On
Tuesday, July 26[2],
Father Jacques Hamel was saying mass at a small Catholic church in
Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in northern France. During the daily Mass, two young men,
Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, who claimed ties to ISIS, “stormed the
church,” entered the sanctuary “armed with knives,” delivered “a hateful tirade”
and then “beheaded” the 85-year-old retired priest. Four others were taken
hostage, including a religious sister who was later taken to the hospital in
critical condition.[3]
That was in France. What else is going on with Christians in the world?
According
to John Allen, a CNN Vatican analyst, since 2003, of the 65 Christian churches
in Bagdad, 40 have been bombed—some multiple times. In North Korea, as many as
100,000 Christians who refuse to denounce their faith and join the government’s
cult are believed to be in forced-labor camps.[4] In Africa, a May 13, 2015
report by the Catholic diocese of Maiduguri, which is a large city in Nigeria,
estimates that more than 5,000 Nigerian Catholics have been killed by Boko
Haram.[5]
These
examples are but a few of the myriad stories of persecuted Christians in the 20th
and 21st centuries. In fact, some make the claim that more
Christians have been martyred in the past 100 years than in all previous
centuries combined.
But
what can we do? It seems overwhelming,
and, if we are honest, hearing these stories makes us desperately sad or maybe
terribly angry.
In today’s
Gospel, Jesus exhorts his disciples to be prepared for the coming of the Son of
Man. “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their
master’s return from a wedding” (Lk 12 35-36). The image of a servant dressed
for the return of his master and with lamps already lit emphasizes that the
servants, and in this case the disciples of Jesus, should be ready for the
Second Coming to happen at any moment.
Think
about this. If you were told this by Jesus, and you saw his other words come
true, would you not get ready for his return to come any time? In fact, a good reading
the letters in the New Testament shows much evidence that these early men and women thought Jesus was
surely coming back immediately, not in some very distant future[6]. Besides, Jesus came back
after just three days in the tomb, and then appeared to the disciples off and
on over the course of forty days (Acts 1:3). Coming back after his ascension? Sure! That will happen soon, too! they might have thought.
From
our contemporary vantage, we look back at those who were ready for Jesus to
come soon, and we see 2000 years between them and us. That doesn’t make it easy
to be motivated to get ready for the Second Coming when we have that much
evidence that it still might be another 2000 years before Christ comes again. It
feels like we have the rest of our lives to get ready. I would wager that most
of us believe that we will die before Christ returns again.
But
the key to our anticipation and readiness for the Second Coming lies in our faith. In the face of so many truly evil
actions against our brothers and sisters of faith, we might think that the
Second Coming is not the most important thing right now. Lord, if you’re not coming back soon, then I want to obliterate these
terrorists so they stop doing evil. Or, Why
focus on being ready for the end of the world when I feel paralyzed by so much
evil happening around me?
Amid
the martyrdom of the ordinary French priest, the continued losses in the battle
against abortion and religious freedom in America, and watching the bodies pile
up on many continents in our modern times, it seems it might be best to put thoughts about the Second Coming on
hold and focus on finding faith today.
And
yet our faith in the Second Coming is our faith for today. Faith realizes what is hoped for, that is,
makes it present now, and faith evidences,
that is, makes present to us and to the world, what is unseen but known by
believers. And this faith is what we
need and what our world needs.
This
is our faith: God became man. God entered into our fallen state, into our
brokenness, and even into our death to free us from it! And not just free us
who believe, but to pour out his blood “for you and for many for the
forgiveness of sins.”[7] Our faith is that Jesus
came, and when we experience confusion or sadness or anger, that we might lean
on our faith to realize what we hope
for, and evidence what cannot be
seen. Because of our faith in Christ’s Second Coming, we people of faith stand resolutely
in the face of disaster and of terrible evils and stare it in the face, because
we know that bombs in Bagdad and murders in France and political restraints in
the US—and even the daily suffering we endure in our own town, in our own homes—that
none of this suffering has the final say… that one day, when the Son of Man
comes again, our true, eternal life, will begin and have no end, and the
sufferings of this world will fade out of memory.
When
the Word became flesh, God Himself entered
into and transformed our condition from within, and by our faith in his
work of salvation already accomplished and believing that one day he will return
for us again, we are set free to transform the world today—not by anger or
retaliation—but by our faith, by imitating his own love in the face of sin and
death on Calvary.
I was
with 47 youth and adults from the Diocese of Evansville in Krakow, Poland for
our pilgrimage to World Youth Day when I heard about the story of Fr. Jacques.
I didn’t know what else to do besides celebrate Mass. So, I asked a couple of
the seminarians who were on the pilgrimage with me if they wanted to have a
late-night Mass after we got back to our hotel.
Brothers
and sisters, coming to this Sacrament is what we must all do, because in the
Sacrament of the Altar, the Lord comes down to enter, once again, into the
ordinariness and fragility of our world, under the form of bread and wine, that
we might receive him. Therein, as he transforms us by our reception of His Body
and Blood, and as our faith is strengthened with our communion of believers, we
go forth to realize what we hope for,
to live out what is unseen! We become
Eucharistic people, the soul of the world!
A few
years ago there was an Amish family, riding in their buggy when a car of rowdy
teenagers came upon them from behind. The teenagers were frustrated by the
buggy, and so they passed the horse-drawn carriage. As they drove by, one of
them took a rock or a brick of some kind and threw it at the family to sort of
“get at them.” The rock hit the son, and it killed him. You can imagine how you
would feel if you were those parents. We might get angry and want revenge. We
might be paralyzed with sadness or fear or anguish. But these parents were
people of faith.
When
the trial came, the parents of the child who was killed went to court, and they
testified on behalf of the teenager who killed their son, asking the judge for
mercy on him. Once the teen was sentenced to prison, those two parents came to
visit him every month—every month![8] That is what faith looks like; a family who knows what the rest of the world can't see, and in their forgiveness and loves realizes in this world what they hope for. That is the realization of thing hoped for and the evidence of
things unseen. That is the medicine
that a world sick with sin needs—the realization of our hoped for Love, the evidence of our unseen God. It needs our faith.
[1] Saint
Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews “highlight[s] the loyalty (=faith) that is
required to keep a steady eye on that goal which will eventually be reached.”
By Pilch, John J., The Cultural World of
the Apostles: The Second Reading, Sunday by Sunday Year C, Liturgical
Press, Collegeville, MN, 2003, page 100
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/world/europe/jacques-hamel-85-a-beloved-french-priest-killed-in-his-church.html?smid=tw-share
[3] http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/26/nytimes-columnist-throws-down-stunning-tribute-to-slain-french-priest/
[4]
Allen, John L., The Global War on
Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution,
Image, New York, 2013, page 6
[5] http://www.christiantoday.com/article/nigeria.at.least.5000.catholics.killed.by.boko.haram/53864.htm
[6]
Some scholars even think the early church was growing “impatient” waiting on
Jesus to return – Pilch, Joh J., The
Cultural World of Jesus: Sunday by Sunday, Cycle C, Liturgical Press,
Collegeville, MN, 1997, page 123
[7] Eucharistic
Prayer III, in The Roman Missal,
trans. The International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 3rd typical ed.,
(Washington D.C.: United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 2011)
[8] Bp.
Robert Barron shared this story in his homily at Adoration on July 28, 2016 at
Tauron Arena Krakow in Krakow, Poland at World Youth Day, via YouTube, https://youtu.be/d3Tq0wF_Pm4 OR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC37P0Zggfk
