December 23rd

The Crowning of Thorns

The second-to-last blog entry for this Advent season, here we go.

Taking a turn from the rather deep plunge into my religious insecurities and returning to the theme of the Rosary as a guide to the faith journey, this post will look at the most obvious lesson to take from this decade. Honestly, this one is fairly straightforward.

As true people of faith, we will be mocked, we will be misunderstood, we will be put through the ringer. The things which bring you spiritual honor available in this life are, to one degree or another, bitter. They are painful. It is painful to be poor, whether or not the Kingdom of God will be theirs. It hurts to mourn, whether or not we will be comforted. It sucks to be meek, whether or not we will inherit the earth. It aches to be hungry and thirsty, it burns to hunger and thirst for righteousness, whether or not we shall be satisfied. It hurts like hell to be merciful, whether or not it promises you mercy in turn. It costs a lot to be pure of heart, whether or not you see God. It galls to be a peacemaker, whether or not they are called children of the Lord. And, of course, it hurts to be persecuted for the sake of righteous, whether or not the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

And it will be your best friends that do it, like Peter who denied Jesus three times on what was already the worst night of His human life. If you're lucky, these days, it'll be gentle scorn or confusion, a subtle banishing from certain aspects of their life or a pointed lowering of their opinion of you. If you're less lucky in where you live and what situation in which you find yourself, it'll hurt more.

Someday someone will demand of you the equivalent of "Prophesy! Who was it that hit you?" If God is your Shepherd, then why did X happen at all? If God is your Shepherd, then why don't you just pray your way out of debt or off this cross? Or if God so loves me, why did Y happen to me?

The worst bit is that there's really nothing that we can say to such things. There are established, go-to lies, but the honest answer - despite whatever that book might say - is that there is no good, satisfactory reason why bad things happen to good people or vice versa. Jesus' Kingdom is not of this world. He resigned jurisdiction of it to us long ago.

That's why the values He told us to live our lives by hurt and burn. They peel away our worldly selves to make room for something better. And that looks silly (at best) to people who cannot see what is happening. I don't just mean non-religious people. I mean those who can't see spiritual change and growth in the lives of others and measure that as a significant gain.

At one point in our lives, that will mean mocking. It will mean having to stand firm when we have no little comeback ready. It will mean keeping faith and holding to the counterintuitive principles when there is no worldly argument we can make for their legitimacy, much less supremacy to earthly common sense.

There's a long tradition of trying to find earthly logic to defend theological values. Some have more credence and have better stood the test of time than others, but they are all ultimately unsatisfactory in one way or another. Because Jesus' Kingdom is not of this world, and the reason to follow Him has nothing to do with anything that makes earthly sense. That's the beauty of it.

That's what we need to hold to when we sit there with nothing to say as those around us mock, as we remember that even Jesus suffered this. Sometimes there is no answer to a creature of the world's demands, not one they would understand. That does not make the spiritual truth we have found any less true or profound or important. It only makes it more precious and more difficult to hold to.

May we all remain strong when the time comes.