Homily

Most of you, if not all of you, are aware of the Supreme Court's decision last week that declared that marriage between people of the same sex is a Constitutional right in our country. Seeing how things are going in our country, I was not surprised at all that this happened. It was just one more step in the same direction away from the Christian faith that has supported our nation since it's founding. And I am not going to speak about the Court and its failure, nor am I going to talk about so-called same sex marriage, because I've already covered that topic several times in recent months.

What it does make me think about is the early Church. From the very beginning, the apostles and disciples and the earliest Christians faced opposition and recurring outbreaks of persecution. First they were opposed by those who should have been the first to have accepted the Gospel--their fellow Jews. But that didn't happen. Although many Jews embraced Christ, there were others who saw the Faith not as a fulfillment of Judaism but rather as apostasy against the Mosaic covenant. We read in the Acts of the Apostles how Stephen was put to death, Saul hunted down Christians for arrest and King Herod got into the act as well by killing St. James and arresting St. Peter. We know that because of trouble between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews, all the Jews were thrown out of Rome under the Emperor Claudius. We're told it was because of a dispute over a certain Chrestus (Christ). It won't be long before the Emperor Nero begins rounding up the followers of Christ for execution, starting a series of on and off persecutions on the part of the Roman government that would last for about 250 years. If you were a Christian, you never knew, if you lived in the Roman Empire, when or where another persecution might break out. It was understood that if you accepted the Gospel of Christ and if you underwent Holy Baptism, you might, at any time, be arrested and put to death if the Emperor or a local governor decided to try and wipe out the Christian faith. From time to time, and from place to place during the first few centuries, following Christ could get you killed. All the Apostles, except for St. John, were executed for their faith. Persecution by the Roman Empire ended with the emperor Constantine, but the persecution of Christians was not ended everywhere and for all time. In every time and every age, there were believers who suffered and even died rather than renounce our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate the memory of two Ukrainian martyrs, the monks Severian Baranyk and Joachim (or Yakim) Senkirskyu. Fr. Severian was arrested on June 26, 1941, by the Soviet NKVD. His body was found a few days later, showing signs of torture and mutilation. Knife wounds in the form of a cross were on his chest. Fr. Yakim was also arrested by the Soviets and he was killed by being boiled in a caldron. He died on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul also in 1941. And of course there are many places where believers are suffering and dying even today in many places around the world, especially in the Mid-East and Africa. Let us pray for them today.

I stop and marvel at how the early church survived through it all. How the early Christians not only held on to their faith also despite all social and cultural opposition they had to deal with, day after day and place after place. And this opposition could come from Jews and from Gentiles. It could come from neighbors, friends and even family members. The pressures against the faith were not only from outbursts of persecution from government forces, but pressures even from those you called friend and relative. What kept the Church going? It was not government protection, it was not cultural acceptance, it was not because of family tradition, because I don't think anyone is willing to die just because their parents were Christians and they just kind of went along with it. The Church continued to survive because of the faith of the faithful, and by the grace of God which supported that faith. It not only survived, it continued to grow and spread throughout the world so that today in every land and country, the name of Jesus is praised. Even today in our own country where, more and more, people are giving up the Christian faith or twisting the teachings of Christ in order to be considered acceptable by certain segments of society, even today we come to worship our Lord and ask His help in all our needs, and the needs of the world.

How did the early Church and the early Christians continue on even in the face of persecution? It was not by exercising political or economic power. It was by living as Christians. It was by trusting in God. It was by understanding that this life is not our final goal. It was by believing that what Christ said is true: there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. And that giving is not only about acts of kindness and charity--it is also about sharing the faith with those who do not know it and explaining it to those who misunderstand it. We stand for Christ, not for public opinion. Everybody wants to be loved, but our vocation is not to be loved, but to love. We stand for truth, not for the truth of the day. We stand for the dignity of the human person and not for the sad attempts by some people to find happiness and life in places and behaviors and situations where it cannot be found. We stand for the love of family, neighbor and stranger, but we never deny the truth of Christ in order to do so--indeed we cannot love them unless we love them in truth. We may be called names, we may be ridiculed, we may even be hated by some of our fellow citizens, but we cannot give up the love of God and the love of our neighbor and the hope that we have in Christ for anything less than eternal glory. As St. Paul said to us today, "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, (that is the word of faith which we preach) for if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

And let us bring along with us as many as we possibly can.