From Fr Tom's Desk

Called To Be People Of The Beatitudes

“O Martyrs and confessors of the faith, bishops and priests, religious and laity, who, for the sake of Christ, suffered in prisons and labor camps and were broken in body and spirit and wasted by beatings, starvation and cold! Your numbers and your names are known to the all-knowing God alone. You shed rivers of blood, and with your tears bedewed prison cells and torture chambers Your martyr’s blood testifies before heaven and earth to your unwavering faith in God” (taken from the Office of Saints and New Martyrs of Ukraine)

On the north wall of our church there is an impressive icon. The scene is that of a remote labor camp with watchtowers and barbed wire. Standing behind the fence there is a group representing members of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. It is a reminder of the kind of church to which we belong, a church which, in the words of our Patriarch Josef Slypyj “poured out rivers of Blood”. We belong to a church which has suffered persecution, scars still remain within. There are those in our community, who have suffered persecution, many have had members of their families give their lives for the faith in Siberian labor camps. I hope the icon in our Church reminds all of us of the kind of church we are called upon to represent by the way we live.

Jesus adds to this Beatitude that His followers are to glad and “dance for joy” in the face of hardships in professing the faith. He never promised His followers a rose garden in this life.   Instead he promised: “they will hand you over to courts—you will be led before governors and kings—for my sake brother will hand over brother—you will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved” (Matt 10:19)

Can we safely say that at the present time it seems unlikely that any of us will be hauled off to a work-camp, or stood up against a wall to be shot for professing the faith?

It might seem unlikely, even though there is a growing sense of anti-Catholicism in the United States.

To be a disciple of the Lord Jesus still costs something. In the seventeenth chapter of St. Matthew Jesus gives this challenge: if you want to be my disciple you will have to walk in my footsteps, there will be some kind of cross to carry... He asks this question: “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose his very self?” (Luke 9:23). In this verse, Jesus talks about those who become ashamed of Him and His words. Opportunities to sell oneself, to be ashamed of the faith, even deny it, are frequent. Throughout the Epistles of St. Paul, he is warning the early Christian community (and us) not to let ourselves to be molded into the culture around us, it happens all the time. There is the politician who must make a decision to stand up for what is right or will he sell out to political expediency. Catholic college students often are torn between their moral beliefs or to go with what the crowd is doing. They may have to face petty persecution for making moral choices. There is the working person who refuses to “cut corners “on the job. Moral choices face us daily. All of us face this question-at what price will we sell out ourselves, our very souls, to the society within which we live.

Strength has been given to us through our Chrismation; it is called the virtue of fortitude, to strengthen us on our journey with Christ.

A book I have frequently read is, The Cost Of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As a pastor, he refused to sell himself out to a fascist dictatorship, he stood up for Christ, and was executed shortly before the end of World War II. At the end of his book, he wrote: Jesus is the only pattern of a life we must follow. And because He lives His life in us, we too can “walk as He walked” (I John 2:6) and “do as He has done” (John 13:15), “love as He loved” (John 15:12), “forgive as He forgave” (Col. 3:13) and are able to follow the example He has given to us (Peter 2:21). 

In a Gestapo jail and waiting for his execution, he wrote: “the disciple looks solely at his Master Jesus. When a person follows Jesus Christ and bears the image of the incarnate, crucified and risen Lord, we may at last say that he has been called to be the “imitator of God”. The follower of Jesus is the imitator of God. “Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephesians 5:1)