12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In every age, Christ and his Church have been persecuted. Despite his message of love and compassion (or perhaps, because of it), Jesus was taunted by people of his time – by both religious authorities and ordinary people alike. Even his death on the Cross and his victorious Resurrection did not convince every person that he was the Son of God; the promised Messiah. Some of his own followers abandoned him. His Apostles faced ridicule and death. Countless early Christians were martyred for their faith.

In the First Reading today (Jeremiah 20:10-13), we encounter the prophet Jeremiah who, in his youth, had been called by the Lord to be a prophet during times of great political upheaval. Despite his initial opposition to God’s call, Jeremiah accepted the vocation of prophet and endured imprisonment, scourging, threats from enemies and even former friends, and his own interior crises as he continued to question his suitability as a prophet of God. Despite such challenges, Jeremiah remained steadfast in the long run because he knew that the Lord was with him like a mighty warrior.

In our Second Reading (Romans 5:12-15), St. Paul reminds the Romans that Adam brought sin and death into the world “and thus death came to all men inasmuch as all sinned.” He compares the effect of Adam’s disobedience to God’s will to Christ’s total obedience to the father’s will – and the effect that each had on the human race. Arguing “from lesser to greater,” Paul states that if the disobedience (sin) of Adam was catastrophic to the human condition, how much more powerful is the obedience of Christ who brought reconciliation and healing to our relationship with the Father in Heaven?

In the Gospel (Matthew 10:26-33), Jesus has shared his message of love and mercy with his Apostles, but at the same time Jesus acknowledges that they would encounter a world that is hostile to his message. He assures them, however, that they will be protected by the same Father who cares for the sparrows. Like Paul, Jesus is using a persuasive argument “from lesser to greater” – if the Father looks out for something as seemingly insignificant as the sparrows, how much more will he look out for those followers of Jesus who believe in him?

Like Jeremiah and the Apostles, Jesus has called us, too. At our Baptism, we became his followers, and through the grace of the Sacraments and the support of our Christian community, we have been called to share that same message of mercy, love, and salvation through Christ. We, too, face a world that is often openly hostile to Christianity and its message. Do we stand up for our faith against the attacks of an increasingly secular society, or are we too weak, too uninformed, too silent? Let us continue to pray that God’s grace will sustain us, and that we will give better witness to the truth of the Gospel to a world that is so desperately in need of hearing it.