Homily: Wednesday, 34th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Dn 5:1-28; Dn 3; Luke 21.12-19

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If the gospel message is good news, then why do so many oppose it with hostility and even violence? Jesus warns us that we’ll be confronted with persecution, evil, false teaching, and temptation. And how does Jesus tell us to respond to all this? With love, with truth, with forgiveness.

Only God’s love can defeat bigotry, hatred and envy, and all that would divide and tear us apart. Only God’s truth can overcome the lies and confusion in the world; for that’s what the Gospel is, God's word of truth and salvation. Jesus, then, tells his disciples to proclaim the gospel throughout the whole world, even in the midst of opposition and persecution.

If they persevere to the end they will gain their lives – they will see God's salvation.

Such endurance isn’t a product of human effort. It’s a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift strengthened by the hope that we’ll see God face to face and inherit His promises. Jesus, of course, is our model: He who endured the Cross for our sake and salvation; Jesus who calls us to love, to die to ourselves.

You know, the Greek root of the word martyr means witness? True martyrs live and die as witnesses to the Gospel, to Jesus. The Book of Revelations calls Jesus “the faithful witness ...who freed us from our sins by his blood." And Tertullian, a second century lawyer converted when he saw Christians singing as they went out to die at the hands of their persecutors. He compared the blood of the martyrs to “seed,” the seed of new Christians, the seed of the Church. St. Augustine spoke of this too: "The martyrs were bound, jailed, scourged, racked, burned, rent, butchered – and they multiplied!"

Christians multiplied because the martyrs witnessed to the truth, to the joy and freedom of the Gospel; and they did so through the testimony of their lives. They witness the truth: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”

 “God so loved the world…” He doesn’t love just part of it. No, He loves it all. He loves each one of us. It can’t be otherwise because He created each human being in an individual act of love. We must remember that Jesus died on the Cross for Jews and Gentiles, for Christians and Muslims, for Hindus and Buddhists, for agnostics and atheists.

By our witness as Christians, others will recognize Christ’s victory on the Cross, his power to overcome sin, fear, hatred, even death itself. When the world looks at us, it has the right to find in us a reflection of the glory of the Trinity. The world has a right to discover in our faith, hope, and love a testimony to the Holy Spirit’s presence.

The problems that have arisen in Christ’s Church over the centuries, and exist even now, are not caused by the Holy Spirit; they’re caused by the mediocrity of Christians, by our lukewarmness. As the great G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

What brings others to Jesus Christ and His Church is seeing Christians loving their enemies; seeing us joyful in suffering, patient in adversity, forgiving of injuries, and showing comfort and compassion to the hopeless and the helpless. 

This, brothers and sisters, is our calling.