St. Stephen’s martyrdom
When they are great, the sufferings of the soul, compared to great bodily sufferings, are even more dire.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira [June 2, 1975]
In This Chapter
“If someone is being persecuted it is because he is being rejected. If he is being rejected, there must be something to it…” This simplistic bias is one of the main objections, conscious or subconscious, regarding the idealist.
See, in this Chapter, how the opposite is often true: “Blessed are those persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:10).
The Persecuted: A Chosen One
Not just anyone suffers persecution for the sake of justice, but those chosen by God.
It is an honor and glory for an individual to be persecuted for the sake of Justice. By choosing someone to be persecuted and thus resemble Christ, God gives that person special proof of his love.
Our Lord says: His is the kingdom of heaven. And the angels will acclaim him when crossing the threshold of death and entering heaven.
The magnificent music of the triumphant choir of winners will welcome him at the threshold of paradise and take him to Our Lady’s feet. And, in unison with that chorus, She will show him to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will look at him and say, “This one is mine because he is like Me: He suffered persecution for the sake of Justice.” [June 2, 1975]
Psychological and Moral Persecution
“Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” says the Gospel. [Mt. 5:10] From the beginning of the world, since Cain killed Abel until the last martyr dies before the end of the world, those who are persecuted for the sake of Justice have the promise of the kingdom of heaven.
But the idea always remains in our minds that persecution must be bloody and that real persecution takes someone’s life or at least injures his body. Psychological persecution or moral torture inflicted on a person, because he loves Justice, is rarely seen as persecution.
Now then, however hard bodily suffering can be, the soul is the noblest part of man. When they are great, the sufferings of the soul, compared to great bodily sufferings, are even more dire.
Man suffers more in his soul than in his body. This is why of all the episodes of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His agony in the Garden is the one for which I have the deepest veneration. It was there, indeed, that He suffered his psychological and moral crucifixion.
Throughout the Passion, the moral suffering was greater than the physical suffering. So much so that having sustained untold physical suffering, in the end, Our Lord complained of moral aridity, the aridity and abandonment in which Providence left His holy humanity: “Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?”
He found Himself in complete aridity and felt entirely forsaken, thus bearing this particular suffering which is abandonment. And He asked: Father, Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? [Mt. 27:46]
Cheerful in the Arena with Wild Beasts
During the Roman Empire, Christians about to be martyred went to the arena so cheerful that you would say they were anticipating their entry into heaven!
By God’s design, they were spared the suffering of soul and inundated with consolation at the very moment they were about to be eaten by a jaguar, tiger or lion!
They were resplendent with joy and confounded the pagans watching their martyrdom, who could not understand how anyone could be so cheerful in such a terrible situation.
The reason for this joy? Bodily suffering was present, but the suffering of the soul was absent.
The main form of persecution is persecution of the soul. It is to tempt the soul, drag it into sin and make it suffer if it does not consent to sin. [June 2, 1975]
A Great Reason to Love
The act opposed to the sin of Judas, which gives Our Lord and Our Lady the opposite glory, is to remain faithful at a moment when all are unfaithful.
To be faithful with fidelity without cracks, reservations or cowardice and have a heroic, declared and peremptory fidelity that moves forward no matter what happens.
To be faithful selflessly, without ambition or profit but out of pure love for Our Lady and Our Lord Jesus Christ.
To have this fidelity, we must have a great love for Our Lord and Our Lady.
How can one have a great love? Only by having a great reason to love.
The true way to love is to consider the sublimity of God Our Lord and Our Lady: Unfathomable, ineffable, magnificent. A superiority that places Them above all else.
By imagining Them like this we are filled with enthusiasm and attain unalloyed fidelity. [March 17, 1992]
“When My Christmas Arrives…”
It is Christmas night. Our Lord is in the manger.
Through grace, the Child Jesus visits all souls. He plays not only the role of one who receives but who actually goes after men: All men, of all ages and languages and from all walks of life.
