By Father Glenn Jones:

Cool … back to 2 Chronicles again this week, though not very uplifting. Well … not until some more history had passed, at least.

The period is, or just after, 600 B.C. The great Israelite kings David and Solomon are long gone, as is the greatness of their kingdom. Israel—not divided into the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah—has waffled back and forth from fidelity to infidelity…as have thier fortunes. The post-split northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered and absorbed by Assyria, which itself has been conquered by the Babylonians. Only the southern kingdom of Judah remains, centered around that historically—then, as now—pivotal city of Jerusalem.

Now, Jerusalem the Judahites—thus all Israel—would be conquered by Babylon.

Why conquered? Per 2 Chronicles 36: “…all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations … they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets, until the anger of the LORD against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy.”

Seems like such infidelity always existed. Fast forward about six hundred years to the time of Jesus and we read Him lamenting: “… people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.” (John 3)

Certainly we see no shortage of evil in our day—power struggles, crime, political corruption, etc. But … those evils have always been, and likely will always be; where persons seek their own enrichment or glory even to the detriment of others, there will always be evils.

But more recently we see a growing soft—and not so soft—persecution of Christianity. What other religion is ridiculed and caricatured in media, movies and television? Also, there has been an epidemic rash of the burning of churches in Canada, Europe and the U.S., though you don’t hear about it much—itself reflecting a bias against Christianity. Does this not sound again like 2 Chronicles 36: “Their enemies burnt the house of God, and destroyed all its precious objects.”? Now there’s growing political condemnation of “Christian nationalism”, formally defined as efforts to establish a unilaterally Christian government, but seems to be creeping towards a blanket condemnation of Christianity itself.

So, O Christian, are we to quail before a rising tide against the faith? Are we to succumb to the weakness of the religious authorities in Jesus’ time: “…they loved praise from men more than praise from God”? (John 12:43)

No. Negative. Nyet. Nein. Iye. Non.

First of all, it is innate within human beings us to seek truth. Thus Jesus, who is “the way, the truth and the life”—not simply because He said so, but as demonstrated in His teaching of loving God and neighbor—calls us in our very depths of being to follow Him. Explore the moral truths of almost any major religion, and you will find them—and more—in the Christian faith (albeit not always demonstrated well by Christians themselves, fallible critters that we are).

And yet challenges to faith are perennial, even over millennia. Young people, always concerned with popularity with their peers, are increasingly ridiculed for faith, and thus challenged to remain with it. They are strong youth, indeed, who stand up to the rising tide of culture and resistance. But, we assure them, truth remains truth, even if the whole world were against it. We need only recall the tragic consequences of “groupthink” of the past—Naziism and WWII, tens of millions killed by Communist regimes, etc., to see that the tide of culture is often wrong and destructive. Or, closer to home, the depredations inflicted upon native peoples in the Americas and throughout the world in the European pursuit of Manifest Destiny.

More and more young (and not so young) people are encouraged by peers to follow ways inimical to the Christian faith. Will we come to the point of the Israelites in 2 Chronicles, in which there “was no remedy” because we had digressed so far as to ignore God altogether? As Jesus laments: “…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:18)

But, then, as with Noah … as with the Israelites in the desert … and as with each of us … God gives chances for a “do-over”… the coming to Him in repentance, and determination for conversion. Even in our episode in 2 Chronicles, Persian king Cyrus, having conquered Babylon, let the Israelites return to the Promised Land and rebuild Jerusalem and, most importantly, the temple … and thus giving them opportunity to return to right worship of God.

By this Chronicles episode—and many others in the Bible—we see that not all misfortune is pointless evil. Our physical “good” is not of ultimate importance as is our spiritual good. Through misfortune, and even pain, we can learn patience and realization that this world and its comforts are, at best, transient … such realization (hopefully) leading us to a greater understanding that seeking eternal truth and life need be our goal. As we read: “…after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you.” (1 Peter 5:10)

A second theme is, of course, that God gives us the grace to repent and return to Him; such grace is never withheld from us, because as Paul writes, God: “…desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4) This, of course, is the very theme of our Lenten season: Repent!  Turn from evil, learn to do good. Do good, avoid evil.

So let us not be so foolish as to ignore God’s great good—ALL for our benefit—in return for fleeting and often deceptive trivialities of the world. For, as Jesus assures: “ … whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”

“…in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5)

Will Christ find faith on earth when He comes? Declare to Heavens and to earth: “Yes! He will find it in me.”

Editor’s note: Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.