Today's reflection compliments of Kevin Childers.
Today’s gospel reading I must say has taken me through a maelstrom of thoughts.
The first from chapter 15 is the reassurance from Jesus that while he must leave them, he will send from the Father, the Spirit of all truth who will testify as they too will testify. For these men this is their greatest hope that they might be held worthy to speak in Jesus name and to carry forth the word of God.
Then with almost the same breath chapter 16 opens and Christ tells them the cost of their faith will have. In their world to be expelled from the temple and the synagogues was to be cut off from one’s community, family, culture, their very lives as they knew them would end. Then, that they not simply die, but would be killed. Not by the enemies of Israel or the Jewish people, but by those who they most share the same basic faith, in the faith of their fathers. And in doing so believing they were defending the faith and acting in accordance to the will of God.
Try placing yourself in the same scene as one of the apostles and try to think as men of their time would have. How shocking was this? How challenging to their minds and their faith? What a revelation that the Crucifixion was not the end, but a beginning! That the suppression and persecution was to be all the greater. Christ was telling them that they might prepare themselves for what was to come for them and so be strengthened in their faith.
Yet their faith endured and has been carried forward in his church in accordance with the will of the Father.
Peace Be with You,
Kevin