When The Going Gets Tough
The Church’s Holy Week services begin today with the blessing of Palms and the reading of St. Matthew’s Passion. If we listened with devotion to this account of our blessed Lord’s sorrows and torments, all of them offered to his Father in heaven so that our sins may be forgiven, we should have experienced many emotions—anger, sorrow, disgust, shame, compassion, love. The reading of the Passion should always affect us deeply, but the ultimate result should be a new and stronger determination to amend our lives.
Zooming in on just one aspect of our sentiments on this day, let’s look at our own courage and resolve—or lack thereof—in following in our Lord’s footsteps. Surely we must be just a little more eager to embrace our crosses and carry them filled with a firm faith, a soaring hope in our redemption, and a burning love for the Saviour who died for us? How can we listen to the events of that first Good Friday and not be moved to become better followers of Christ? How can we walk out of this church today the same person as when we came in? It isn’t possible, surely, that we’ve become so jaded and cynical, so immune to Christ’s suffering, that we don’t experience even a slight movement in our hearts to do better from now on?
We might find some extra incentive by taking a closer look at two men who actually witnessed all these events that first Good Friday. Their good—and bad—examples may give us that final kick in the right direction. They offer some of the obstacles standing in the way of our conversion, and the dangers that might lead us to neglect any of our good resolutions today. These two men were both apostles, St. Peter and St. John. They began the last journey with Jesus together in Gethsemane, and they finally ended up together again at Easter. But on those terrible days, the night of Maundy Thursday and then again on Good Friday, they took too different paths.
As I said, both of them began that journey together, dutifully accepting our Lord’s invitation to accompany him to the Garden of Gethsemane. Here, after their blessed Lord told them his soul was sorrowful even unto death, they remained together in their neglect of this terrible start to our Lord’s sufferings. They both lay down and slept, oblivious to his torment. It hadn’t taken long for them to abandon Christ when he needed them most. Let’s learn from this. Will we so easily let go of our faith when the going gets tough?
When the traitor Judas arrived with the Roman soldiers, St. Peter made a superficial show of courage by cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. His usual gruff spontaneity was promptly reprimanded by our Lord, and again Peter and John stayed together, this time actually running away and hiding themselves. Their behavior in Gethsemane was inconsistent and messy. So there was no steady support of our Lord in his Agony, and when they faced the prospect of being arrested with him, they both ran away. Their example in this case is not one we should follow. St. Peter’s character especially is one we should be wary of, his courage in so many cases is spontaneous but short-lived—think of his attempt to walk on the water, or his flight from Rome to escape martyrdom. His unswerving loyalty to our Lord eventually wins out of course, but we should not presume that we would be given that same gift, the greatest gift of all, that of a happy death in the state of grace.
Today, we “traditional” Catholics have left the world behind to follow our Lord according to the true faith and true sacraments. We have followed him to this modern Gethsemane, where our Lord’s Mystical Body now undergoes its Agony. So here we are, but what are we doing? Are we showing support for that Mystical Body, the Church, as she sweats blood at the hands of the new Judases who exploit her? Or are we sleeping? Are we blithely negligent of the terrible suffering caused by Vatican II, burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the ever-increasing signs of the coming Antichrist? Or are we bored and jaded by the never-ending attacks on our faith and morals? When the going gets tough, the tough are supposed to get going. We’re not supposed to distract ourselves with TV shows, video games, football and other meaningless and useless entertainments. By all means, enjoy your well-deserved recreation when it’s appropriate, but let’s not center our lives on those futile pastimes to the detriment of our prayer life and search for perfection.
What happened next that night? The Gospel doesn’t say what happened to St. John. Presumably he went into hiding, although I would like to think he went to find our Lord’s blessed Mother to let her know what was happening and try to console her. St. Peter meanwhile secretly followed our Lord, desperate and in a state of shock, pacing up and down at the prison gates. Again, St. Peter showed the greater courage, but again it was a superficial courage, as he ended up denying our Lord three times, something that St. John never did. It’s a good example of how we can place ourselves in the near occasion of sin, sometimes with the best of intentions. Let’s not deliberately seek out danger, let’s not place ourselves in a situation that we might not be able to handle. Above all, let’s not ask God for crosses we cannot bear. If the opportunity for suffering, even martyrdom, is placed at our door by the hand of God, then so be it, but let’s not ask for such extreme penances. We have no idea whether we will have the courage to persevere, whether we will have the burning love of God necessary to accept pain and death without flinching.
After his triple denial, St. Peter disappears from the Gospel pages, not to be seen again until Easter Sunday. St. John, however, reappears at the foot of the Cross. His fears dispelled, he was the only apostle to stand with the loyal women at Calvary, and observe first-hand the death of his Saviour. His reward for this loyalty was very special. While St. Peter was granted the honor of being our first Pope, the rock upon which Christ’s Church was built, the loyal St. John was granted a far greater honor in one of our Lord’s last acts on the Cross. While St. Peter was entrusted with the Church, St. John was entrusted with the Blessed Mother. We see the difference today, as the Church is beset by problems caused by the imperfections and wickedness of man. Meanwhile, the Blessed Mother is as perfect, immaculate and undefiled as on the day she was conceived. If today we are placed in the unfortunate position of having to choose between a pope defiled with heresy and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our decision should be instant, clear and firm. Let’s not forget that it was our blessed Mother that warned us that firstly, Rome would become the seat of the Antichrist, but that finally, her Immaculate Heart would triumph.
Neither St. Peter nor St. John acted with perfect loyalty. They both slept at Gethsemane, and St. Peter even denied Christ. St. John meanwhile never denied him and was present at the foot of the Cross, regretting his earlier weakness. When the going gets tough, what will we do? We might already be sleeping, but when they come to wake us up, to try to force us to be as “woke” as they are, what then? Will we deny Christ by accepting the sins of the modern world, will we take the next vaccine or mark of the beast, or whatever malicious act of betrayal they try to tempt us with? Will we follow St. Peter or St. John? The answer is that neither of them acted perfectly—remember that little nap in Gethsemane. Better to follow our Lord himself, who alone out of all men, is without fault or imperfection. He told us himself, to take up our cross and follow him. There will be crosses. There will come a time when we will have no control over what crosses to accept or reject, at least if we want to assure our salvation. On this Palm Sunday, let the palms in our hands remind us of the Hosannas of an adoring multitude, the crowds who today shout out the praises of our Lord and by Friday would be screaming out for his blood. May God help us to be not like this mob, but to be loyal to our Saviour, even to the foot of the Cross itself.