Sermonette: Jan. 2, 2023

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, 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. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.” Matthew 10:17-22.

The day after Christmas, the above Gospel passage is proclaimed at Roman Catholic Masses throughout the world as the Church honors its first martyr, St. Stephen. The peaceful manger scene with the birth of Jesus including St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels and shepherds is replaced with a rather stark message one day later. Why? The Church needs to remind us of the very simple message: Jesus came into the world to obtain the redemption of the world not through His birth, but through His death.

In fact, it was achieved through His hideous death on a cross when he was crucified between two thieves. By becoming too attached to the story of Jesus’ birth, it is easy for us to want to forget the most important part of the story regarding His suffering, death, and resurrection. It also can lead us to forget the part of the story that impacts us directly; the world hated Jesus then and still hates Christians today.

This is a reality that is often hard for us to come to grips with. When Jesus was suffering anguish in the Garden of Olives the night before His crucifixion, how did His closest apostles cope with the reality that some wanted to put Jesus to death? They slept. How do we sometimes cope with the reality? We sleep both physically and figuratively. We may choose to sleep more hours or simply find ways to distract ourselves from facing the reality. We may become fixated on work, hobbies, fitness, sports, travel, entertainment, achieving bucket lists or doing anything the world places in front of us, sinful or not, to forget about the reality. After all, who on a natural level wants to be hated by siblings, children, parents, everyone? Yet, that is exactly what the Gospel message that we hear the day after Christmas says will happen.

What else can we do to deal with this reality? We can simply abandon the Christian faith altogether and make peace with the world and abandon Jesus. This has been the choice for many based on the rise in the number of atheists and agnostics in our world today. Another signal that this choice is on the rise is the increase of those who are more accepting of socialist or communist forms of government. Neither are compatible with Christianity.

Another choice we can make is to continue to call ourselves Christian, yet embrace everything the world

has to offer. We can be accepting of ideas or positions that the world takes and says are OK whether or not they are compatible with what Jesus commands us to do. The less authentically Christian that we are, the less hated we are by the world.

The last choice we can make is to embrace the reality that as Christians we will be hated by the world.

This might mean being hated by siblings, children, parents, everyone. We stop thinking inward about how we feel and replace that by looking outward to see how we can help others regardless of whether they are friend or enemy. This is what Jesus did and what we are called to do as well. Jesus promises us that He will give us the supernatural grace by His presence to love our enemies and endure it all. We simply need to place of our trust in Him. As He states in the Gospel passage, “...whoever endures to the end will be saved.”