There is no calling so high as to be persecuted for Jesus’ sake.
May 8 of this year, Pastor Artur Pawlowski was intercepted on the highway. Heavily armed SWAT police surrounded his car. He was cuffed and dragged away, awaiting a 4-year-sentence in Canada. His crime: he opened his church and lead the faithful in worship. The news went viral. Within weeks, feces and nails were thrown at his house and arsonists torched his garage. Earlier this month, Pastor Artur lead a prayer rally in Portland. Antifa thugs attacked the crowd with paintball gunfire and mace, while shouting: “God has abandoned you!” All year, he has been warning Americans and Canadians to prepare for what is ahead: “The enemy is not hiding anymore.” “It’s here.” “Wake up or else.”
There is only one good life: a life of prayer. In The Little Prince, a 1943 novella, the adventures unfold of a boy traveling through space. He moves from one asteroid to the next, each time meeting an eccentric character. On one asteroid, he runs into a businessman. “Good morning,” the boy says, “Your cigarette has gone out.” The businessman mutters, “Three and two make five. Five and seven make twelve. Twelve and three make fifteen…I haven’t time to light it again. Twenty-six and five make thirty-one.” The boy asks the businessman what he is counting. “Stars.” Why? “I own them.” “What do you do with them?” “I count them and recount them…” the businessman asserted. “[These are] matters of consequence… five-hundred-and-one-million, six-hundred-twenty-two-thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one…” The Little Prince shook his head, “Grown-ups are certainly altogether extraordinary.”
We take our lives so seriously, but what does it matter? All of it, without prayer, is as meaningless as the life of the businessman counting his stars.
God calls us to one purpose: to fill our hearts with prayer.
“As he came near and saw the city, [Jesus] wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes.” Then Christ entered the temple, “and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer’” (Luke 19:41-42, 25-26).
Our Gospel begins with human delusion.
“If you had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace.” “They are hidden from your eyes.”
I am reading a book on ethics. The author is wrestling with a question: Is reason enough? Can you figure out ‘good’ and ‘bad’ just by using your brain, or do you need God and religion? The more I read, the more convinced I am: reason alone is worthless. Without faith and religion, all human effort is a waist of time— mental gymnastics that come to nothing.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
We start with the heart. If the heart is healthy, the brain can put two and two together. If the heart is sick, the brain malfunctions. You cannot think right, if your soul is not in the right place. Do some youtube searches about the crazy ideas ethics professors teach. They have more degrees than I have fingers on my hand. Yet, their conclusions are so ridiculous, my five-year-olds can do better. Only the pure in heart can make sense of anything.
‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day” (Luke 19:42).
We have to guard ourselves from delusion. The Jews knew the Law, but they were scared. They feared the power of the Roman empire. Fear and stress turned them into a mop, and that mop hung Christ on a cross.
In the witch hunts of the 1600’s, thousands of women were killed. They were burnt at the stake, not because of crimes, but because they became the scapegoats of insane societies. Fear and stress created mobs, and the mobs became a monster.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi officials implemented the Jewish badge. The Star of David marked the Jews as “different” and “dangerous.” The Germans were the most educated people in the world. It boggles the mind that such intelligent, modern people could get sucked into the hypnotism of hatred. The Germans had been normal people. They were educated. They were upstanding citizens. Fear and stress turned them into mobs, and the mobs became a monster.
We are not above this. So much around us is scary. Global warming, Taliban seizure of Afghanistan, new strains of Covid-19, even wearing a face mask or staying locked away at home. Any one of these alone is enough to drive a person crazy. Among all these, what is our biggest enemy: fear. Who will become the scapegoats in our times: extremists, religious fanatics, perhaps, the unvaccinated? We cannot give in to the delusion.
Carl Jung made a brilliant remark:
“It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics [i.e. mass delusion], which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”
Whatever happens in the world, we cannot give in to fear.
What can we do?
Breathe.
Jesus Christ is with us.
“Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written, “My house shall be a house of prayer” (Luke 19:45-46).
Make your heart a house of prayer. Immediately after warning the disciples of delusion, Jesus cleared the temple. The people had given into fear. The veil was pulled over their eyes. So what did Jesus do? He taught them to pray.
