Today we celebrate the feast of St. Peter Baptist and his companion martyrs, Paul Meekie
and others. And these were some Jesuits, and Baptist was a Franciscan, among others, who
had in the 16th century gone to Japan to preach the gospel, knowing very well that their time
would be limited in their endeavor, that ultimately they would be arrested and die martyrs
which, of course, they did. They were crucified in Nagasaki for having preached the faith
contrary to the law of the emperor. These men were inspired by the teaching of Christ, and in the
case of the Franciscans, the teaching of St. Francis, who saw missionary activity as the full
flowering of the Franciscan spirit, the spirit of total commitment to Christ, for the rebuilding
of the church, and the evangelical life of poverty and prayer and sacrifice. And they
didn't count the cost. St. Francis himself on a number of occasions tried to get to the
Holy Land in order to die a martyr and was not granted that grace, instead he was given
the stigmata. But from time to time, friars who did pray for the grace of martyrdom received
it. And in so desiring and so praying, they're really fulfilling what our Lord promised in
the gospel when he taught the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are an expression of the fullness
of our faith lived as our Lord proclaimed it. It's not merely a moral code, sort of
an elevation of the Ten Commandments to a higher level, but rather it is the blessings
invoked by Christ.
Christ, upon those who are faithful, he says, blessed are those who are poor, who are meek
and all the rest. Blessed meaning happy, blessed meaning having had grace bestowed on them,
blessed meaning at rest in the grace of God. Our Lord promises blessings to those who are
poor and who...
Weep and mourn, who are meek, who hunger for justice and all the rest. But he summarizes
the whole of the Beatitudes in the Beatitude of Persecution.
Happy are you when people hate you and drive you out and abuse you, denounce your name
as criminal on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy,
for then you're rewarded.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
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Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
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Amen.
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Amen.
has no part of the Son of Man
and those who are followers of Christ
have to choose him before the world
and choose him before those
who have chosen the world.
And it's a difficult thing to do
but it's something that the saints did
because they were wholly dedicated to Christ
because they completely turned themselves over to him
and lived a life of prayer
and poverty and penance.
We live at a time
when many are persecuted in their faith.
In some countries
that persecution is a bloody persecution.
It has been since the 20th century,
early on in the 20th century.
But times are grave
and as time goes on
we find ourselves
more and more marginalized as Christians
in the public square.
We're fighting for our rights.
We're fighting for our rights.
We're fighting for our rights.
We're fighting for the rights of marriage
and for the rights of the church,
the rights of the unborn.
It's not a message
that our impure world wants to hear.
And we ought to be prepared for persecution.
We ought to recognize
that somehow we have got to find our peace,
our consolation,
our stability,
the ground under our feet
in the face of persecution.
In the Eucharist,
in the presence of our Blessed Mother,
in prayer,
and in the presence of God in our lives.
That is what is going to sustain us always
and everywhere.
We cannot depend upon
what the world has to offer
or even the stable institutions
that we have counted on for so long.
Our economy is in shambles
and it becomes ever more apparent
that we are not going to be able to
keep up with what the world has to offer.
Those who are leading our country
are guessing about how to fix it.
We can't depend on the world
and those who have solutions to offer.
The only solution that we can count on
is Christ and his teaching.
So we need to grapple
with this teaching of our Lord.
We need to seek the intercession of the martyrs
and ask them to give us the grace
to understand the Beatitudes
and to understand the Beatitudes
and to understand the Beatitudes
and to understand the Beatitudes
and to understand the Beatitudes
and find the foolishness of God
to be, as St. Paul said,
wiser than the wisdom of men.
The righteous man, as St. Paul says
in the letter to the Hebrews today,
lives by faith.
He lives by faith, not by vision,
not by what the world has to offer,
but by faith.
And we will need endurance,
as he says,
to do God's will
and to gain what is promised,
but only for a little while now,
a very little while,
and the one that is coming will have come
and he will not delay.
Whether that means for us
the end of the world
or the end of our life
or the coming of our Lord in grace,
our Lord will not delay
but will be with us always
even to the end of time
to sustain us in all of our needs.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.