Sunday, Nov. 17, 2019, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
•Mal 3:19-20A
•Ps 98:5-6, 7-8, 9
•2 Thes 3:7-12
•Lk 21:5-19
By Marc Massery
We know that God is all loving, all merciful, and wants the best for us. Yet, even when we pursue the Lord with all our hearts, we still face obstacles, we still undergo persecution, and we still experience heartache.
A passage from the Gospel reading for this Sunday sheds light on this struggle. Jesus warns His followers, “… they will seize and persecute you. They will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving testimony” (Lk 21:12-13).
We live in a fallen world. Bad things are going to happen to us throughout our lives. But when we choose to follow Christ, the bad things we experience can be redeemed and give glory to God. In the end, the difficulties and persecutions we endure in the name of Christ all become a part of our testimony.
Now, every Christian has a testimony, whether we can verbalize it or not. A testimony is the story of how the Lord entered our lives and delivered us from the power of evil. For the ancient Jews, every Passover they would retell the story of how the Lord delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. They would enumerate all the ways the Lord overcame their difficult circumstances and led them to the Promised Land.
We might not face slavery like the early Jews or prison and death like the early Christians. But for all of us, circumstances will arise that put our faith to the test in one way or another. Whether an addiction wreaks havoc on lives, a divorce splits our family apart, crippling debt brings us to our knees, or illness threatens our very existence, we need to remember that what we’re going through has been allowed by God so that one day, we might testify to His power over evil.
We all have the tendency to think things like, “Not me. I’m too addicted,” or “My divorce was too messy,” or “My illness is too advanced,” or “I’m in too much debt.”
But contemplate what Jesus says as He continues to speak in this Gospel passage, “Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute” (Lk 21:14-15). In other words, Jesus is telling us that in the face of persecution, we should not rely on our ability to reason so much as our capacity to trust. He provides the victory — not us. He is the author of our testimony — not us.
Maybe on the natural level, your addiction is too entrenched, your divorce too messy, your illness too advanced, or your bank account too depleted. The Lord, however, isn’t limited to the natural world. He’s supernatural. If we trust Him, He has the power to overcome all our difficulties. Maybe He won’t deliver us in the way we had anticipated, but He cannot fail us. It’s not in His nature to fail us.
Consider Jesus’ words to St. Faustina, “You should not worry too much about adversities. The world is not as powerful as it seems to be; its strength is strictly limited. Know, My daughter, that if your soul is filled with the fire of My pure love, then all difficulties dissipate like fog before the sun’s rays and dare not touch the soul. All adversaries are afraid to start a quarrel with such a soul, because they sense that it is stronger than the whole world …” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1643).
When we experience God's power like this, it makes for one heck of a testimony.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.
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