Any serious disciple of Jesus truly committed to spreading the Gospel must have experienced these two things—rejection and opposition. They are painful experiences that can leave us bewildered and confused.
Unfortunately, we do not take rejection and opposition well. We can begin to blame ourselves unnecessarily. We may begin to feel useless or unworthy of bearing the Good News to the world. We may even get discouraged or regret our commitment to the Lord Jesus. We may take it personally and begin to retaliate against the aggressors. We can become resentful towards them. We can even doubt or renounce the vocation and gifts that God has given to us for His service. Ultimately, we lose that joy and zeal that we should have in our apostolate.
Luckily, there are things that help us overcome these oppositions that we face as Jesus’ disciples.
Firstly, we must realize that, in rejecting the Gospel, it is God who is being rejected first. God’s chosen people had rejected Him before He sent the prophet Ezekiel on mission to them: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have rebelled against me to this day” (Ez 2:2-5). The prophet cannot expect a wholehearted welcome from those who have rejected God first.
Our Lord affirmed this too: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first” (Jn 15:18). Thus, the rejections we experience are not primarily about us. We are messengers of a God who is constantly being rejected by His people. This will help us to mortify our wounded egos when we are rejected or opposed.
Secondly, God gives sufficient grace to all of us, both to the obstinate recipients and to the ones who bring the Good News. St Paul, who was being oppressed by an “angel of Satan,” repeatedly begged in vain to be delivered but only received this reply from the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
This grace is not meant to remove the oppositions and make us acceptable to all. It is meant to sustain us in fidelity in the face of opposition and rejection. It also serves to soften the hardened hearts of the recipients of the Gospel. The availability of this sufficient grace should fill us with humble trust in God and less trust in our own ability and expertise.
Thirdly, the moments of opposition and rejection bring us to purify our motives for our discipleship. It is so easy to be committed when we are accepted by all and have no oppositions. But we can easily give up or lose our peace of heart or our zeal when we face rejection and opposition.
St. Paul used the moment of his own trial to purify his motive: “Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:7-10). The grace of God acts powerfully in our weaknesses only when we are on mission for the sake of Christ and not for our own selfish purposes. When we have a Christ-centered motive, we can bring the Gospel to all persons in every time and place, no matter the conditions or the results of our efforts.
Lastly, we must do what we can and leave the rest to God. Offer to God all the results and responses from our apostolic activities. When Jesus was rejected by His fellow Nazarenes in Mk 6:1-6, He reached out to heal those who were properly disposed to receive His healing, “So He was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying His hands on them.” As He continued His mission, He did not allow the hardened hearts of a few to deprive others of His healing power. We, too, must not let the negative responses we receive discourage us from reaching out to others with fervor.
Like St Paul, we all have our “angels of Satan,” persons and spiritual beings that challenge us in our commitments to our Lord Jesus. We can easily be tempted to change or adapt the demands of the Gospel to make it more tolerable to our world or make ourselves more acceptable to others.
Let us remember that, like St. Paul, we have received from God “an abundance of revelation.” We have not received it for ourselves, but for those inside and outside the Church who may even persecute, reject, malign, and oppose us.
Our Eucharistic Lord has been rejected first, and He continues to be rejected today. Many deny His Real Presence. Those who believe in His sacramental presence still reject Him in the tabernacles of our churches. He was opposed till the very end, and He is being opposed today. He understands all that pain well. He also gives us sufficient grace in each Eucharist to be faithful to Him in every time and place.
By the power of this grace and our firm Christ-centered commitment, no amount of rejection or opposition can or should prevent us from being His faithful witnesses.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
Photo by Carl Tronders on Unsplash
