As we
continue to hear from the first letter of Peter today, we hear about what it
means to live out our Christian faith in a hostile world and we hear advice to
those who face persecution. When we hear of the martyrs in the early
Church or other those Catholics who were persecuted by the Nazis in WWII or of
those in Africa or the Middle East who are being persecuted for their faith, it
seemed so far away. But,
I can tell you, I have face hostility as a Catholic priest here in the Bible
Belt of Mississippi. And I think when
some of us see the direction the government and society is going, with an
emphasis on the secular and a diminishing of the religious, we can be
frightened as to where all of this might go. There
is a famous quote from the late Cardinal Francis George regarding persecution
in a secular society that has made the rounds of the blogs on the internet for
some time. Cardinal George made this
comment while speaking to a group of priests.
It was recorded on someone’s smart phone, and the rest is history. Cardinal George said this: "I expect to die in bed, my successor
will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.
His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help
rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history." And, yet, there is always a message of hope
in our faith. Mary is one of figures in
our faith that always gives me courage and hope. I think of the Sorrowful Mother who stood by
her son on the cross, accompanying him and praying for him. I think of Mary as Our Lady of the Pillar,
who appear to St James in an apparition to give him hope and encouragement when
his missionary work in Spain seemed to be a failure. Here
is a prayer to Mary, the Light of Hope, taken from St Pope John Paul II’s consecrating
of the entire world to Our Lady of Fatima on May 13, 1982.
Immaculate
Heart of Mary,
help us
to conquer the menace of evil,
which so
easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today,
and show
immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world….
Accept,
O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of whole societies.
Help us
with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin:
individual
sin and the “sin of the world,”
sin in
all its manifestations.
Let
there be revealed once more in the history of the world
the infinite
saving power of the Redemption:
the power
of merciful love.
AMEN.
