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Today, in the secular world, we celebrate Mother's Day. It's always appropriate to remember the many women who have helped shape our faith and led the Body of Christ to further glory. Today I would like to remember Edith Stein.
Stein lived in Germany to devout Jewish parents. She eventually strayed from her faith and buried herself in academia. Eventually she studied the Roman Catholic Mystics and joined the church, eventually becoming a nun, taking on the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Unfortunately for her, Stein did so as the Nazi threat was growing. Although she was a Christian now, because of her Jewish decent, she could no longer teach in academia as she once did. She even had to move to the Netherlands to stay safe. But Stein's Faith never wavered. When she could no longer be a part of the world, she served God by teaching her fellow nuns. She knew that she might not survive the war, but she remained loyal to her Lord Jesus Christ and prepared herself for the death she foresaw.
While the Nazis might not have cared for her, one might hope they would have cared what the church thought. That was sadly not the case. In 1942 the Dutch Bishops condemned the racist violence of the Nazis. The Nazis responded by removing allowances for Jewish converts to Christianity, and Stein died in Auschwitz later that year.
This is a stark reminder that the world and the church are not the same, and that often the world hates us. It is because the world is for power and vengeance, and who follow Christ Jesus stand for Love and Forgiveness.
This, the divide between us and the world, is the very thing Jesus warns of in the Gospel this morning. In His prayer to The Father, Jesus says that the world hates His followers because Jesus has given us The Father's words.
But there is also great hope in what Jesus says. Because what He is asking for is our protection. Even though Jesus isn't physically present with us, He is present still, as we see through the Paschal Candle, the Light of Christ. Through His prayer, we see that no matter what that Jesus' concern is always for us, even when He was preparing for His own death. And He prays because He knows the world hates His followers, just as it hated Him.
Jesus isn't asking for pure physical protection, but that we might have the strength to stand against the evil one. Jesus' hope is that we can all be like Stein, serving our Lord even in the midst of danger. Jesus' hope is that our loyalties will never be divided, but that we will follow Him, and only Him, always.
And as we hear in 1 John this morning, we follow Him because the testimony of God is greater than anything we as humans can devise. God's testimony lasts. It gives us life and being when all other life and being have passed away. God's testimony is what gives us hope to face the scariest of trials, just like with Stein.
We want all our other human activities to work in conjunction with our spiritual ones because they are a part of our identity. For example, I define myself not only as a priest but as a fencer. But fencing is an athletic pursuit, and often honor is pushed aside in the name of glory and victory. These things can lead to rudeness and selfishness, which are contrary to the ways of Christ Jesus. I can't change that, but I can let my Christian nature win out over these things so that I can be an example to others of honor, loyalty, and above all kindness.
We can all be like Stein and push away our fears to continue to serve God in each other, even when the rest of the world is against us and hates us.
The choice between God and the world is no choice at all. We must chose God every time. God is there to love and protect us. He is there to be with us in the form of Jesus Christ whenever trouble or harm befall us. God is the only way we can receive life and peace in this world and the next.
That doesn't mean we ignore the world around us, or our groups and affiliations, whatever they may be, but it does mean we are called to be Christians first, no matter what we do. We're not called to give up those groups we love, but we are called to transform them and lead by example. As our patron saint Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, God's "power is made perfect in weakness".
This is the example we are to lead by. We are not called to give into world's obsession with power and dominance, but we are called to embrace the weakness of God who humbled Himself to the point of dying on the Cross. We are called to love and forgive what has been done to us. We are called to serve God and to serve each other.