Return to Sender

John 15:18-27

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• if the world hates you, realize that it hated me first
• no slave is greater than his master
• you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning

Applying the Word to My Life:
I was leading a small group at our high school retreat this weekend, and we were talking about what it actually looks like to live their faith at school. Several described the same tension. Sometimes the challenge comes from classmates who aren't religious at all. Other times it comes from Christians who have strong opinions about Catholicism. In both cases, they often find themselves answering assumptions about what Catholics believe rather than questions from people who actually want to understand.

We kept coming back to the same answer: love. They don't have to win every argument or force anyone to be curious or fair. Their job is to live their faith honestly, care about the people around them, and let the way they live become part of the explanation.

Isaac Jogues knew what it was like to love people who didn't understand him. He had left France for the missions of New France, learned unfamiliar languages, traveled difficult country, and tried to serve people whose world was very different from his own. He was one of eight Jesuit martyrs of the 1640s whom the Church honors together.

Then everything went wrong.

Jogues and his companions were captured. He was beaten and tortured, and his hands were mutilated badly enough that several fingers were damaged or lost. His friend René Goupil was killed, and Jogues tried desperately to recover his body so he could bury him.

Months later Jogues escaped and eventually made it back to France. His body carried the evidence of what had happened, and he needed special permission to celebrate Mass because of the damage to his hands. He was finally safe. No one could reasonably have blamed him for deciding that he had given enough.

Then he volunteered to go back. In 1646, he was killed there.

That decision is hard to understand unless love was doing something stronger in him than fear or resentment. Jogues knew exactly how badly the mission could go. He returned because the people were still worth loving.

Jesus tells His disciples in today's Gospel that the world hated Him first, so they shouldn't be surprised when it misunderstands or rejects them. He doesn't tell them to answer contempt with contempt. He tells them that the Spirit will testify, and that they will testify too.

When people misunderstand our faith, the strongest explanation is the kind of life that makes them wonder whether they misunderstood us.

That doesn't mean we never explain what we believe. Sometimes we should. But the explanation has a different weight when it comes from someone who is patient, generous, joyful, and genuinely concerned about the person on the other side.

Isaac went back. My students will walk back into school. We will all return to places where people misunderstand us or have already decided what our faith means. We can't control what they do with our witness. We can control whether they encounter Christ's love through us.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll answer one misunderstanding of my faith by loving more clearly.

ABOUT THE NORTH AMERICAN MARTYRS
Name: Sts. Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf, and Companions (the North American Martyrs; also called the Canadian Martyrs)
Lived: Martyred 1642–1649 in what is now New York and Canada
Feast Day: October 19 (September 26 in Canada)
Patron of: North America
Title: Eight Jesuit missionaries and martyrs, canonized in 1930
Read more: Franciscan Media · Wikipedia: Isaac Jogues