Why did Christ's people hate him 'without cause'?
Referring to the psalm, Christ says 'They hated me without cause'—a hatred born not of reason, but of shame.
Referring to the psalm, Christ says 'They hated me without cause'—a hatred born not of reason, but of shame.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How hatred of Christ was born in the hearts of his people by the Light that exposed their sins.
That their hatred of the Son inevitably deepened into hatred of the Father and the whole divine plan.
Why all men who resist grace are gradually driven to deny even the truths they once professed to hold.
He shows us that rejection of Christ is not intellectual but moral, rooted in the refusal to repent.
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
Love of darkness rather than light
Our Lord speaks of Himself as the object of their hatred before the Father, because it was His presence, as the Light of the world, which forced on them the alternative of either accepting His teaching or turning upon Him in anger and hatred, and the support, so to speak, which He received from His Father forced them, in the next place, to hate the Father also.
What our Lord said about the hatred of the light by men who do evil, is drawn out more fully in a famous passage in the Book of Wisdom.
‘Let us lie in wait for the just, because He is not for our turn, and He is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the Law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life. He boasteth that He hath the knowledge of God, and calleth Himself the Son of God. He is become a censurer of our thoughts. He is grievous unto us even to behold, for His life is not like other men’s and His ways are very different.’1
The hatred began in their souls, first with the preaching of St. John Baptist, from which these priests turned away because it was a call to repentance and the confession of sins. That was the first step, and it involved all the rest.
But how did this hatred progress?
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