Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
One of my favorite superheroes is Captain America. My affinity for him is not just because the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in which he appears were pretty good. My favorite quote of his from the comic books is this:
“Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — “No, you move.”
I think that quote strikes me in particular because it sounds a lot like the world and society in which we live today, and the friction with it that we experience as Christians. We’ll come back to that, but it’s important to remember that this is nothing new. We have 2,000 years of saints and martyrs who have been in similar situations where their faith seems to be at an impasse with the values of the world. Even further back, at the end of the Old Testament, we read about a group of brothers from 2nd Maccabees, which we hear in the First Reading this Sunday.
These seven brothers and their mother are asked to eat pork as a sign of renouncing their faith, and they refuse and stand their ground. For Captain America, those who oppose him might get a vibranium shield flying past their head, but for these brothers, they fight back not with any weapons of this world, but by laying down their lives. And this willingness to sacrifice their very lives for their faith was so inspiring that “Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage, because he regarded his sufferings as nothing.”
Some saints lived in a time when the Church was was at the center of society and living a virtuous Christian life, though not easy, was held out as the standard to shoot for in society. That’s not so much the case for us – you and I may not be physically persecuted for our faith at the moment, but we have a lot more in common with the early Church and the brothers from the First Reading. We should probably expect at this point that our faith won’t always be supported – in school, on our sports teams, at work, among our friends, and even in our families sometimes. So are we expected to face these challenges alone?
Of course not. For one, we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1)” and have all the saints that have gone before us to inspire us and to pray for us. But we also have each other – a constant theme we see in the lives of the saints is that they surrounded themselves with other people who were striving for holiness, who could support them when the road got tough. The brothers from the First Reading had each other for that strength and support as they made the ultimate sacrifice for their faith.
You may find yourself thinking, “Ok that all sounds great, but I don’t know much about any saints, and I don’t have a vibrant community of faith around me.” If that’s the case, just start with one saint and one friend/relationship this week. Pick a saint and watch a video on their life or read about them. Reflect on what inspiration you can take from their life, and then actually ask them to pray for you! And for your “faithful friend”, try starting with getting involved in a youth ministry group at your Parish. You’ll most likely find some fellow saints-in-the-making there, and you might wind up being the answer to someone else’s prayer for to find a faithful friend too.