Why does 'the world' hate Christ and his Church?
The hatred of the world is not a failure of the Church’s mission—but the seal of her fidelity.
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The hatred of the world is not a failure of the Church’s mission—but the seal of her fidelity.
Editor’s Notes
The following reflections are on the Gospel readings for the Sunday after the Ascension, preceding Pentecost. Christ moves from love within the Church to hatred from the world, showing how internal charity and external suffering are inseparably linked. He prepares the Apostles for post-Ascension trials, assuring them that fidelity to Him will bring persecution—but also union with His own divine life and mission.
Persecution as ‘quasi-mark’ of the Church
In his treatment of the four marks which identify the true Church from other false claimants, the theologian Fr E. Sylvester Berry calls persecution itself “a quasi-mark of the Church during the period of preparation prior to the coming of Antichrist.”1 In support of this striking idea, he cites the words under examination in this chapter:
“If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you... But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I have spoken to you: No servant is greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also… But all these things they will do to you for my name's sake. […]
“They will expel you from the synagogues. Yes, the hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering worship to God. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake.”2
On these words, Berry comments:
“As Christ was hated, despised, calumniated, and persecuted in His natural body, so also shall He be in His mystical body, the Church. Therefore a Church that is not thus despised and persecuted, can scarcely be the one which Christ had in mind when He uttered the words quoted above.
“It is always consoling to realize that those who calumniate the Church and stir up persecution against her, are fulfilling the prophecies of Christ and thus they unwittingly prove her divine character. Thus does ‘He that dwelleth in heaven laugh at them; and the Lord deride them.’”3
The theologian Van Noort makes a similar point when considering the mark of holiness as a means of identifying the true Church:
1. Christ prophesied that His Church would be hated by the world; hated precisely because, under the life-giving impulse of the Holy Spirit, it would not belong to this world […]
Now it is a strange as well as a notorious fact that of all the Christian societies none experiences this hatred of the world so strongly as the Catholic Church. Something further, it is the only Church which is continuously attacked by that amorphous multitude which rises age after age under the leadership of evil men. By their very persecutions, then, the children of this world identify that Church which is vivified by the Spirit of Christ.4
In a footnote at the end of that section, he adds:
On this point J. de Maistre comments aptly: “No enemy of the faith is ever deceived. They all strike in vain because they are battling against God; but they all know where to strike.”5
Frs Spirago and Clarke also write, in their The Catechism Explained, “the true Curch is that one which is most persecuted by the world,” and explain:
Christ often spoke to His disciples of these persecutions: “The servant is not greater than his Master. If they have persecuted Me they will also persecute you” (John xv. 20).
“They will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues . . . you shall be hated by all men for My name’s sake” (Matt. x. 17-22).
“Yea, the hour cometh that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God” (John xvi. 2).
“Because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John xv. 19).
Never in the history of the Catholic Church has it been free from persecution. Whatever be the differences between the sects they unite against the Church. The apostles, especially St. Paul, were objects of hate to the Jews (Acts xiii. 50; xvii. 8), and St. John (166 A.D.) testifies that their hatred of the Christians had not died out in his day.
The present day is not wanting in examples in the sufferings inflicted on religious communities, in the interference of the secular governments in things spiritual, in the opposition made to processions and meetings and other devout practices.
Can any Church be the true Church which does not oppose the spirit of the world?6
Placement in the Liturgy and the Gospels
As with several other Sundays in Eastertide, this reading is taken from Christ’s final discourse at the Last Supper, just before His Passion. It is immediately preceded by the parable of the vine and branches (John 15:1–10).
There is an unusual alignment between the Eastertide Gospels and Season 5 of The Chosen. Each episode of Season 5 begins with part of the Last Supper discourses, but they appear in reverse order. This is more or less what occurs in the Roman Liturgy from the Third Sunday of Easter.
In brief, Fr. Coleridge tells us in this first part of the chapter…
How Christ prepared His Apostles for the world’s hatred, linking it to their union with Him.
That such persecution is a mark of divine election and a spur to supernatural charity.
Why the world’s fury reveals its wounded pride before the healing light of truth.
He shows us that being hated by the world for Christ’s sake is both a trial and a sacred honour.
Hatred of the World
Passiontide, Part III
Chapter III
St. John xv. 11-27.
Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1892
Topic of the hatred of the world suggested by the preceding chapter
The topic to which our Lord now proceeds is very different from that of which we have been speaking, yet it may still be said to have been suggested by and to grow out of the other.
In contrast to the close union and love which He wished to see prevailing among His Apostles and their followers, there must have come before His mind, as He looked forward to the future of the Church, the intense hatred and furious persecution which she was to meet with from the world, although her mission and her work were to bring home to the latter the priceless benefits which were to be purchased by the Precious Blood.
He foresaw the treatment that the Apostles were to experience at the hands of the world, and He now said something to prepare them for this and to arm them against it. This had some connection with the former topic, because the enmity of the world would call forth a great amount of union and sympathy and mutual love among Christians, and in that way would tend to strengthen the principle of charity among the true children of the Church, even though there might be some instances in which the sufferings and trials were to have a contrary effect in those children of hers who were weak in faith and inclined to yield to the fiery trial which was upon them.
