In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost.
We remember today the Myrrh-bearing women, Joseph of
Arimathea and Nicodemus, people who in the course of the Gospel are
hardly mentioned, yet who, when Christ was seemingly defeated, when
death, rejection, betrayal and hatred had conquered, proved to be people
of faithfulness and courage, the faithfulness of the heart and the
courage that can be born only of love. At the moment of the Crucifixion
all the Apostles had fled save one, John, who stood at the foot of the
Cross with the Mother of God. Everyone else had abandoned Christ, only a
small group of women stood at a short distance from the Cross, and when
He had died, they came to anoint His Body which Joseph of Arimathea had
sought from Pilate, unafraid of being recognised as a disciple, because
in life and in death love and faithfulness had conquered.
Let us reflect on this. It is easy to be Christ's
disciples when we are on the crest of the wave, in the security of
countries where no persecution, no rejection is endured, no betrayal can
lead us to martyrdom, or simply to becoming the victims of mockery and
rejection.
Let us think of ourselves not in regard to Christ
alone but with regard to one another, because Christ has said that what
we have done to any one of us, to the smallest, to the most
insignificant, we have done to Him.
Let us ask ourselves how we behave when someone is
rejected, mocked, ostracised, condemned by public opinion or by the
opinion of those who mean something to us, whether at that moment our
heart remains faithful, whether at that moment we find courage to say,
‘He was, and he remains my friend whether you accept or reject him’.
There is no greater measure of faithfulness than that faithfulness which
is made manifest in defeat. Let us consider this, because we all are
defeated, we are defeated in so many ways. We all strive, with whatever
energy we have - a little or much, to be what we should be, and we are
defeated at every moment. Should we not look at one another not only
with compassion, but with the faithfulness of friends who are prepared
to stand by a person who falls, falls away from grace, falls away from
his own ideal, frustrates all hopes and expectations which we have set
on him or her. At that time let us stand by, at that time let us be
faithful and prove that our love was not conditioned by the hope of
victory but was a wholehearted gift, gratuitous, joyful, wonderful.
Amen.
