The Advent Season and the Idolatry of False Persecution

And you know? He’s right.

It’s rather alluring to think of oneself as a persecuted minority. There’s a fun, dramatic romance in imagining that you’re being oppressed when a very easy inconvenience happens. It’s pleasant to revel in a small sting that won’t raise a blister; it’s only real pain and scars we fear. There’s a cheap sort of fun to be had in outcry over a consequence-free event, like a secular institution making reference to multiple holidays instead of just the ones your religion celebrates. It’s fun to pretend you’re suffering a heavy cross with a plump reward waiting in Heaven, when people roll their eyes at your prayers. But it’s wrong. It’s prideful. It makes you blind to real injustice and numb to the sufferings of others. And it leaves you dreadfully unprepared to suffer real persecutions, real crosses, or to recognize the real consolations that Heaven sends. Persecution doesn’t look like rolled eyes or a secular holiday window display. Persecution has actual consequences. It’s a dire injustice that leaves no room for aesthetic pathos. The reward of bearing persecution with grace, is beyond our understanding. Scandalizing the ordinary cheapens grace and makes joy into kitsch. It blinds us, both to real suffering and real consolation. It makes us stupid.

There are real people, Christians and others, in the world and in our country today, who are actually being persecuted. They’re the ones who deserve our outrage and our energy. There are real sufferings we have to endure and they don’t feel at all like the cheap self-satisfaction of the War on Christmas. There is real grace we should be beseeching Heaven for, real blessing He wishes to pour out on us for Christmas, never mind the cheap and kitschy satisfaction we may feel that we’ve earned.

We worship a God of Mercy, a persecuted God. We worship a God who took flesh and became like us so that He could be torn to shreds by our injustice, carry it down to the depths of Hell with Him and conquer it by rising again. He bids us cast down our idols and join Him. And where can we find Him? With the brokenhearted, with the victims of real injustice. And what is He doing? He is binding up the brokenhearted, opening the eyes of the blind, strengthening bruised reeds. He is allowing Himself to share their suffering, because He loves them. He’s not reveling in consequence-free false persecution. He embraces real persecution for our sake, scorning the shame. That is the true meaning of Christmas, the true meaning of Advent and the Nativity fast and all of Christianity. That’s the true meaning of life.

None of us has earned a reward in Heaven. We can only cry for mercy as we light our Advent wreath and participate in the Nativity Fast. We aren’t worthy to lift our eyes to Heaven, let alone to enjoy feeling wounded when the world which never knew Him in the first place refuses to say “Christmas.”

May all of my readers have a blessed and fruitful Advent, Nativity Fast, or whatever it is you observe this time of year. May you be blessed on the Feast of Saint Nicholas, the Feast of Saint Lucy, the Octave of Christmas, the Feast of Saint Stephen, the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God and Epiphany– or, as you might say, Happy Holidays. I wish you real happiness, not the cheap idol of consequence-free persecution and reward. May God grant us many blessed years.

(image via Pixabay)