And they come to a house, and the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.
And when his friends had heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him. For they said: He is become mad.
And the scribes who were come down from Jerusalem, said: He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of devils he casteth out devils.
And after he had called them together, he said to them in parables: How can Satan cast out Satan?
And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
And if Satan be risen up against himself, he is divided, and cannot stand, but hath an end.
No man can enter into the house of a strong man and rob him of his goods, unless he first bind the strong man, and then shall he plunder his house.
Amen I say to you, that all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and the blasphemies wherewith they shall blaspheme:
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, shall never have forgiveness, but shall be guilty of an everlasting sin.
Because they said: He hath an unclean spirit.
And his mother and his brethren came; and standing without, sent unto him, calling him.
And the multitude sat about him; and they say to him: Behold thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.
And answering them, he said: Who is my mother and my brethren?
And looking round about on them who sat about him, he saith: Behold my mother and my brethren.
For whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and my sister, and mother. (Mark 3:20-35)
Many have said that being Catholic in the modern world is harder than ever before. This could be disputed by some comparisons. Being Catholic during the English “Reformation,” when priest-hunters prowled the country looking for faithful Catholics to torture, coerce into recantation of their faith or else brutally execute through the common method of drawing and quartering, must have been particularly grim. Likewise, being Catholic in ancient Rome prior to Constantine would have been similarly difficult, when brief periods of peace could be interrupted at any time by an emperor whose bad fortune he interpreted as a sign that the gods were displeased with the growing popularity of Christ and so proceeded to feed Christians to the lions in the coliseums, burn their writings and destroy their churches. Again, during the imperialistic conquests of Islam, when the lands of Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Iberia were taken, churches were desecrated, Christians were mocked, raped, tortured, enslaved and murdered, being Catholic would have required unimaginable courage and faith.
In more recent times, being Catholic would have been quite difficult in the Enlightenment, when even many people in the Church, as at the false Council of Pistoia, sought to subject the Faith and the Sacraments to the trendy dictates of human science and philosophy, when liberal secular democracies were erasing religion from the public square and Catholics were frequently excluded from public office, owning property or even practicing their religion openly in many Protestant countries, including certain areas in the United States. Then, of course, Catholics were persecuted more in the twentieth century than ever before, especially under the regimes of socialism that festered in Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia and elsewhere, persecuting Catholics as traitors to the deified state and dangers to their amoral Machiavellian agendas.
By comparison, in today’s world and especially outside of Islamic nations, Catholics are rarely threatened with physical dangers. Nevertheless, the argument could still be made that it is harder to be Catholic today than ever before, precisely because the meaning of “Catholic” has become so confused that even many Catholics do not know what it means. Catholics today are forced to define what type of Catholic they are – traditional or modern, conservative or liberal, etc. – and to then find a niche in Catholic culture to support their preferred type. Then, as they go about their daily lives, they are surrounded by people who casually hate or misunderstand the Church, who call it superstitious, bigoted, outdated, violent, oppressive, etc. and who accuse every priest of child abuse and every Catholic of enabling them. They are presented with more temptations than ever before, whether from half-naked women in the grocery store (or at church) or from pornography, drugs, pluralistic indifference or the ever-present distraction of social media.
Every public school and library celebrates “Pride” in grave sins and the denial of God-given human nature while movies, TV shows, books and the Internet constantly bombard Catholics with lewd imagery, vulgarity, falsifications of Catholic history and the promotion of evils such as abortion, contraception and sodomy. Catholics are forced to explain to their children why two men are making out in public, or why the lady working the cash register has a beard. And even the Church is no longer a sanctuary: between Protestants who continue to hate the Church despite our liturgy and teachings having been diminished to accommodate them and Catholics who deny the doctrines and abuse the disciplines of the Church, there seems to be nowhere to turn.
In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Christ addresses what it takes to be Catholic. He summarized His point succinctly in another verse: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Mt 6:24) Many enemies of the Church, particularly Protestants, will use this reading as a means to deny the Church’s veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but this completely misses Christ’s point and even accuses Him of the sin of violating the fourth commandment. As the Venerable Bede explains,
Being asked therefore by a message to go out, He declines, not as though He refused the dutiful service of His mother, but to shew that He owes more to His Father’s mysteries than to His mother’s feelings. Nor does He rudely despise His brothers, but, preferring His spiritual work to fleshly relationship, He teaches us that religion is the bond of the heart rather than that of the body. (Catena Aurea)
In truth, the Blessed Virgin represents most of all the family Christ describes, those who “do the will of God,” since His own Incarnation began with her great Fiat, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.” (Lk 1:38) The true point of Christ’s message is that ties of blood, while important, are ultimately inferior to the supernatural family of the Church, the Body of Christ whose mother is Mary. We will not be saved based on our parentage and relations but based on our participation in the divine life of Christ through the Sacraments and lived out in faith, hope and charity. Only the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the denial of the power of grace to forgive our sins, can exclude us from God’s forgiveness: He forgives all those who truly desire and pursue His forgiveness through the mercy of Christ.
For modern Catholics, the house of the Church is divided – as Christ knew it would be (Lk 12:51) – between those who love and serve the supernatural family of the faithful and those who subject the Faith to the will of Satan and his worldly servants, between the City of God and the City of Man. This division is and always will be the cause of problems in the Church and of hardships for Christians living in the world. All we have to decide is to which family, which city we will belong, both now and for eternity.
(Cover image source: https://jesus-marie-joseph.org/songedonbosco.htm)