Page Download(s)
file size: 190KB
Eighth Sunday of the Year
27 February 2011
Dear Friends in Christ,
The International Bulletin of Missionary Research is a periodical published by and for Evangelical Protestants, but it is also of general interest to all Christians because of its invaluable collection of data about Christianity all over the world. Through diligent research, the IBMR estimates that between the years 2000 and 2010, just over one million men, women, and children were murdered around the world because they were Christians. That’s one million martyrs in the first decade of the 21st century, and that’s a powerful reminder that being a faithful witness to Jesus Christ is never easy or safe.
In the past two weeks a missionary priest in Tunisia was beheaded because he was a Christian in a Muslim land, and four Americans on a sloop in the Gulf of Oman were murdered by a gang of men routinely described in the media as “Somali pirates.” In fact, all of these men are Islamofascist terrorists, and the Americans were murdered not because they were Americans but because they were Christians on a mission to distribute Bibles. All over the world, but most especially in lands where the majority of people are Muslims, Christians are routinely targeted for intimidation by violence, and in the relative comfort and security of our lives in the United States, we too easily forget the solemn words of the Lord Jesus: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” (John 15:18-20)
In this passage, the phrase “the world” means that part of creation which is in rebellion against its Creator. To be in Christ is to be reconciled to God and therefore to be chosen “out of the world,” but to live in fidelity to this vocation to be a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart” (1 Peter 2:9) we must learn to see the world and everything in it — including our own lives — from a Christian point of view or, in other words, a Christian worldview. Forming such a Christian worldview is what the Seventh Principle of Evangelical Catholicism is about: “Being a follower of Christ requires moving from being a Church member by convention to a Christian disciple by conviction. This transformation demands that we consciously accept the Gospel as the measure of our entire lives, rather than attempting to measure the Gospel by our experience. Personal knowledge of and devotion to Sacred Scripture is necessary for this transformation to occur through the obedience of faith, and there is no substitute for personal knowledge of the Bible. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” Let us honor the martyrs of these last days by following the Lord Jesus Christ ever more faithfully in the Way of the Cross.
Father Newman