Why is persecution a mark of the true disciple of Christ?
Christ tells His Apostles to expect hatred, not as a curse, but as a mark of union with Him.
Christ tells His Apostles to expect hatred, not as a curse, but as a mark of union with Him.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ prepares His disciples to face hatred by binding them more closely to Himself.
That persecution becomes a mark of union with Christ, endured for His Name and mission.
Why even the contempt of Christians wounds Him, and why such suffering is a cause for joy.
He shows us that to be hated for His sake is not a shame, but a sign of fidelity and love.
For more on this section, its place in the Gospel and the Liturgy, and the role of persecution as a “quasi-mark” of the Church, see Part I. (It has been updated since it was published.)
Hatred of the World
Passiontide, Part III
Chapter III
St. John xv. 11-27.
Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1892
Accumulated reasons for patience
Our Lord speaks to them in the glow of His love, fresh from all the wonderful outpourings of His Heart in the mysteries which He had been celebrating, and we can feel that His tone reveals to us that their hearts were glowing with love as well as His. They were full of love in their measure.
These reasons for patience in the discharge of the laborious task and under the hatred of those to whom they were sent, are all appeals to their personal love for Him.
‘The world hated Me before you—the world would love you if you were its own. I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.’
All such words have greater or less force and power in proportion to the warmth or coldness of the hearts to which they are addressed.
Our Lord then goes on to remind them of the great charge which He had addressed to them at the outset of their Apostolic career, and in them to the ministers of the Church in all time. We must remind ourselves as we read what He says now, that He may mean, in these as in other quotations, to recall to their minds not only the particular words which He quotes, but the whole context to which they belong.
In that discourse1 He had told them of the persecutions and trials which awaited them.
‘You shall be hated by all men for My Name’s sake, but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved. When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish the cities of Israel until the Son of Man come.’
And then He had used the words of which He now reminds them.
‘The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. If they have called the good man of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?’
The servant not greater than the master
What our Lord now says is, ‘The servant is not greater than his master.’ Instead of the words about Beelzebub, He says, what is clearly more appropriate to the present occasion and leads more naturally to what is to follow, ‘If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you, if they have kept My word, they will keep yours also.’
Again, there is the same tacit appeal to their devotion to Himself as their Lord and Master. They can be patient under the treatment which they receive from the world, because He has received it before them, and because it identifies them with Him. He mentions two distinct shapes which that treatment takes, the persecution of His own Person and that of the Apostles, and the neglect and contempt of His doctrine and theirs.
In the former, the persecution of outrage and injury to the person, His active enemies take part. They were to bring Him to the Cross, after numberless acts of violence and the infliction of all the pains and the shame which their malice, aided by the instigations of Satan, could devise, and outrages of the same kind have been the lot of those who bear His Name in all generations and all countries in innumerable cases.
In the second kind of ill-treatment, not the open enemies alone of our Lord take part. For all Christians who are in any way on the side of the world, and have caught its spirit, and who therefore do not keep His word nor obey the precepts of the Church, may be guilty of this kind of persecution to Him and His representatives.
Ignorance of our Lord and his Father
He puts the case hypothetically, but it is plain that His words convey a most distinct and certain prophecy. The Apostles had not yet witnessed the extent to which the enemies of our Lord, the children of the world, were to go in their violence and the brutality of their treatment of His Sacred Person, and it is probable that, when the Passion actually came about, it was a revelation to them of which they had no expectation.
So also it must be a revelation to the servants of God in all ages, how many are the Christian souls who take part in that persecution of our Lord and of His Church, which consists in the neglect and contempt of their words.
‘But all these things will they do unto you for My Name’s sake, because they have not known Me nor Him that sent Me.’
He seems to refer to the discourse to the Apostles which has already been quoted, and which contains many other details, besides those which have been mentioned now, concerning the persecution of His followers.
Or He may simply refer to what He has just said, that all the suffering and contempt was to be inflicted on them for His Name’s sake. By this He may mean two things. First, the world may treat them ill for the sake of His Name, which they will preach and proclaim as that of the Saviour of the world. Again, they may be persecuted because they bear His Name and are known to belong to Him as members of His Body, the Church.
Thus, when the Apostles, soon after the Day of Pentecost, were scourged by order of the Sanhedrin, for preaching our Lord, we are told that they went forth with joy from the presence of the Council because they had been counted worthy to suffer contumely for the Name of Jesus.
In that place it may be either the preaching or the companionship of our Lord which may be meant, though it seems more natural to understand the words of the former. St. Peter, in his first Epistle, speaking of the persecution of the Christians, says,
‘Let no one of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, as a busy body in other men’s matters, but if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this name…’
… that is, as it seems, for bearing the name of our Lord, and in that passage it is difficult to understand the words as referring to the preaching of His Name.2
It was then either the preaching of His Name as the Saviour of mankind, or bearing His Name as members of the Church, that was to bring upon the Apostles the enmity and persecution of the world.
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Hatred of the World
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St. Matt. x.
1 St. Peter iv. 15, 16.