For calamities and persecutions sometimes produce a want of cohesion and a consequent falling off from unity among certain portions of the body on which they fall with great violence, but generally they have among the more faithful members a bracing and purgative effect. It is not necessary to suppose that our Lord now turned to this point for the sake of the truth contained in the connection between persecution and the strengthening effects which it is able to produce in knitting together more closely those who have had to suffer together.
After speaking of the principle of brotherly love which was to distinguish His children internally, it was natural that He should say something concerning the sufferings which they were to endure at the hands of the world, and the reasons for which those sufferings were inevitable.
The world hated Him first
‘If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
‘Remember My word that I said to you, the servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you, if they have kept My word, they will keep yours also.
‘But all these things they will do to you for My Name’s sake, because they have not known Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He that hateth Me, hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin, but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father.
‘But that the word may be fulfilled which is written in their law, They hated Me without a cause.’
The chief purpose of this whole passage seems to be to prepare the Apostles for that practice of patience in the discharge of their office in the Church and with the world outside, which was to be one of the greatest fruits and exercises of that charity which He had been so much insisting upon. He seems to suggest one motive after another for this most essential virtue.
Reason for His treatment by the world
At the same time our Lord gives a clear and calm statement of the reason why He had been so treated by the world, a reason which was to be a consolation to the Apostles in their own trials, which came originally from the same causes as His own rejection, and which would serve to strengthen them, when their turn came to be the rejected of the world while they were endeavouring to enrich it with ineffable blessings at the cost of the greatest labours and sufferings of their own.
He first puts before them the unspeakable consolation of His own example—they were after all only to be treated as He had been treated, and to generous and loving hearts this was enough. Would they wish to fare better than their Lord in doing their Lord’s work? So to fare would not only be the most happy thing for their own hearts, it would also secure them the strength and the guidance which were sure to be theirs when they were treading in His footsteps.
‘Know ye,’ or you know, ‘that it hath hated Me before you.’ Their work was to be a continuation of His, their objects, their methods, and their aims the same. It is not to be wondered at that their treatment at the hands of the foolish world should be the same as His. The reason why our Lord was treated as He was, lay in certain elements in His character and teaching which touched the wounds of the world, as some healing but irritating medicine, which is applied to the sores of a sick man, whose state requires that the sores should smart before they can be cured.
The world would have loved its own
‘This,’ as He said to Nicodemus, ‘is the judgment, because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil. For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. But he that doth truth, cometh to the light that his works may be made manifest because they are done in God.’7
Our Lord could not have fulfilled His Mission of being the healing of the world unless He had touched its sores and made them smart, and the smart was sure to ripen, either into healthy conversion, or into hatred of the physician, according to the state of the souls in which it was occasioned.
The same treatment of themselves by the wicked world was to be a proof to the Apostles that they were the true followers and servants of their Master. It was to be a recognition on the part of those who had been His enemies and were to become theirs, of those same qualities in them which had provoked hostility in Him.
To those who loved our Lord so much as the Apostles loved Him, it was a great honour and a great consolation to be hated by the world for being so like to Him.
They had been rescued from the world
On the other hand, if the Apostles had met with any other kind of treatment from the world than that which their Lord had received, it would have been a sign that they were not loyal and faithful representatives of Him.
‘If you had been of the world, the world would have loved its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.’
The hatred of the world is a recognition of the character of the Apostles as the disciples of our Lord, and any other treatment of them would have been just as much a sign that they were the world’s own, that is, enemies of God and our Lord. Something seems also to be specially implied by the further reason given by our Lord, that He had chosen them out of the world.
He says not only that they are not the children of the world and do not belong to it. They have been rescued from it.
‘I have chosen you out of the world.’
They had been, like others, and as much as others, the world’s own by birth and right, as far as that can be truly said of any, as far as anything that is evil and corrupt can have any right over any of the creatures of God. Our Lord had rescued them from the bondage of the world, a bondage which was founded on a lie and which was therefore a usurpation.
The world was the strong armed man, of whom our Lord had said that a stronger than he was to come upon him and take away his goods and despoil him of his prey. The world therefore saw in them those who were once its own, a prey which had been torn from its hands.
And our Lord’s words signify even more, for they signify that their lot in being saved out of the world was singular. They had been taken out of the multitude of those who had not been so taken. The despoiler of the world has chosen them and has left others unchosen. This word, chosen or elect, occurs over and over again in the New Testament, signifying the blessed lot of those who have been the objects of that blessed choice which makes them heirs of salvation.
The Church is the assembly of the chosen.
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Hatred of the World
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P 88
Ibid.
89.
Van Noort pp 195-6.
(Du Pape, IV, conclusion). VN, 211.
St. John iii. 19-21.
Beautiful! Many thanks!
"Can any Church be the true Church which does not oppose the spirit of the world?"
This is very damning for the Novus Ordo. I converted to Catholicism precisely because of this truth. I figured the Catholic Church had to be true because of how the world persecuted it. I, fortunately, was informed properly, for the most part, but came through a Novus Ordo parish, not knowing any better. After a considerable time in the Novus Ordo world, I quickly concluded the Church I was looking for was not the Novus Ordo, because the world loves the Novus Ordo and the Novus Ordo does not oppose the spirit of the world.
The Catholic Church is persecuted by the world, and the Novus Ordo does its fair share of the scourging.