Christmas Weekday

 Lectionary: 209

Now the testimony of God is this, that he has testified on behalf of his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself.
Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son.
And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
Whoever possesses the Son has life; whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life.

As Catholics we find ourselves living in a world that has adopted some of our values without their context of faith. They readily embrace values like compassion and inclusiveness but misconstrue them badly. Their compassion permits abortion; their inclusiveness excludes the unborn while erasing identity. Words like male, female, husband, wife, father, and mother have become interchangeable to them. If a gay couple refer to each other as husband and wife, how should a straight couple address one another?  

The secular minds dismisses Marion Rukeyser's The Ballad of the Orange and the Grape, and ignore Lewis Carroll's satire:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ 
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

Mr. Dumpty clearly intended to master Alice. Do words and their meanings belong only to the loudest voices? 

The word truth has become meaningless as every party claims to own it while accusing their opponents of intentional, cynical lying. "They intend to subvert the Constitution and destroy the nation!" they say of one another. It seems pointless to affirm the Church's mission to announce the Truth. The secular city immediately declares that we despise the truth and our claims only demonstrate our arrogance. 

Saint John knew our dilemma. This is not the first time we have faced a polarized society. Scholars believe the Gospel of Saint John and his three Letters were produced by a small Christian congregation challenged by a larger Jewish synagogue. While they had the resources and the genius to produce these documents, the Church was nonetheless suffering social ostracism and economic discrimination.  

But the Evangelists did not back down. Their testimony is from God; their beliefs are based upon the Word of God who took on our human mortality and lived among us. 

The truth as they knew it was based on their memory of Jesus of Nazareth; it was affirmed by the sacrificial Spirit of Jesus. They had -- and knew that they had -- his life among them. If none of them in these closing days of the first century, had personally seen the Man or witnessed his Resurrection, they accepted the testimony of those who had -- who had passed into eternity by now. They were sure that the Spirit of Jesus had not departed from their Church, and they were willing to die for him.  

And, like the Jewish martyrs of the Maccabean era, "they did die:"

...many in Israel were determined and resolved in their hearts not to eat anything unclean. They preferred to die rather than to be defiled with food or to profane the holy covenant; and they did die. (1 Maccabees 1: 62-63)

Heretical Christians, pharisaic Judaism, and pagans were not ready to die for their beliefs. They saw no need for it; they could not suppose that God or the Truth would demand it of them. But Christians demonstrated an amazing willingness to die, and often cheerful confidence as they suffered severe torture. They cherished stories of Saint Lawrence's jocularity on the griddle, and of the young virgins who espoused Jesus Christ and refused to accept arranged marriages to wealthy pagan men. 

That spirit has never left the Church; every century has produced its own martyrs both in mission countries and in formerly Christian countries. Wikipedia lists eighteen stories of individuals and groups of 21st-century Catholic martyrs; several have already been named by Church officials as "Servants of God." 

Saint John uses strong language to describe those who deny our knowledge of God: 

"Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son." 

The Evangelist did not draw the line in sand; he chiseled it onto the Rock of Faith.