A Homily for the Sunday after the Ascension

​+ “They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor Me.”
 
These words, which the Church’s Sacred Liturgy put before us as she meditates on the absence of the Ascended Lord whilst she awaits the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, are hardly comforting. They foretell the rejection and persecution—even unto death—that is to be expected for those who know Jesus Christ as the definitive revelation of God in history, who persevere in unswerving faith in Him and who hold fast to the mission and witness He has given to them to accomplish in this world. Being excluded from the worship of Almighty God by those who exercise authority in His name, and even having one’s very life taken away: this is what may well await those who will not renounce what they have experienced and come to know in their encounter with the Resurrected and Ascended Christ.
 
This bitter reality has been known time and time again in the centuries since, particularly clearly in the lives of the early Christian martyrs, and perhaps more subtly afterwards—the reality of ecclesiastical authorities who have long since abandoned the humble service of the Truth for the political exercise of raw power is not unknown in Church history, even in our own day, and in such circumstances exclusion and damnatio memoriae are frequently employed to put people to death just as quickly as death sentences were imposed on the early Christians by any secular Caesar.
 
Yes, fidelity to Christ necessarily brings suffering, particularly where it challenges the infidelity that abounds. There is no avoiding this: accepting and indeed lovingly embracing the Cross is an inescapable element of any Christian discipleship worthy of the name. For it is thus that we find salvation.
 
Yet Our Lord’s warning about the sufferings that await us have a purpose: “I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you of them,” He tells us. “I have said all this to you to keep you from falling away.”
 
Thus forewarned, we are already somewhat fortified. But we are strengthened all the more by the fact that it is Jesus Christ, gloriously risen from the dead, who foretells this. We would do well to ponder this fact: He Whose brutal execution proved ineffectual, He Who is Himself Victory Over Sin and Death, warns us that there are troubles ahead—but because it is He who warns us, because it is He who has overcome them already, our faith is not in vain, and any sufferings inflicted upon us for remaining faithful to Him cannot ultimately harm us.
 
This is the supreme gift of a peace that the world and its sufferings and its potentates cannot take away (cf. Jn 14:27); it is very much that pax inter spinas which is frequently employed as a Benedictine logo—that peace which no thorns can ultimately occlude or destroy. (In our own version of this, the designing artist depicted the fruit which grows from this peace, even amidst the said thorns.) For there is no doubt that we shall encounter many thorns if we seek to be His faithful witnesses today. But as His witnesses we share in that peace, His peace, that the world and those who serve it cannot take away.
 
Living this pax inter spinas is by no means easy: we rapidly focus on the wounds wrought by the thorns and lose hold of the peace that is given to us. The Church of all ages has known this and has had to deal with it, which is why her Sacred Liturgy presents us with the straightforward counsel of St Peter in the Epistle of this Holy Mass:
 
“Keep sane and sober for your prayers. Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another. As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”
 
The difficult realities we face are clear. But clearer still is the victory over them that has already been won by the Risen and Ascended Christ. And so too is our vocation to be witnesses to this truth in our times. As we worship He whose victory gives us that peace which cannot be taken from us at His altar this morning, let us ask for an increase in that love, that charity, of which St Peter speaks, that our peace, our fidelity, and our witness shall bear much fruit in ourselves, in the Church and in the world. +