We have a mission to share Christ’s compassionate love with the world. In the 1st Reading, Jeremiah expressed confidence that God will protect him. Matthew’s Gospel must be read in the context of the Jewish Christian community who has to face the might of the religious authority. Against the might of its leaders, the Jewish Christian convert would definitely feel an awkwardness since they were considered to have betrayed the ancient religion. It is not a novel experience. Just ask the new converts who chose to leave behind their loved ones who have remained staunchly devoted to the old religions.
In carrying out Christ’s compassionate mission, we will surely face rejection or abandonment. How does one carry on when there is renunciation or being forsaken?
Perhaps two real examples might help. Firstly, we have St Jean Marie Vianney. He was, by our standards, someone who might not have made it to the priesthood. He was not intellectually endowed but somehow he managed, through the kindness of those in charge of his formation, to get ordained. Those in HR know this reality. Those who can work, often get loaded with more responsibilities. Those who cannot work are left untouched because the result of dealing with problematic people is more unpleasant than the difficulty of the work itself.
Jean Vianney was not a difficult person. But like Padre Pio, he was just simple and the only way to deal with his lack of sophistication was to send him to a place of unimportance. Being abandoned in a faraway place was one way of getting rid of a problem. He remained in Ars for the next 41 years. The parish was mired in apathy after the French Revolution. People drank and did not go to Church. But he single-handedly faced their apathy, if not direct rejection for a good number of years. Slowly he converted them, if not by words then by his actions. He spent hours before the Blessed Sacrament and frequently heard confessions for long periods of time. Soon, France came to know of this holy priest and many flocked to the Curé d’Ars to have him hear their confessions.
Secondly, we take a look at the life of Damian Veuster. He was a priest who chose to go to the Hawaiian island of Molokai to serve as a priest in a leper settlement. The indigenous population of Hawaii had no immunity against the diseases brought by the colonisers. Soon, leprosy caught on and those suffering from it were isolated in Molokai, torn away from their families. Damian chose to serve them knowing that he might not return. When he started to feel numbness in his limbs, he knew that he had caught the disease. He had become one of them. Just like Jesus who took flesh to become one of us, Damian Molokai began to identify himself with lepers whom he served.
What gave both these saints the courage to accept rejection as in Ars and identify with being a leper in Molokai? Firstly, there must be a strong belief in the resurrection. The fact that God will take care of us is made more certain by the belief that the travail of this world is not the final answer to the loss that we will encounter in this present life. Jean Marie Vianney suffered the constant taunts of the devil. His burnt bed, which can be seen today, was physical evidence of the intense spiritual warfare and demonic attacks he endured. He supposedly said this. “The devil is angry. He cannot catch the bird and so he burnt the cage”. He carried on hearing confessions even as his room was burning. Like Jean Vianney trusting God, Damian Molokai, towards the end of his life, had gained nothing except that he had become a leper. And yet, that did not faze him. He carried on because he knew that despite the slow destruction of his human body, his soul would not be lost for it was secure in the hands of God.
To those who placed their lives in the hands of God, God will never forsake them. Even Christ who hung the Cross cried out “Eloi Eloi, lama sabachthani”. Even though He possessed a godly nature but that did not stifle the cry that rose from the depth of His human nature. In other words, we should never be surprised that there will be rejection and consequently, a feeling that we have been abandoned by God.
In the end, when Jesus breathed His last, He cried out, “Father, into your hands. I commend my spirit”. That scene would be repeated in the lamentation of St Stephen as the Jewish crowd stoned him to death. He gave his life and he commended his spirit to the Lord which means the same can be said of us. We are in the world to carry out Christ’s mission and we will encounter setbacks and be discouraged and we may feel that the world is unfair or that circumstances are stacked against us that we want to give up.
But we soldier on because the mission of Christ in the world continues. It makes sense as Saint Paul stated that “some sow the seed and some reap the harvest”. It reflects a philosophy that one’s entire life is not the whole story of the world. Instead, it recognises that one’s life is but a strand of the entire mission of Jesus. Each one of us is a part of His love for the world. We play our part within that mission and ultimately when we do not succeed despite all the effort that we have put in, we know that it is not a loss. We know that God has everything in his hands.
We must strengthen and cement our belief that there is life after death. Otherwise apart from the preoccupation of prolonging our lives, we will be hemmed in by this fear that history is only written here on earth forgetting that the future is inscribed by eternity. Thus the belief in the resurrection gives us confidence, especially when we are faced with incomplete answers to the questions we have. The basis for our engagement with the world must come from a realisation that we are loved by God and that on many occasions even God is helpless in the face of human freedom. God is bound by how man chooses to exercise his freedom. The greatest example is Jesus Christ being handed over to wicked men to be tortured and be put to death. While that may appear as abandonment, it was a supreme sacrifice on the part of God because He respects our freedom.
And yet Christ’s death was not a total loss. On the contrary, His death ransomed many for whom the future would be worthless. In Him, eternity is framed by the resurrection. Despite being burdened by our works and our worries and even though we do not have the answers to what we want and hope for, we dare to come before Him, especially during our adoration. We will not be sitting before a Lord who is dead but before a Lord who has overcome all burdens of this world. We sit before him confident that we will not share the fate of eternal death, but rather we sit here certain that we will enjoy the Resurrection.
