Bill Maher is Right

I bet that headline got a lot of people’s attention. It’s probably the main reason you’re reading this now. Does everyone remember the famous atheist’s remark a few weeks ago about “Christians loving to feel persecuted”? This happens while our mostly Orthodox brethren are being killed by ISIS in the Middle East, Catholics and Protestants are marginalized, jailed, and beaten for refusing to bow down to capitulate on marriage and the family, and society as we have known it becomes more and more hostile to what God founded in nature and eternity. However, let me clarify the above statement before I hear the sound of heretics cheering and my faithful brethren praying for my soul.

Mr Maher is correct in but one aspect of how we look at persecution: we don’t do all in our power to avoid it. We love the graces which flow from suffering. Seeing the Church purified of its faithless traitors is a joy, since Our Savior did the same in the Jerusalem Temple. Like the heroes in fairy tales, persecutions test us, make us stronger, and give God the chance to show us just what He made us to do. Simply put, it is a belief that does not see suffering as an evil, but as much a gift as direct blessings.

Now having to live in a country which openly mocks God’s natural design, it would be advisable to meditate on the lives of St Charles Lwanga, St Thomas More, St John the Baptist, St John Fisher, and the many other saints who died defending the Sacrament of marriage. Each time such a martyr was made, it was because corrupt rulers believed they had a right to supersede God’s law regarding marriage. America’s government, it can be said, has joined the likes of Robespierre, Henry VIII, Nero, Herod, and every reprobate who did not see self-control as humanly possible. Granted, we do not now see guillotines, heads on spikes, or coliseums where human suffering is exalted, but we see a greater wholesale slaughter of babies and infants than any Herod Antipas ordered. One leads to others, and we must prepare for whatever America’s mob rule (for that’s what caused so much of the evil in our culture) is planning for the faithful.

One last thought: what is the ultimate irony of Mr Maher? He was raised as a Catholic. Come back, brother, and use your intellect for something greater than your own glory. Stay strong, stay faithful, and pray for those who jeer us. St Paul used to be one of them.