“If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.” (1 Peter 4:14).
For today’s reflection, I am opting for Option 2 Readings that Holy Mother Church offers on the feast of Saints John Fisher, Bishop, Martyr, and Thomas More, Martyr. The readings have the underlying theme of Christian persecution that can be summarized by St Thomas Moore’s famous saying before his execution: “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” St Thomas More is a good example to look to and emulate at this point in the Church’s faith journey to achieve the right balance. As a Christian, I can be too scrupulous and forget God’s word in Romans 13:1: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God”. Another temptation is to be totally absorbed by worldly ideas and forget God’s word in John 17:16: “They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”
Both Extremes
Now, how do I not fall into both extremes and as a result fail to evangelize the culture that God has placed around me? The answer is the Bible verse that St John Fisher received just before his execution – John 17: 3, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.”
Let’s go a bit deeper to understand this. In the first reading, St Peter says: “14 If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory,[a] which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you” (1 Peter 4:14). In other words, the Spirit of Glory which is the Spirit of God rests on you not because you are reviled for the sake of Christ: it’s the other way. Since you have the Spirit of Glory, which is the Spirit of God, resting on you, you are strengthened to bear all persecutions for the sake of Christ! Alleluia. This is it, my dear brothers and sisters, in Christ! That, once our true focus is to know God and Jesus his Son whom God sent (and not any focus on magnifying the mistakes inside or outside the church), we start evangelizing the culture.
Spirit of Glory
Now what is the Spirit of Glory? CCC 693 has the answer: ‘Besides the proper name of “Holy Spirit,” which is most frequently used in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles, we also find in St. Paul the titles: the Spirit of the promise, 21 the Spirit of adoption, 22 the Spirit of Christ, 23 the Spirit of the Lord, 24 and the Spirit of God 25 – and, in St. Peter, the Spirit of glory’.
The Spirit of Glory is the presence of the Holy Spirit resting on you; resting as in abiding, active, working. Wow! I love this. This means that we have been prepared to be mission-ready! We have been prepared to be moved by the Holy Spirit, to evangelize cultures and ultimately suffer for Christ. O! What a privilege!
Mission
St Paul received his mission from the Lord through these words from Acts 9:15-16: “15 But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; 16 I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’”
Does this apply just to St Paul? No. It applies to every one of us who hear the words of Christ proclaimed through the priest at every Mass: ‘Go and proclaim the good news’. Let us move forward in the Spirit of Glory, my dear brothers and sisters, to evangelise the culture that God has placed around us.
St John Fisher & St Thomas More – pray for us!
It’s interesting to see how faith and resilience intersect in challenging environments. What kind of stories have you encountered through this ministry?
Hi , Faith and faithful endurance ( resilience) are inseparable brothers , in fact i know i have faith only when it’s tested . the stories are end results, results that happen since one has faith . I would like to encourage you to read God’s word every day for 30 minutes , the gift of Faith gets transferred to us primarily when one reads God’s word ( Romans 10:17).