Where are the good works of such hatred? What peoples have been drawn from vice and corruption? What souls have been consoled? What hearts have been sweetened? There are men and women in the world dying in sorrow, crying out the bread of everlasting life, and there are sinful hearts pleading there for forgiveness. Where, oh! where - oh, Hatred of Christ - is your consolation, your mercy and your peace for such souls?
No, the hatred of Christ is not to be found in the fact that He was an impostor, for hatred is a negation, and the negation is an assertion of His existence. There are too many minds in all ages who have studied and bent the knee, to admit He was an impostor. Where then find a reason for the hatred?
There must be some reason peculiar to Him and Him alone which accounts for it. In no one else in all history do you find an abiding hatred except against Our Lord. In other founder of a world religion ever said He would be hated, and no one ever was hated. Buddha is not hated. Mohammed is not hated. Zoroaster is not hated. Some men while they lived were hated. Nero was hated while he lived, even by his own countrymen.
Genghis Khan was hated by a great mass of humanity. Bismarck was hated by many of his own countrymen. But who hates any of them today? There are no fists uplifted in desecration against Nero. There are no oaths of bitterness against Genghis Khan. There is no hymn of hatred sung over the tomb of Bismarck. Hatred died with them. Not even the Kaiser, who was hated by part of the world and by some of his own people after the First World War, is hated today.
Now why has hatred died against everyone else, and still endures against Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ? Here we come to the real reason. What cause hatred? Hatred is caused by that which annoys or creates an obstacle to something we desire. Why was Nero hated when alive? Because his vices were an obstacle to social justice for which the Romans yearned. But now that Nero's vices are corrupted with his flesh, no one hates him. No one today hates Tiberius, Domitian, Ivan the Terrible, or Nestorius. Even the word contempt is too strong for them.
They have ceased to be the objects of hatred, because they have ceased against Christ has never been weakened even after twenty centuries; and the reason it still endures is because Christ is still an obstacle - an obstacle to sin, to selfishness, to godlessness, and to the spirit of the world. The Spirit of Christ still lives in those who love.
He is still a hindrance to nations who would forget God; still a stumbling block to those who cease to pray; still a reproach to those who sin and atone not; still a Divinity refusing to step down from the cross to win the plaudits of an hour; still a Voice calling uneasy hearts away from the spirit of the world to the glorious liberty of the children of God. Hatred still endures because Jesus Christ still lives. But if He still lives, then He is Divine. If He is Divine, then until the spirit of the world dies, there shall be distress for His followers. But when it dies, victory. "You'll have suffering in the world, but take courage! I have conquered the world." - John 16:33 -
Here is the key to the hatred of the Church - Our Lord Jesus Christ was intensely loved and intensely hated because He was Divine. Only the perversion of the sovereign love of God could ever explain such hate. Only that which continues that Divine Life could ever be the object of such a hate.
'If there is a form of Christianity now in the world [says Newman] which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen and ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue; a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational faith; a religion which impresses on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt and consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by one, their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts a grave shadow over the future;
A religion which holds up to admiration the surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if they would; a religion, the doctrines of which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which is consider to bear on its very surface signs of folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, and that careful examination is preposterous; a religion such that men look at a convert to it with curiosity, suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if something strange had befallen him, as if he had an initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion with dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him of his personality, reduced him to a mere organ or instruments of a whole;
A religion which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as dividing families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims of government, making mock at law,dissolving the empire, the enemy of human nature, and a conspirator against its rights and privileges; - a religion which they consider the champion and instrument of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the land the anger of heaven; a religion which they associate with intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is accountable; a religion, the very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation they would persecute if they could; if there be such a religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it, when it came forth from its Divine Author.'
If you would find Jesus Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church which is accused of being behind times, as Our Lord Jesus was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which peoples sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord Jesus because He came from Nazareth.
Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord Jesus was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, peoples say must be destroyed in the name of God, as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because He called Himself the Truth.
Look for the Church which is rejected by the world as Our Lord was rejected by peoples. Look for the Church which amid the confusion of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its Voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly, it is otherworldly. Since it is otherworldly it is infinitely love and infinitely hated as was Jesus Christ Himself. But only that which is Divine can be infinitely hated and infinitely loved. Therefore, the Church is Divine. Therefore, it is the life of Christ among peoples! Therefore, we love it! Therefore, we hope to die in its Blessed Embrace!
BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 )
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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