Everything seems so important. Our to-do-list feels urgent. The news is overwhelming. We get caught up in the fear and gravity of it all. We become like the self-important businessman counting stars, “I have no time for loafing.” It is futile. Christ simply invites us to sit down at his feet.
I want to end with a little story. Something happened to me last week. I was driving home and saw an elderly neighbor. She was hobbling up to her trash can, so I pulled over to see if I could help — but she helped me. She was wearing one of those old, cotton dresses — it was probably made in the 1950’s — and one of those pinned up bonnets. We started talking. She talked about how Jesus keeps her company. He is with her all day long. We are so blessed, she said. For a moment, standing there by this faithful woman, all the hubbub of the world disappeared. I felt like I was standing in a different world. It was an epiphany, a glimpse into the deeper reality around us. God is with us, and God keeps his own.
Above all other things, we have one job: become a house of prayer.
“And the temple of God was opened in heaven: and the ark of His testament was seen in His temple, and there were lightnings, and voices, and an earthquake, and great hail. And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”(Apocalypse 11:19-12:1).
The tomb was empty. The light poured in from the opened door, but it did not shine on a body. The rays fell on the bed where she had lain. Her body was gone. In its place were lilies and roses.
The love of beauty is the mark of a Christian soul. From the tiniest blade of grass to the stars in the sky, all beauty is sacramental. It exists to inspire our soul towards God. If we want to grow as Christians, we need to take seriously this work: to spend life contemplating beauty.
She fell to sleep praying the psalms. She prayed the psalms when she woke in the night. She memorized the psalter, so that she could recite its words through the day, cleaning, gardening, and folding laundry. She was not a nun or hermit. She was an ordinary woman, a mother of eight children. The famous elder, Fr. Roman Braga, often told stories about his mother and her love for the psalms. She exemplified the life God desires, not for the saints, but for us ordinary people.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10).
The men strained at their nets and could barely pull in the fish. Rocking violently, the boat nearly capsized, tugged down by this miraculous catch. Peter had seen everything. No mortal had this kind of authority over water and earth. It was a terrifying moment, discovering before him God almighty. He trembled and collapsed:
We have a duty, as 21st century Christians, to build a counterculture. 1,500 years ago, a young nobleman was appalled by the moral chaos of Rome. He left the world behind and retreated to the wilderness. He set up an altar in the woods, he prayed, and formed communities based on order, stability, beauty, and worship. St. Benedict exiled himself from mainstream culture and built a new culture anchored on Jesus Christ. We share the same vocation. Here and now, in this little parish, we have a duty to be counterculture.
“Amidst the racket and ridicule of people my prayer rises toward You, O my King and my Kingdom. Prayer is incense, that ceaselessly censes my soul and raises it toward You, and draws You toward her. Stoop down, my King, so that I may whisper to You my most precious secret, my most secret prayer, my most prayerful desire. You are the object of all my prayers, all my searching. I seek nothing except You, truly, only You.” ~ A Prayer by St. Nikolai Velimirovich
Hunger is the word that describes the saints. Their souls ache with hunger for God. In his book, Prayers by the Lake, St. Nikolai gives us a glimpse into this state of relentless hunger. Nothing will satisfy him short of God. Meanwhile, I find myself more interested in biting into that bacon cheeseburger. My thoughts are continually pulled away towards all the noise. The racket of day to day life gets us so distracted. How can we become more like saints?
Defocused and toned early evening street scene with taxi cabs in Manhattan, New York City. Slight grain effect in shadow areas.
We live in a battle between two spirits: the spirit of the world and the Spirit of God. On Pentecost Day, the Holy Spirit poured into the hearts of men and women. It inspired a culture with God in the center. Today, society is influenced by a different spirit, one that seeks to twist and pervert. Our task, as Christians in the 21st century, is to reject the spirit of worldliness, and to reclaim Christian culture.
We have woken up to a new era in America. The Church has new struggles. For years, the battle against Christianity has been escalating. It has taken a profound leap forward and our fidelity to Christ will be tested in every way. In all of it, we have every reason to rejoice. It is a great adventure, to belong to Christ. We know who wins the battle. We know who is in charge. Even now, even in the darkest struggles of our times, we can rest in peace and joy.
