HOMILY ON THE FEAST OF ST JOSAPHAT
St Josaphat was a 17th century bishop and martyr. He was put to death by fellow Christians. The Church in Lithuania which at this time was spread over parts of Russia and Poland was divided between the Orthodox Christians and the “Uniates,” those Eastern Rite Catholics in communion with the Holy Father.
Josaphat had been born to Orthodox parents, but he embraced the Catholic faith and became a Basilian monk. But he didn’t look back with scorn on what he had a left behind. But nor did he pretend that the difference didn’t matter.
Yes, Christian unity requires a recognition of shared common ground, but if you believe you abide in the Church which possesses the fulness of truth, if you love, you’ll want others to share in that truth, taking seriously the words of today’s Gospel that two may be in one bed and one will be taken the other left. Looking similar is not always enough.
And so Josaphat sought to bring about union between the Uniates and the Orthodox. That was not successful, not least because of the range of vested interested that were aligned against such a union.
He was ordained a bishop at the age of 38 and proceeded to build up the Ruthenian Catholic Church by placing emphasis on its own liturgy, language, and clear teaching.
Although he failed in the union which he desired, a desire which I think we can safely say was a share in Jesus’ desire that ‘they might all be one’, he did succeed in bringing many individual souls into union with Rome, for which he earned the simultaneously popular and derisive moniker, ‘the thief of souls’.
Success, as is so often the case, caused bitterness amongst those who considered themselves his opponents, although that is not the way he would have viewed them. Nonetheless, they would take every opportunity to vilify and attack him in public, with a fervour that led to his eventual attack by a mob, from the midst of which he begged his soon-to-be murderers not to harm his servants.
The clemency he asked for his servants was not extended him and so with furious cries of “Kill the Papist!”, He was struck on the head and shot and thrown into the river.
He was forty-three years old.
In staying true right to the end, he received the grace that he prayed for, for he knew that his commitment to Christian unity did not bode well for his well-being, and so had made a part of his prayer the following: “Lord, grant me the grace to shed my blood for the unity of the Church and on behalf of obedience to the Holy See.”
But what for us here in Cardiff, on this November day of this Ruthenian saint? Well, I wonder how much of our prayer is for the Lord to remove difficulty rather than to give us the grace to endure it?
I was struck by a line I read recently, ‘The length of life is decreed by nature, its depth by grace’
Now I don’t want to suggest that prayers for a long life, or freedom from illness, are bad prayers. They’re not, I pray them throughout the week for my hospital patients, but they’re not all that we should pray for. Are my prayers for natural things, or the things that pertain to the life of grace, things that really fulfil and lift up, things that give life depth, not just length? Sometimes I pray for a good death too.
I remember once going to visit an elderly Nigerian lady in hospital, her body riddled with cancer. She asked me what she had done to deserve such great pain as she was in. In essence I told her that it’s quite possible that she had done nothing, but I also said that her suffering need not be for nothing. I tried to tell her something of what St Paul teaches in 1 Colossians 24, when he says:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church….
Words that I think are best explained by that mystic Simone Weil when she wrote:
The supernatural greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.
That is that our suffering can be redemptive for us and for those who we love.
And do you know what this elderly lady in such great pain said to me after my efforts at explaining the idea of our participation in Christ’s redemptive suffering?
She said, ‘In that case, Lord increase my pain’
And I’m not sure I’ve ever heard words of such Christian love spoken with such conviction in my presence.
There has to be willingness in our lives to embrace discomfort for the sake of the highest things, not just discomfort for the sake of a new PB in the gym or on my ParkRun. Although the latter is not a bad training for the former.
But I think we have to be conscious of the constant bombardment of adverts, to which we’re subject, that promise to make our life more convenient, more comfortable. . . . “Got a difficulty? . . . There’s an app for that.”
Because there’s a danger that if we blithely digest the worldview of these ads we being to think that pain and suffering are to be avoided at all costs, but there’s something more to life than that, otherwise our desires start to differ very little from that of our pets.
There’s a danger we begin to just exist rather than really live. The lives of the martyrs, like Josaphat, hopefully jolt us out of that, hopefully we see something of their heroic witness and desire to be made of the same stuff ourselves . . . well that stuff is grace, but also a willingness to suffer for the sake of something bigger than simply not suffering or of being entertained.
As Bl Pier Giorgio Frassati observed in a manner which seems particularly appropriate to this time of remembrance of those who died so that we might truly live:
To live without faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for truth, that is not living, but existing. We must not exist but live.
Be prepared to become uncomfortable but also to be fulfilled.