Over my lifetime I have lived inside various ‘spiritualities’ and just prior to being received into the Catholic Church, in 2012, I had spent 20 years exploring the land of ‘modern’ spirituality. In that world, the notion of the search for the ‘truth’ was put on the back burner, instead what was cooked up and served was a buffet containing various offerings of religious diversity. The table manners were structured to ensure that it was the spirit of fraternity that animated our interactions. Traditional Christians were accused of having an ‘unhealthy’ interest in the truth-claims of Christ.
It is significant that one of the names of the Holy Spirit, given in the New Testament, is an ordinary Greek word that means the lawyer for the defence, the Paraclete. When you think about it, before you need a defence lawyer you first must be accused of something. In the process of acting and speaking on your behalf the defence lawyer is attempting to ‘enlighten’ your accuser as to the false nature of their accusations and to hopefully trigger an act of repentance, on their part. “When the Spirit of Truth (the Paraclete) comes, he will guide you into the full truth”, John 16:13. For in labouring under their false perception of reality your accusers, “...they know not what they do”.
In Matthew 5:11, Jesus says, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” If they revile you because you are a bit of a jerk, that is one thing, but if you are reviled because of your faith in Christ, that is another. Our bearing the cross of a false accusation can be the means of our accuser’s salvation. Think of those first Christians who facilitated St. Paul’s conversion from accuser to apostle. In this way "our sufferings are joined to the sufferings of Christ", Colossians 1:24.
In Luke 9:22 Jesus, the Light of the World, says, "It is necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things, and to be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and to be killed, and on the third day to be raised." Christ, through his Passion, enlightens us to and frees us from our bondage to the falsehoods of evil and he turns the Paraclete loose on the world. Whatever false declarations that may have been directed at Christ’s Church, during this pandemic, for example, that worship is “non-essential”, will hopefully bring the Paraclete even more business?
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