Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves;

so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.
But beware of men, 
for they will hand you over to courts…

As the old man Jacob sets out for Egypt with all his family and everything he owns, we hear Jesus telling his disciples, “I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves…” For the next four hundred years Jacob and his descendents will live in a foreign land, at the service of pharaohs. Welcome and unwelcome by turns his people will learn to keep their own counsel and worship their own God while their neighbors worship the pharaohs.

Christians master the same art as we live always in a foreign land. When our neighbors dote fondly over their kings we hope to survive his inevitable fall; when they hiel their hitlers, we pray for the nation and its people. We are in the world but not of the world; for, periodically, “they will hand you over to courts…”

Jesus urges us not to

…worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say.

You will be given at that moment what you are to say.
For it will not be you who speak
but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

 

But we cannot expect to learn this art of speaking in the Spirit when the trial begins. Rather, we must practice it continually. This is why we use the expression “practicing Catholic” or “practicing Christian.” We practice speaking in the Spirit as we worship in church and pray at home, as we teach our children and listen to our elders, as we respond to life around us in the Spirit of Jesus.

No one can expect to be guided by the Holy Spirit during a moment of crisis if he has never listened to the Spirit during the peaceful times.

I once received a phone call from a long-forgotten acquaintance in a distant state whose girl friend had suffered a terrible automobile accident. The poor fellow wanted to be a faithful and true friend to her but I knew already his life was given to alcohol. Jobless, illiterate, inebriated and all but homeless, he had no spiritual resources. I commiserated with him but could not help him much beyond that.

The gospels warn us continually to be ready and alert for “you know neither the day nor the hour.” Saint Paul urges to pray always. Doing so, we’ll know what to say when the crisis comes, whether it be a personal tragedy or a "show trial" before judges and magistrates.