Wednesday of the
Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
(Daniel 5:1-6.13-14.16-17.23-28; Luke 21:12-19)
Recently Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C., the president of the
University of Notre Dame, publicly defended one of the university’s faculty
members from an unjust accusation. When
a law professor of the university was nominated for a federal judgeship, a
number of senators attacked her as living by dogma. What bothered the senators was the professor’s
conviction that abortion is wrong. Fr.
Jenkins wrote an open letter saying that he too lived by dogma as do millions
of other Americans.
The implied criticism of Church dogma reflects today’s
gospel. Jesus tells his disciples that
they will be persecuted because they preach him. The persecution begins soon after his death
and resurrection as attested in the Acts of the Apostles. It waxed and waned for three hundred reaching
a climax just before the Emperor Constantine granted Christians religious
freedom. And it has never really ended
until the present day. Christians themselves
have sometimes provoked harsh reactions, but more often people resent the
Church for preaching the justice of God’s kingdom.
We should not be surprised if we hear snide remarks made
against us. A generation ago Catholics
were supposedly undermining the common good by having large families. More recently we are ridiculed for believing
in what the sophisticated call fantasies such as the resurrection of the
dead. As Jesus advises, we should not
become too outraged. Rather our stance
should always be like his cool defense of what we believe. It does not rest on sophisticated argument
but on the gospel we receive from him.
