The Somewhere Journey

Trust.

You only get it if you deserve it. And even then maybe not.

Trust has to be earned. 

The great saints aren’t just radically different from most of us. They’re radically different from each other. 

But whether they’re modern saints like Mother Teresa, saints martyred in the Holocaust like Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, or medieval saints like Joan of Arc and Francis of Assisi, they all have one thing in common. 

Complete trust in God.

This Sunday’s first reading shows us the relationship between God and His beloved. From the view of God’s beloved. 

It’s got some pretty hard stuff in it, but one thing runs through it all. 

Complete trust in God. 

For so many different people (with such different lives and deaths) to have complete trust in God means one thing. God must have done something to earn that trust. 

More on this Thursday.

Jer 1:17-19; Ps 70; Mark 6:17-29

Last Sunday we heard that Jesus’s words were found to be “intolerable” and because of his hard teaching on the Eucharist, many stopped walking with him. But, for the sake of truth, Jesus did not back down or accommodate his teaching to the sensitivities of the crowd. So, too, St John the Baptist boldly pointed out the sinful relationship between king Herod and his brother’s wife, Herodias. For the sake of the truth, and indeed, for the sake of the eternal salvation of Herod and Herodias, and because of the public scandal caused by their actions, St John the Baptist was not afraid to speak up and to denounce the king; truth confronted power.

In our age, the Church is often at odds with the powers of our time, whenever she tries to speak up concerning issues of natural law; or relating to marriage and sexuality; or about just wages, or concerning the rights of migrants, or about the fundamental right to life for the unborn and the elderly. Yet, the truth must be heard; Christ must be preached. Hence, whenever Christians speak up for the truth, despite opposition and ridicule or even, in some place, in danger of death, they follow the example of Christ and his cousin, St John. As the Collect said, St John was “a Martyr for truth and justice”, and we pray that we, too, will have the grace to “fight hard for the confession of” Christ’s teachings. 

Recent revelations in the USA have shown that, in our own sad times, Catholics might have to struggle for justice to be done, and for the whole truth of Christ’s teachings to be taught, not only with the secular world, but even within the corridors of the Church. For power, even episcopal power, has been used to conceal the sinful acts of those in authority, and thus caused the weak and vulnerable to be harmed still more. And this intolerable situation still persists, sadly.

So, to all those who are martyrs, that is to say, witnesses for truth and justice; to all who long for truth and justice among the leaders of the Church today; to all those who love the truth, that is, who love Jesus Christ, the Lord says, as he said to Jeremiah: “Be not crushed on their account… for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Many, I recognise, are greatly demoralised, their faith and their spirits crushed, by scandal after scandal, by the abuse of power to stifle the truth.

But today’s feast day gives to all lovers of truth and justice, a patron Saint in the struggle, and it also offers them hope. For although Herod beheaded John, we know today that the king has been forgotten – the powerful of their time is rendered impotent and futile. But the weak who remain united to Jesus? They are exalted and their righteous deeds are recounted in song. Thus, today’s feast of St John’s martyrdom is called his “heavenly birthday”, for the Risen Lord’s power transforms death into life, despair into hope, and his Resurrection light reveals truth out of the darkness.