Readings: 30 May 2022 – Monday of Week 7 of Easter
“In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”
Only now, when it is customary to regard faith in Jesus’s resurrection and continuing presence with us as a daft illusion, can we begin to understand what it is to ‘overcome the world’.
This is the opposite of imperial conquest of the world – a matter of self-glorification, of armies, fleets, invasions and subjugations – and the cruel extermination of all opposition.
It is the realisation that truth itself cannot be overwhelmed, that the light of Christ within us cannot be put out. It can be said truly that Christ died to make us indifferent to ‘what the world thinks’ – because ‘what the world thinks’ is usually both wrong and passing away.
Christendom was essentially a long and deeply tragic experiment in Christian imperialism – and this is precisely why so many today think it good that Christian believers are a shrinking minority in the West. In the aftermath of the disgracing of the church it is tempting to fall in with the disparaging disbelievers, and more difficult to hold fast to the Creedal foundation.
But what strength then comes from reflecting on the strength of Jesus when the world turned against him, a strength that did not have recourse to anger and to arms? He could not be shamed even by the cruellest means ever designed to shame anyone – and that, surely, is how the Cross triumphs in the end.
For, with St Paul, we can be certain that nothing now can come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus Our Lord. To rely on His judgement alone, and not on ‘current opinion’ – whatever that may be – is to overcome the world.
Readings: 30 May 2022 – Monday of Week 7 of Easter
“In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”
Only now, when it is customary to regard faith in Jesus’s resurrection and continuing presence with us as a daft illusion, can we begin to understand what it is to ‘overcome the world’.
This is the opposite of imperial conquest of the world – a matter of self-glorification, of armies, fleets, invasions and subjugations – and the cruel extermination of all opposition.
It is the realisation that truth itself cannot be overwhelmed, that the light of Christ within us cannot be put out. It can be said truly that Christ died to make us indifferent to ‘what the world thinks’ – because ‘what the world thinks’ is usually both wrong and passing away.
Christendom was essentially a long and deeply tragic experiment in Christian imperialism – and this is precisely why so many today think it good that Christian believers are a shrinking minority in the West. In the aftermath of the disgracing of the church it is tempting to fall in with the disparaging disbelievers, and more difficult to hold fast to the Creedal foundation.
But what strength then comes from reflecting on the strength of Jesus when the world turned against him, a strength that did not have recourse to anger and to arms? He could not be shamed even by the cruellest means ever designed to shame anyone – and that, surely, is how the Cross triumphs in the end.
For, with St Paul, we can be certain that nothing now can come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus Our Lord. To rely on His judgement alone, and not on ‘current opinion’ – whatever that may be – is to overcome the world.