Gospel: Jn 15:18-21
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JESUS said to his disciples: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”
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At the outset of his gospel, John anticipates the rejection of Jesus: “He was in the world…but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:10-11). The same fate awaits the disciples of Jesus – they have to go against the grain of the “world.” The world refers to people who oppose Jesus as God’s revelation. A pagan society is neither open to a Savior compassionate to the poor and forgiving to sinners nor desirous of a new divine realm; a secularistic society accepts only an earthly kingdom and its human rulers.
The same tendency is seen today in what Pope John II notes as the “silent apostasy”: “At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of man apart from God and apart from Christ. This sort of thinking has led to man being considered as ‘the absolute center of reality, a view which makes him occupy – falsely – the place of God and which forgets that it is not man who creates God, but rather God who creates man. Forgetfulness of God led to the abandonment of man.’” (John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europa, 28 June 2003, 9)
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SOURCE: “365 Days with the Lord 2020,” ST. PAULS Philippines, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 895-9701; Fax 895-7328; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.