He tells them something that especially touches their hearts. Christmas also brings joy to places where sadness reigns. Christmas is not only a feast of the joyful; it is also largely a feast of the sad.
Imagine a prisoner in the Lubyanka—Russia’s sinister communist prison—who hears a bell ringing afar and realizes that it is Christmas Eve. From the depths of his dungeon and isolation—surrounded only by hatred, persecution, need and sorrow, where every moment is grief—if this man has faith, he kneels and says, “Lord, it is Thy holy Christmas.”
And joy penetrates those impregnable walls.
Then the man prays and recalls:
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, alles schläft, einsam wacht, nur das traute, hochheilige Paar…” [Original lyrics to the “Silent Night” Christmas carol]
My God, not only the holy couple are watching, but this prisoner as well. Behold, my God, my wrists: they are put into fetters. My God, how long will I be here? I do not know. One thing I do know is that when my Christmas night comes around, Thou shalt come and call me and I will be born to Heaven.
How much hope, joy and resignation! How much solitude and sorrow! [Dec. 22, 1984]
An Idealistic Boy, Already a Victim of Incomprehension
He is misunderstood in his own home and at friends’ homes and faces isolation and abandonment because he does not utter dirty words, tell filthy jokes or read indecent magazines.
Because he is serious and does not play around, he sees himself isolated, set aside and despised. A veil of sadness descends upon his childhood, which should normally be cheerful.
Later, adolescence begins and sometimes he sees his whole environment stand up against him.
At school, at home, and everywhere else, a wall is raised against him. They say he is like an old man who has no fun and is backward, old-fashioned, obnoxious, proud, you name it.
This causes suffering, and that suffering is a form of persecution.
“Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake.” But what is justice? It is not only what is called the virtue of justice, by which you give each person what he is entitled to. The word Justice is also used in the Old and New Testaments to indicate virtue as a whole. The ensemble of virtues is called Justice.
The individual who suffers persecution for the sake of justice has a perfect intuition that he is being persecuted for it. Therefore, he will no longer be persecuted if he ceases to love justice, practice virtue or promote the virtue of others.
The young man mocked by his colleagues because he is chaste knows quite well that all he has to do is go out with an immoral woman and all antipathy against him will end. Everyone who is persecuted knows in a more or less confusing manner the reason for his persecution.
Now then, despite that, he chooses to lead a hard life rather than abandon virtue.
Isn’t a Patient’s Suffering Worse?
A person suffering in a hospital can offer his pain—something highly commendable—and thus sanctify himself. But a patient is not always able to say to God, “I could put a stop to my cross, but I will not do it out of fidelity to Thee.”
However, one who is persecuted for the sake of justice can say: “I could stop this cross but will not do it out of fidelity to Thee.”
Since he has this possibility, every minute of fidelity he lives is one in which he fully renews his acceptance of the pain imposed on him.
He who does this will have lived the most beautiful days of his life. [June 2, 1975]
Blessed Aloysius Stepinac, Croatian Cardinal, during his iniquitous trial by the communists
Conquering Persecutors with a Smile?
Someone says: “Man is viscerally good. When he strays, it is because of some inability on the part of the good. If good people were clever they would always conquer opponents by smiling and making concessions. Thus, there would never be religious persecution. From smile to smile, the Catholic Church would conquer men.”
To this way of thinking one could object: “If the good are guilty every time the bad rise against them and persecute them, then Our Lord Jesus Christ was to blame for having been persecuted and crucified!”
“Nor would He have applied the smiling tactic. Otherwise, He would have taken advantage of His moment of popularity on Palm Sunday and led all those people to a great reconciliation. What happened next would never have happened.”
“His whole unpopularity and ensuing tragedy stemmed from the fact that He was very uncompromising and never yielded in his principles.”
To give in, smile, have no principles and pay any doctrinal or ideological price to avoid war, deeming physical death as the ultimate evil and sin as harmless: Behold the mentality that led to today’s progressivism and the many aberrations out there.
Paradise (Fra Angelico – detail)