Coming Persecutions

Today's Reflections  

    

Coming Persecutions 

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Mt 10:17-22

[Jesus said to his apostles,] ¹⁷“Beware of people, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, ¹⁸and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. ¹⁹When 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. ²⁰For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. ²¹Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. ²²You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

Reflection:

They will hand you over to courts. Jesus’ words in the Gospel are fulfilled in the first martyr of the Church, St. Stephen. Confronted by his persecutors and faced with death, he spoke powerfully in the Spirit and endured to the end, bearing witness to the Lord Jesus not only by his words but also by his death (cf Acts 7).

His martyrdom, celebrated the day after Christmas, tells us that faith in the Lord Jesus is not a sugary affair. Those who believe in Jesus must be ready to witness to him not only by their service to the community (which the deacon Stephen ably did) but also by fearless speech and by courage even to the point of dying for the Savior.

Our recently canonized saint, the young Pedro Calungsod, witnessed to the faith by dying for it, like St. Stephen. We remember Blessed John Paul II’s words when he beatified another Filipino, Lorenzo Ruiz: “To die for the faith is a gift to some; to live the faith is a call to all.”

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit…

Lord, do not hold this sin against them”

(Acts 7:59-60).