A Leaven In The World . . . Fierce Persecution Brings Powerful Witness
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Alleluia! Happy Easter.
The darkest places on Earth become the greatest sources of light when Christians remain steadfast in witnessing the faith. Ireland leads the way.
Easter is about the ultimate victory. God’s love over human hate. Holiness over sin. The Eternal life of joy over eternal pain of death in Hell.
This year for many, the Easter solemnity seemed in human terms a defeat. Europe imposed lockdowns before Easter. In many places, public Mass was canceled once again. Ireland suffered the worst penalty: Churches were locked and it was illegitimately declared illegal to pray holy Mass. Ironically, just over the border in Northern Ireland under British hegemony churches remained open. After many years of suffering under the yoke of the English, the Irish are now persecuting their own people.
Traffic blockades have been set up around churches to intercept worshipers. Fines have been imposed on priests. On the day when the universal Church joyfully celebrates the moment Life burst the chains of death forever, the churches in Ireland were more akin to tombs than tabernacles.
But as Ireland once led the Catholic world in sending missionaries around the globe, and where today it is not unusual for bishops to ordain one priest yearly, this tiny Catholic nation is called once again to become a spiritual dynamo.
One example of this coming rebirth occurred on the Solemnity of the Resurrection of the Lord on Achill Island. There a young priest led the way with a repeat of the days of Ireland’s illegal Masses on “Mass rocks” and in hedgerows. Facing the rising Easter sun, he offered holy Mass on one such rock, bringing it back to life as the focus of an open-air church once again.
If they lock the churches, take the Mass out into the open air.
A photo of the priest, Fr. Quirk, went viral, a visual protest spread around the world against persecution of the Lord Himself when His people are oppressed. Easter joy ironically radiated from that spot where enemies of Christ might have brought about a repeat of Good Friday were it not for a faithful and resourceful priest.
I also posted the inspiring photo on my blog, apriestlife.blogspot.com.
In another remarkable example recorded in a video that went viral, a Polish Pentecostal pastor in Canada ordered a fascistic health worker with police in tow out of his church. Members were gathered at the time for a holy week prayer service, if memory serves. He had to persist and raise his volume increasingly, as he repeatedly yelled “get out,” but eventually his persistence paid off and they reluctantly left.
Catholics can also benefit from the example of other Christians who from time to time seem to have greater fortitude, even if only gathered for simple ad hoc prayer and without the Lord’s gift of holy Mass which has been handed down in the Church.
When Irish authorities ordered churches locked, it resulted in witness on steroids. Catholics simply gathered outside their churches to pray in another example of public testimony. What might have been invisible to the many who will never enter a church became accessible to everyone. Man’s futile efforts to wall off God from the people failed again as they always do. The risen Lord overcame the bonds imposed by unjust men as Catholics gathered undaunted by intimidation.
The big tech companies are attempting to cut off communication between those deemed “deplorable” or politically incorrect by deplatforming even a sitting president and weaponizing the Internet through the anti-culture of cancel tactics. COVID lockdowns also weaponize “health” and paternalistic concern for wellbeing by cutting Catholics and other Christians off from the community of faith.
Divide and conquer. Gain power and control by destroying means of lawful assembly.
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
Practicing our faith is a constitutive element of health. Body and soul are one indivisible reality. Positive experience of God afforded by communal prayer and worship heals and strengthens every dimension of the human person, physical and spiritual. Many suffer needlessly for having been denied for so long what God Himself gave us for wellbeing, temporal and eternal.
We must help ourselves by following our consciences. We must inform ourselves with faith and virtuously choose to do the right thing at the right time. Discernment is necessary to judge the appropriate response to every challenge.
Joy must always be at the heart of our faith in the risen Lord. Whether we gather in churches or hedgerows, cathedrals or barns, we choose faithfulness to Christ in every circumstance so as to remain one with His life and Resurrection as the only source of true peace.
“The joy of the Lord must be your strength.”
Friendship with the Lord, His risen life reigning in our hearts and in our homes, must be the center and source of our lives. Nothing else can take its place. Simply knowing the Lord and sharing intimately in His life through the graces of the Eucharist is the greatest reality this side of death. Nothing and no one else can give us the endless life we seek with every breath and with every thought, whether we are conscious of the desire or not.
The COVID phenomenon has revealed who has faith and who does not. Many have fallen away, perhaps finally exposed as having been going through the motions of faith habitually like a vehicle coasting along on fumes as fuel runs low.
Once again, as throughout the history of the Church, we see that the seemingly darkest moments are those with the potential to shine with the greatest light because of faithful Catholic witness. All Catholics everywhere are strengthened by the heroic virtue of our brothers and sisters in the faith who suffer most as we fight our own battles with the goal of remaining faithful to the end.
Christ is risen: Alleluia!
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
