Palm Sunday Road, Jerusalem
John 15:18-21
By my count, I have led or co-led about 10 Kairos retreats, a 3-4 day intense retreat where the day usually extended well into the night, sometimes to 2am. And that doesn’t include the weeks of preparation and guidance for the student leaders. Trust me, sleep was a very rare occurrence. But the experience and the effect were always breath-taking and life-changing. All that time and effort, all that work, was worth it!
But no doubt, it was exhausting work! And it is a reminder to us all that being a Christian, living a Christian life, is work! We will meet criticism, doubt, resistance, even outright anger in the process of llving a life of service to others and love for our Brother Jesus.
It’s not easy to be Christian, to be Catholic, not in the world we live in. But, let’s face it, even before the corona virus appeared, this secular world wanted no part of what we believe in. Truth? Honesty? Kindness? Selflessness? Charity? Focusing on possessions and not others? Simple common decency? Looking out for the poor, the downtrodden, the neglected? Nope, nope, this world wants none of that!
Jesus saw that attitude even in the world that He and the Apostles lived in. “The world hates you and it will persecute you because of me.” Things have certainly not changed. It would be so easy to just give in and give up and follow the crowd. Take the easy road! But the only real benefit to the easy road is that it’s easy, nothing more. It is ultimately unfulfilling.
It boils down to a question philosophers and theologians have debated for centuries -Are we bodies with a soul or souls with a body? Catch the difference? What matter more – the body or the soul? Jesus answers this question in today’s Gospel. You do not belong to this world! So don’t get so attached to it. You belong to God; your destiny is the kingdom of heaven. This world is temporary; life with Me is forever.
So go ahead, be radical! Be counter-cultural! Be Christian! Be kind today, help out a stranger. Be truthful and decent! Love your neighbor! Will some people hate you for it? Certainly! Will you be persecuted for taking a ‘neighborly’ approach to others? Absolutely! But that’s the point. We are not called to change ourselves to fit the world. We are called to change the world, to Christify the world!