Matching Opposition with Commitment!

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Is 41:13-20; Mt 11:11-15

Today’s Gospel insists on the radicality of commitment as the fitting response to the fierce opposition to the Gospel. 

If ‘desperate times call for desperate measures,’ the attack on the Goodnews can only be countered with a profound measure of our goodness. In other words, only our goodness can keep the violent force that thwarts the Gospel message under check. 

Here, Jesus lets us consider the real-life example of John the Baptist who symbolized the courage to die for what he believed to be true and proclaimed. And yet, Jesus means that the possessor of the Kingdom is better than the proclaimer of it.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. John of the Cross who found the meaning of the ‘cross’ through his own sufferings, persecution, and imprisonment. St. John of the Cross matched the opposition with his bold commitment. In his agony and pain, he underlines the Gospel paradox that ‘the cross leads to resurrection, agony to ecstasy, darkness to light, abandonment to possession, and denial to self to union with God.’ 

Our commitment to the profundity of the Gospel’s redeeming and liberating message is the antidote to the challenges that the Gospel encounters. That is how we can respond to Jesus’ invitation. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar