His Suffering

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.”
John 15:18-21 (NAB)

Prayer Reflection

Dear Father the Bible gives us exactly what Jesus stated, that he would be hated and persecuted. In the account of the ordeal he suffered in what we had recently gone through ourselves in the season of Lent. Holy week brings to us the truth of these words Jesus spoke. He did it for love of us, to save us because he wanted to do it for you dear Father. As Christians we too suffer in many ways, not as profoundly as Jesus did, but in lesser degrees. Mind you, Jesus did the ultimate suffering for us, so we would be able to endure for love of him. Our persecution at the hands of unbelievers, and even Christians themselves can never give us the true meaning of what Jesus went through. It is in keeping His Word bound to our hearts that we find the source of love. The picture below of the Sacrifice of the Mass with the Angels and Saints speak loudly of today's reading and the sacrifice given up for us. But we also have to remember he asks two specific things of us to love God first and love our neighbor. How hard is that, just think if we honestly loved God first, there would be no hatred nor persecution.