The call to live with Christ-like integrity

Jesus, of all people, could understand Jeremiah’s plight. As God’s beloved, he not only spoke God’s word, he lived and breathed the Father’s care. He gave of himself as bread to the hungry and moved through life as God’s hand outstretched to the rejected and needy. History and his own experience of being criticized, rejected and threatened assured him that the powerful would seek the way to do him in.

We can assume that when Jesus talked about his impending suffering and death, it was not to impress his disciples with his future-telling skills. He was sharing his heart. He wanted them to know and understand what he had discerned about God’s will for him.

When he said he must go to Jerusalem, he was saying that was the only way to be true to his vocation. The disciples were savvy enough that they weren’t surprised that going to Jerusalem would bring Jesus suffering. What they didn’t understand, however, was why he would do it in the first place. That was what Jesus had to teach them, and he tried again and again. His primary way of teaching was through action — only after acting did he explain what he was doing.

Jesus had to go to Jerusalem because to avoid confronting the powers aligned against him would have been to admit the impotence of his own message. So, in essence, he said, “They are going to unleash everything in their arsenal against me, and it is going to take my life. But God will not let that be the end of the story.” He put all his cards on the table: “If you believe in me, if you want to follow me, this is where the road is leading.” Jesus’ faith, at that moment, was greater than anything the disciples could imagine.

Jesus wasn’t courting death. He wasn’t even baiting his opponents. He was simply teaching his disciples that his integrity demanded that he not hide from danger. He had to decide between being true to his message and saving his skin. He decided to leave the latter to God, trusting that his father would also give him the grace and strength to accomplish the former.

Unlike some of our brothers and sisters in places in Africa and the Middle East, few of us in the United States will ever have to face anything like the persecution Jesus and his disciples confronted. To those of us who don’t have to walk the road toward martyrdom, Paul offers a different and no less costly challenge. He says, “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” He’s not saying “run to the coliseum to volunteer for a lion fight.” That is too easy as a once-and-for-all solution, a romantic hero’s role that we choose for ourselves. Paul calls us, instead, into a daily struggle for faithfulness: “Do not conform yourselves to this age.”

This is the call to live with Christ-like integrity, to stand up for the values of the reign of God, no matter the cost. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize laureate who survived the Holocaust, is quoted as saying: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor. … Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented.” Our road to Jerusalem offers us glimpses of religious persecution, of refugees turned away from shelter and of billboards advertising a philosophy that proclaims that we will make a better world by putting ourselves first. Disciples of Jesus must not remain silent. Such realities demand of us a Gospel response.

Gospel love is indeed hard and dreadful. It can cost us everything. But is there anything worth living for without it?

[Mary M. McGlone, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, is currently writing the history of the Sisters of St. Joseph in the U.S.]