Persecution and Perseverance

Gospel Reflection for Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Nov 26, 2025

In today’s Gospel, we hear Our Lord warn His followers that they will suffer persecution for their love of Him:

“Jesus said to the crowd:
“They will seize and persecute you,
they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,
and they will have you led before kings and governors
because of my name.
It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
You will even be handed over by parents,
brothers, relatives, and friends,
and they will put some of you to death.
You will be hated by all because of my name,
but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
By your perseverance, you will secure your lives.” Luke 21:12-19.

These words are ominous to be sure. But through the warnings of suffering to come, Our Lord gives a consoling light at the end:

By your perseverance, you will secure your lives.

Here, we can see what first appears as a contradiction: We will suffer persecution, but we will be able to secure our lives if we persevere to the end. Verses like these shed light on the final Beatitude, which is also the most perfect:

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’s sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

These words of Our Lord go so beautifully together as both a warning and a consolation that for those who embrace their cross and carry it to the mount of Calvary, they will possess the Kingdom of Heaven. This carrying of the cross is the perseverance that Our Lord is speaking of. To reach the end of the Spiritual Life, that is, Divine Union, we must carry our cross to the end. The danger, however, is that we are permitted to drop our cross and walk away. This leaves us with one option: We either deny ourselves or we deny our crosses.

In the Gospel for today, that cross takes the form of persecution. This persecution can come from many different sources and can take many different forms. Our Lord tells us it can come from family or friends. It can come from our work or from neighbors. It may even culminate in our death. But it is in the denial of self and the sacrificing of these earthly goods that we come to embrace the cross, and it purifies us and makes us fit for the Kingdom.

It is in this persecution that we are most perfectly configured to Christ. Garrigou-Lagrange speaks to this:

“This beatitude is the most perfect because it is that of those who are most clearly marked in the image of Jesus crucified. To remain humble, meek, and merciful in the midst of persecution, even toward persecutors, and in this torment not only to persevere in peace but to communicate it to others, is truly the full perfection of the Christian life. It is realized especially in the last trials undergone by perfect souls which God purifies by making them work for the salvation of their neighbor.”1

This is completely contrary to the vast majority of Mega-Church pastors who sell a comfort Gospel of wealth and worldly goods. They couldn’t be farther from the truth that Christ gives us. The more we embrace the goods of this world, the more we turn away from the Good of the life to come. These pastors are wolves in sheep’s clothing and are leading souls to perdition. Perfection lies in the suffering of the cross and being united to God, not in worldly riches or human adulation.

The only way that we rise to the perfection that God has set before us is through perseverance through persecution, and suffering. One does not persevere through the Prosperity Gospel. One does not persevere through the comforts of this world. One does not persevere through laying down a cross and walking away. This is not perseverance.

Perseverance is always in the face of the arduous. It is picking up the cross that Christ offers to us and embracing it with love and devotion. This is a supernatural beatitude. And it is one that can only be understood by those sustained and enlightened by the grace of God. As we move into the Advent season, the Church gives us a penitential season prior to the joy of Christmas. This is a time where we can allow God to strip us of some of these worldly comforts and prepare for the coming of Christ, yes, as the babe in the manger, but also, and most importantly, during His second coming.

Missio Dei Catholic

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