Endure persecution for the sake of justice (Matthew 5:10). (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 33)
Brace yourself. To endure implies time, maybe a long time. Persecution is not a one-off insult from a passing stranger, or a violation of a specific right on a particular occasion. Persecution involves systematic, sustained, deliberate attack, targeting you, or a group that you’re part of. We’re talking about a long ordeal with no end in sight.
In such a time, when there’s nothing to see but darkness, we focus on the thing we love more than getting ahead. It’s the thing without which we’d have no reason to keep going, even if life were easy. It’s called justice, in the large sense. Another word for it is righteousness. All it means is living rightly, doing the right thing. If everyone lived this way, justice would flourish everywhere. There are in fact many opportunities to exercise this rightfulness, in any human life. It’s the thing you do because it’s right, before you realize you’ll be punished for it.
Perhaps you speak out honestly, and the person in authority doesn’t want to hear it. You’re pulled aside, talked down to, and given to understand that you are not at the level of those who have interesting contributions to make. You are at the level of those who shut up and listen. Fall in line, you’re told, and maybe you’ll get somewhere.
So you try. And you fail. You have no knack for nonsense phrases. You keep searching for a way to express the truth that will get someone to listen. But there is no phrasing that will be acceptable, because it’s the truth itself that’s not wanted: not where you are.
What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just get along? What is it that prevents you from fitting in when no one else has a problem?
It’s the element of righteousness within your character. It’s the justice of God embodied in you. It’s the stuff you’re made of.
And so you pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” because now you realize there’s a chasm between earth and heaven, and you’re on the wrong side of it. Friction between earth and heaven is heating up. Where on earth is God’s will being done? Within you.
God is truth, and the Spirit of Truth cannot abide lies, nor dwell within the liar. This is why you feel sick and sicker at hollow words you can no longer repeat. You can’t collude with what repels you.
When you walk through the door, no one sees you. You greet them, but they don’t remember having met you. They don’t hear you when you speak. You don’t exist for them, and nonexistence is a terrible strain. It melts your whole sense of self.
But when the heat is on, and the blows are hammering, something within you glows to life. The thing that should break you doesn’t break you. Your whole substance responds and alters instead. You don’t recognize yourself anymore, and neither do the people who used to know you. Sparks fly. You lose friends.
It should not be so painful to do right, but on earth it is. Hold out for what should be. Something in you does not belong to this world. Glow brighter. The darkness is very dark, and what you don’t see is that the only light in the vicinity is emanating from you.
You take the plunge to escape, because that’s the only path forward. When the steam clears, you’re still in one piece, but you feel defeated. You do have a future ahead of you, but it’s not the one you had planned. Not only your shape but your elemental structure has changed. Impurities are gone. Alloys are pounded in. There’s no going back to what you were before. Not now, not ever.
The One who is forging your character knows what he means to make of you, and your story isn’t over yet. Some day the form of you will find its function.
