GOD, OUR REFUGE IN PERSECUTION.
June 25, 2023.
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time – A.
“Fear no one…” Mt 10:26
A Sicilian proverb says: “Who serves God, fears nothing.”
And an Albanian proverb adds: “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
Persecutions, trials, rejections, and all the like are
inevitable, and even more, they have become the common and daily reality of
many. Day after day, we hear of oppression. It goes from social, economic,
political, and racial, even to the religious and spiritual.
Everywhere in the world, man to man is brought to face
persecution. In some places, it is due to the political and social choices. In
others, because of gender differences and sexual orientations. While other
people, in some other places, are brought to suffer for their religious beliefs
and the faith they profess.
A few days ago, a conflict in Manipur, India, left scores
killed, thousands displaced, and churches destroyed. In the Democratic Republic
of Congo, DRC, Jihadists killed, last week, 12 people, including women and
children. We all hear daily, about the sorrowful experience of people prey to
ISIS, the fate of Iraqi and Syrian Christians... The list could be long and the
paint, painful to watch, for drawn in blood.
Amidst all these chains of persecution and trials, where can
man find solace? Our faith tells us that only God can console the sorrowful and
the afflicted. It is not about proposing a spiritist solution to social and
political issues, but the truth is that human solutions are limited because of
our human imperfections and interest-oriented minds. God alone, therefore,
becomes the solution. He alone is our surest refuge amid tribulations and oppressions.
Hence, this song of the Charismatic Groups: “My only support is the Heavenly
Friend, Jesus alone! Jesus alone! Years go by, this Friend remains to me, Jesus
alone! Jesus alone! [Chorus] This Friend knows my alarms, His love heals my
pain; His hand wipes away all my tears, Sweet Savior! Sweet Savior!”
How, then, do we act or react when confronted with
situations of tribulations, hardships, and trials? The Catechism and the Word
of God give us an answer. It is called faith. Faith is the weapon against persecution.
Only genuine faith sets man fearless and intrepid.
"The world we live in often seems very far from the one
promised us by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and
death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a
temptation against it. It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith: to
Abraham, who "in hope... believed against hope"; to the Virgin Mary,
who, in "her pilgrimage of faith", walked into the "night of
faith" in sharing the darkness of her son's suffering and death; and to so
many others: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely,
and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to
Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."" CCC 164-165
He who sets his faith firmly rooted in the Lord, no matter
the trials and persecutions, stands firm and unshaken.
It sounds obvious, persecution and faith are the themes that
bind together all the readings of this 12th Sunday of the year A. When people
erect their life and their whole beings in darkness and evilness, the light of
God disturbs them. They prefer their darkness. And so, they inevitably oppose
and persecute the one whose life stands as a contradiction to theirs. As
Christians, children and elected of God by adoption in Christ, we are called to
be prophets. It is a mission we hold from our Baptismal promises. A prophet is
before all a person of contradiction. Our mission is to announce, denounce, and
renounce. We announce God's word and plan for his people. We denounce the evil
of our societies, and we renounce to be part of that evil. This will not be
easily accepted. It will lead to persecution.
In the first reading, we have the example of Jeremiah. How
he was plotted against and willed dead. But because the prophet sets his firm
trust in God, God will rescue and save him. God alone is our surety and the
refuge of the righteous in tribulation.
In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus assures his disciples of the
inevitability of persecution. It is a kind of cloak they will have to wear.
Like the disciples of the Lord, if we are firm in our faith in him, we will
also face tribulations and persecutions. But faith alone will keep us moving,
firm and safe.
One expression recurs three times as a chorus in today's
Gospel: "Fear no one…” “Do not be afraid…” “So do not be afraid.” The Lord
makes it an insistence for his followers. We should do away with all kinds of
fear. Fear, in itself, does not help to overcome the obstacles life put in our
way. Rather, fear transforms situations into mountains and maximizes them. Fear
paralyzes. As Christians, our solution to fear should be faith. For it is the
key to all the possibilities. It is only when a man reaches the point of making
the Lord his only anchor that fear no longer paralyzes him but challenges him
to dig farther into God and love him more.
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