Ave Maria!
Twenty Fifth Sunday after
Pentecost—18 November A.D. 2012
(Mass of the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany)
“Our gospel hath not been unto you in word
only, but in power also,
and in the Holy Ghost, and in much fullness....”
In writing to the people of Thessalonica
(a city in what today is northern Greece, a little bit inland from the Aegean
Sea) Saint Paul is almost boastful because they make up one of his most
successful efforts at evangelization. Other local churches accepted the
Catholic Faith from him, but the Thessalonians seem to have accepted it most
completely. They not only accepted and claimed to believe the teachings of
Jesus Christ, but they conformed their actions and their very lives to the
Gospel. By comparison, when Paul wrote to his converts among the Corinthians he
had to warn them to give up a number of immoral vices.
The Thessalonians served as a good example of what it meant to be a Christian to
all the people of their region.
Clearly, the believing of the truths of
Faith revealed by God, and the keeping of His Commandments, is of primary
importance to each Christian individual. Those whom Paul had to correct among
the Corinthians might have been eternally lost if Saint Paul had said nothing,
or if they had ignored his words. But Paul’s joy over the behavior of the
Thessalonians goes beyond these holy individuals. They were a necessary
“pattern to all that believe” in the area around them. Paul knew, as we also
should know, that there is a continuous struggle in the world that seeks to draw
men and women collectively away from God. In all times and places, there
are false religions and false philosophies that seek to replace God, the Gospel,
and the Church. The antidote to these false religions is found in God’s grace
and in the example of the steadfast believer.
In Paul’s time there was the Roman
Empire. Rome had a whole pantheon of false gods, and would, on occasion, put
people to death for refusing to worship those false gods. More than death
itself, the tortures of the ancient world might move the less-than-dedicated
Christians to “apostasy,” the abandonment of their Faith. Having a few
really good examples around could really help to inspire those of lesser faith.
Around 200 A.D., the Roman writer, Tertullian, said: “The blood of the
martyrs was the seed of the Church.”
It was martyrdom—willingness to die—that inspired Christian resistance to false
gods and false philosophies. Paul knew that martyrs would come only from those
completely committed to the faith of Jesus Christ—only from those like the
Thessalonians—for these were the “mustard seeds” and these were the “yeast” that
could leaven the whole Church—nothing lesser would do.
In the same writing Tertullian mentioned
that the persecutors preferred that their victims submit to immorality rather
than death—for this satisfied the pagans’ lust, deprived the persecuted of the
victory of martyrdom, and dishonored them in the eyes of their fellow Christians
“for the stain upon chastity is reckoned more heinous among us than any
punishment and any death.”
Now, it is said that even among the
priests of the false gods, there were few or none who actually believed in
them. “Jupiter, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, and Apollo” were the stuff
of Roman literature in the centuries before Christianity became legal. but they
were hardly “gods” in any authentic sense. The persecutions served not to honor
the “gods” but to secure the power of the ruling elite. We never hear of a
persecution on behalf of Jupiter, for example, or Apollo—the persecutions are
always named for the politicians who hoped to benefit from them: Nero, Caligula,
Diocletian, Valerian, or Julian the Apostate, by way of example. The
politically powerful made use of the “gods” (and even declared themselves to be
“gods” in some cases) so as to deprive the common people of life, liberty, and
property.
None of this went away when Christianity
became legal in the Empire. In some cases it was mitigated by the authority of
the Church keeping in check the avarice and immorality of Christian kings and
princes. But there were many persecutors over whom the Church exercised little
or no control. Some were merely conquerors from Scandinavia, with no religious
agenda, but others, like the Moslems from Arabia and Mongolia plundered in the
name of a false “god” and a false religion. And like the persecutors during
Tertullian’s time, who sought to subvert the morals of lax Christians, these
new religions were happy to make converts by offering a few extra wives, or the
prospect of easy divorce—immorality became more of a carrot than a stick.
Again, it took character, like that possessed by the Thessalonians, to stand up
to the persecutors.
In modern times—let us say, since the
French Revolution of 1789, or the European socialist revolutions around 1848—the
persecutors changed their tactics a little. Instead of requiring the worship
of false deities, socialism is a sort of “religion” that substitutes man himself
for God—man or mankind becomes its own false “god.” It doesn’t recognize sin or
grace—it doesn’t recognize man as a fallen creature, eternally lost without
saving grace—but substitutes state planning for divine redemption. Instead of a
paradise in the hereafter, socialism promises paradise in the here and now. It
will use the might of the state to absorb the resources of any who oppose the
collective plan—forcing them to become collaborators, whether willing or not.
And, of course, immorality plays a
bigger part in the socialist program than in any earlier form of persecution in
history. Socialism doesn’t work—eventually the state runs out of “other
peoples’ money” and goods to redistribute. Contraception and abortion not only
appeal to irresponsible lust, but they also keep the state from having to care
for future generations of unproductive citizens. Likewise, the elimination of
the feeble and elderly. We have here a sort of human sacrifice to the state, as
it becomes a more and more powerful force in everyone’s life—as it were, a false
god.
This is why the Thessalonians are so
important to us in modern times. Socialist revolution is no longer an isolated
occurrence that can be assigned a place or date in the past, like “France,
1789” or “Russia, 1917.” Rather it is on every continent, backed by the major
political parties, urged upon us even by many Christian churches, bishops, and
clergy—and the date is “now.” The time is ripe for persecution that will make
Nero, Caligula, and Diocletian seem mild. For the salvation of our souls, and
for Christians collectively to survive it will be necessary not only to believe
the teachings of Jesus Christ, but to conform our actions and our very lives to
the Gospel, “not ... in word only, but in power also, and in the Holy Ghost,
and in much fullness....” Like the Thessalonians, and like all those who have
won the victory over politicians, persecutors, and false gods.
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