Standing firm

Today’s gospel (Matthew 24: 4-13) has both a collective sense and an individual application for us. Jesus speaks about world history, but His words also apply to our individual histories. And in a sense, it is only the latter that matters.

For whatever is happening all around us, whether we live in an age of Christian flourishing or an age of spiritual winter, we must – as the wretched anticlerical Voltaire said – attend to our own garden.

Never mind the grand conspiracies on the world stage: what deceits prosper in our own heart? How much do we lend an ear to agitations and agitators? How much do we let our faith be overwhelmed by the earthquakes around us, or by officious bullies who wield power in both Church and State? Our only consolation in these tumults should be the fidelity of Jesus to us. If we take consolation and strength in our own sense of self, in our rank or in the strength and rank of others, we are in danger of being let down.

“Then they will hand you over to be tortured and put to death.” In A Man for All Seasons, Richard Rich is desperate for Thomas More to give him a hand up in society, but when Rich claims that he would be faithful, Thomas tells him: “Richard, you could not answer for yourself, even so far as tonight.” Rich is a man with his faith in the upper classes, but he has no self-knowledge. He lives in deceit – deceit about himself and deceit about others – and thus, it is no surprise to find him involved as an agent in the handing over of More to his persecutors.

As one French mystic says, “Beware those who are in flight from themselves…” in flight because they too live in deceit about themselves and about the world around them. Love only grows cold in those who have embraced deceit – about themselves and about others – and are in flight. And where deceit waxes and love grows cold, so persecutions follow.

We think of persecutors with snarling faces like those who crucify Jesus in Gustave Dore’s engravings, but we only need look in the mirror to find a potential persecutor – a persecutor of others or indeed of ourselves. It is easier than we think to hate the self; grace means to forget ourselves, or at least to love ourselves only with the humble love of the Man God, free from deceit, averse to the lawlessness that follows on the loss of charity.

How many wasted hours do people spend over signs of the end and portents of things to come! Our challenge is here; the final act is now; the denouement of our lives may only be a breath away. In every moment of our lives, we have the chance to say ‘yes’ and ‘thank you’, like Mary did – Mary who beheld clearly on Calvary the coldness of men’s hearts and the persecution of her Son.

But Mary had first known the peace of the house of Nazareth and the gentle labours of faithfulness in her own soul, the soul of her spouse, and the soul of the Son she raised. We only need to stand firm with her (and with saints like More and Fisher).