, is that it is
not what Christ promised His followers. And His track record
in the way of things prophetic, such as the destruction of the Temple
in 70 AD by the Romans, for which He was scorned even on the Cross —
has been pretty good; in fact, unerring!
The
“Flock”
have largely been left to fend for themselves since the shepherds have
been away on more “pressing” errands at the endless “committees” that
proliferate like bacteria around the country, indeed, around the world.
So many “commissions”
to attend! For
peace and justice,
women's empowerment,
animal rights,
planet-earth issues,
photo-ops, and lately even
commissioning women
“Ecclesial
Ministers”
(the latest novelty concocted by the bishops, as you count them
— and in case you never heard of them — there are about 30,000 — they
are “co-workers with the bishop” since he is off ... well, commissioning
others to do his work. It is an odd kind of work, this “working”
to get others to do “your work” ...)
The Wolf at the Gate: a
Crescent-shaped Scimitar Rising in the East
The Flock is largely untended and have
grown quite disorderly, and without direction have wandered into dangerous
paths. Many have been lost altogether. But more worrisome still is the
untended Gate. The hireling, as we have said, has fled — to hire more
hirelings, who really care nothing for the sheep. The wolf knows this.
In fact he is already at the Gate. What is more, he is ready and willing
to exact a real cost for
“the
Name of Jesus”
— which you must disavow or lose your head — quite literally.
Do you doubt the scarlet zeal of Islam? You had better pull your head
out of the sand before losing it! 2
Islam is the fastest growing
“religion”
today. In fact, CNN, the doggedly secular news outlet, tells us in the
article,
“Fast-growing
Islam is winning converts in Western world”
that ,“In
the United States, for example, nearly 80 percent of the more than 1,200
mosques have been built in the past 12 years.”
— and the converts come from the West!
The Gate has been let open. Unguarded
and unguided, the sheep are lured or stray to other pastures (or deserts
...) because
“they
no longer hear the voice of the shepherd”
— your bishop — and subsequently
“no
longer recognize it.”
4 The teachings of the Church, of Christ — the authentic
teachings of the authentic Christ — are no longer transmitted,
taught, or proclaimed with any sense of urgency ... or even certainty.
Your children do not know Christ,
still less His Church. When Christ spoke of
“the
fields white to harvest”
5, He was speaking of your children ... of you! And the harvesters
of whom He speaks should be our bishops and priests ... not a
Mullah with scimitar-as-scythe in his hand, ready to reap what he did
not sow — and for the reed that does not bend, to cut it to the root!
It has become entirely too comfortable
to be a Christian these days. But a change is coming ... it is at the
door ... and the cost of being a Catholic, a Christian — long
deferred and spent in dissolution — will be called to account
with a new master at the table where the bishops left the keys ... and
a ledger with long debits.
While you can
... you can be loved for
“The Name”
– or hated for it. Ultimately
you must choose. But you cannot choose the terms. They have already
been chosen for you ... by Christ Himself, Who promised that
those who followed Him would be hated by the world ... not loved by
it ... just as He was. 3
Don't take my word for it. Take Christ’s.
So where do you
stand on the matter, and more importantly, beside whom — “the
world” ... or Christ? Take a good inventory of your own situation vis-à-vis
“the world”, and make the assessment yourself. If “the world” lauds
you, takes you to its bosom as one of its own — if you are loved
and not hated for the Name of Christ, if you are not disdained
and marginalized because you belong to Him and not to the world
— you have much to be concerned about, despite the false assurances
of those “of the world” who say that they are “in Christ” and see nothing
of the contradiction.
Smug in
our assurances that it will not cost us our blood 6,
we in the West know nothing — yet — of the cost of being
a Catholic.
Archbishop Ignatius A. Kaigama of the Archdiocese of Jos, Nigeria,
who has ... far fewer
“committees” and
less pressing errands ... than our own bishops, knows better. His flock
is little and loses everything for the sake of Christ. We are many and
have much and lose Christ for the sake of anything.
We do not have
to go to Africa to know the cost of being Catholic. Relax. In time
— but ineluctably — it will come to us.
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1
Acts 5.41
“So
they [the Apostles] went on their way from the presence
of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered
worthy to suffer shame for His Name”
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2
From the Koran:
-
Sura 4.89: “They desire that you should disbelieve
as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all)
alike; therefore take not from among them friends
until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but
if they turn back, then seize them and kill them
wherever you find them, and take not from among
them a friend or a helper.”
-
Sura 8.12: “When your Lord revealed to the
angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those
who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts
of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their
heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”
-
Sura 9.5: “So when the sacred months have
passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you
find them, and take them captives and besiege them
and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if
they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate,
leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving,
Merciful.”
-
Sura 17.16-17: “When we decide to destroy
a population, we send a definite order to them who
have the good things in life and yet transgress;
so that Allah's word is proved true against them:
then we destroy them utterly. How many generations
have we destroyed after Noah? And enough is thy
Lord to note and see the Sins of his servants.”
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3
Saint Matthew
10.22:
“...
and ye shall be hated of all on account of My Name.”
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4
Saint John 10.5 and 10.27:
“My sheep hear My voice: and I know them, and they follow
Me ... But a stranger they follow not, but fly from
him, because they know not the voice of strangers.”
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5 Saint John 4.35
6 Hebrews 12.4
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Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Printable PDF Version
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
_________________________________________________
Saint John 15.17-25
“These
things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hate you,
know ye, that it hath hated Me before you. If you had been of the world,
the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
Remember My word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than
his master. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you:
if they have kept My word, they will keep yours also.
But all these things they
will do to you for My name' s sake: because they know not Him who
sent me. If I had not come, and spoken to them, they would not have
sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth Me, hateth
my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no other
man hath done, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen
and hated both Me and My Father. But that the word may be fulfilled
which is written in their law: They hated Me without cause.”
R/ Gloria Tibi,
Domine!

Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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