Today is Oct. 8, Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time.
At today’s Mass, in the first reading, we hear St. Paul tell the Galatians, “You heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it” (Gal 1:13).
How many others have tried, like St. Paul, to destroy the Church? It is a wonder of God’s grace that St. Paul died a martyr for Christ. In the end, the great apostle was subjected to persecution, just as he once tried to persecute other members of the Church!
But persecution is not merely a matter of history. Even today, throughout the world, our brothers and sisters are suffering for love of Christ. In Nicaragua this summer, the government revoked the legal rights of religious orders, including the Franciscans, Carmelites and Augustinians, and numerous other Catholic organizations. (The Jesuits were expelled from the country last year.)
“(The Church) has been attacked from all sides. They’ve removed clergy, they’ve frozen its accounts. The Church has survived,” an exiled priest, familiar with the diocese, told OSV News. Flesh and blood cannot prevail against the designs of heaven!
Early on in his pontificate, Pope Francis preached, “Christians are persecuted today more than at the start of Christianity.” The pope explained the source of persecution saying, “The originating cause of every persecution is the hate of the prince of the world for those who have been saved and redeemed by Jesus through his death and resurrection.”
That is the message of St. Paul to the Galatians: He has been saved and redeemed by Jesus Christ. That transformation is ours to embrace, too. Each day we must resist the powers of the prince of this world, clinging to God’s grace, as St. Paul did.
A prayer for God’s mercy:
Almighty ever-living God, who in the abundance of your kindness surpass the merits and the desires of those who entreat you, pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask. Through our lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
My Daily Visitor spiritual reflections are a dose of daily Catholic inspiration from Our Sunday Visitor magazine.
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