Homily for Ordinary Time Twenty
August 14, 2022
Standing for Truth
Many
years ago I was at a Confirmation ceremony with Cardinal Edwin O’Brien from
Baltimore. As part of the ceremony, the pastor asks all the kids to be
confirmed to stand. They stood up, everyone applauded appreciatively, and then
Cardinal O’Brien asked them to remain standing. The cardinal came to the center
of the sanctuary and stood there, just looking at them in silence. The seconds
stretched into minutes as the kids stood silently, the cardinal stood silently,
and things started to get awkward.
Finally,
Cardinal O’Brien said, “Tonight you are standing for something. Never forget
Who you are standing for. Please be seated.”
It was a
moment I’ve never forgotten. They were standing, in public, declaring that they
believe in Jesus Christ. He is certainly worth standing for.
As the
old saying goes, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
Unfortunately many people don’t have much more to stand for than for a
comfortable life for themselves.
But
Jesus offers us a stark warning: to stand for Him means often to stand alone,
against family and friends and society as a whole. After all, we are following
a King Who Himself was rejected by His closest friends. Truth is controversial
in a world of lies, and so Jesus Who is Truth Itself finds Himself in
opposition to the world.
I love
that powerful scene from Jesus’ trial when He stands before Pilate, and Pilate
asks Him, “So You are a King?” Jesus responds, “For this I have come, to bear
witness to the Truth.” And Pilate asks the age-old question: “What is Truth?”
Here we
have two views of the world: Jesus, claiming to be King and Lord, and Pilate,
rejecting that claim. These are still the fundamental visions of the world: either
Jesus is Lord, or we are. Either a God-centered worldview, or a secular
worldview. Either God established the world and its laws, and we must humbly
obey those laws; or we are the ones who define life and marriage and
gender and meaning and purpose. Either we submit to the Lord’s loving Kingship,
or we rebel against it and do whatever we want. All of our choices and thoughts
fall into one of these two categories – either a universe based on God, or a
universe with us at the center.
When
there are conflicting visions of the world, we get di-vision – division. Jesus
is only warning us that division is going to happen. And many of us have
already suffered division because we hold to Jesus as Lord. I have a friend who
was peacefully praying a Rosary for an end to abortion at a rally, and a man
came up and spit on her. I know a friend who has been open to life and generous
with their family size, and they often get snide remarks like, “Are those all
yours? You’re done, right? Save some resources for the rest of humanity!” When
I told my family I was becoming a priest, my brother (an atheist) commented, “You’re
wasting your life!” There will be division because there are competing visions
of what the world is.
But it’s
worth it to live for the Truth. In the mid-1900s, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was
one of the few people who spoke out against Communism in Russia. He wrote “Live
Not By Lies,” an essay that said it was better to suffer for the Truth than to
live by lies – he paid for that essay which criticized Stalin with eight years
in the Communist Gulag labor-camp, followed by exile. But is it not better to
suffer for truth than to live comfortably in lies?
The
people who lived this best were the martyrs. The word “martyr”, in Greek, means
“witness” – the more-than-50-million martyrs for Christ witnessed, by the
shedding of their blood, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that Heaven is real.
These men, women, and children stood – and died – for Truth. And now they are
living in a world where there are no more illusions, no more lies.
One of
my favorite martyrs is St. Thomas More. His death took place in merry old
England, under the reign of King Henry VIII. The King hadn’t produced a son
with his wife Catherine, so he divorced her and sought to marry his mistress
Anne Boleyn. The Pope told him that it was wrong to be divorced and remarried, for
in the eyes of God, he was still married to Catherine – a civil divorce doesn’t
dissolve a sacramental marriage. In anger, King Henry VIII declared that he
would be the head of the Church in England, and required all of his nobles to
sign an oath of loyalty, declaring that the King, not the Pope, was the head of
the Church.
All of
his nobles cared only about their own political futures and comfort and
happiness, and the peer pressure was so strong, that only one solitary man
refused to sign the oath – the King’s chancellor, Sir Thomas More. Thomas had a
lot to lose – he was the second-in-command in the Kingdom, wealthy, married
with four children.
The King
prevailed upon Sir Thomas, begging him to sign the oath due to their long
friendship. He promised him wealth, riches, and greater favors. But Thomas knew
that the Pope was the spiritual head of the Church, not the King, and he could
not violate what he knew to be the Truth. So the King tried to persuade him
with torture, locking him up in the Tower of London. The King sent in his wife
and daughter, to try to convince him to sign the oath. Imagine how difficult it
was for Sir Thomas to see his wife and daughter, whom he loved dearly, and have
to choose to stay faithful to Truth. Yet his heart and soul was made up – it was
worth it to lose everything to stand for Christ.
And lose
everything, he did. He was eventually beheaded for his steadfast faith, and his
final words were, “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
He knew
that Jesus Christ was King of the World, the founder of the Church, the
promiser of everlasting life – and thus, worth dying for. King Henry thought
that he, the adulterous king, was the center of the universe.
My
friends, there will be division if we stand for Truth, because we live in a
world of competing visions – a vision where Jesus is Lord of all, and a false
vision where man is the center of everything. But despite what it may cost, it’s
worth it to stand for Christ, to live for Christ, even to die for Christ.
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