We must love Christ above everything else

Third Sunday of Easter, Year C
First Reading: Acts 5:27–32, 40b–41
Second Reading: Revelation 5:11–14
Gospel Reading: John 21:1–19

In this Sunday’s First Reading, the apostles appear before the Jewish council, charged with publicly teaching “in the name of Jesus.” Strictly ordered to desist, they reply, “We must obey God rather than human beings.”

So must we. “All Christians, by the example of their lives and the witness of their word, wherever they live, have an obligation to manifest the new man which they have put on in Baptism and to reveal the power of the Holy Spirit by whom they were strengthened at Confirmation,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“In situations that require witness to the faith,” we must “profess it without equivocation,” as the living creatures do in the Second Reading: “Amen!”

Christ himself said, “If anyone in this faithless and corrupt age is ashamed of me and my doctrine, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes with the holy angels in his Father’s glory.”

We have no choice: Christians are required to let the light of Christ “shine before men.” As Pope John Paul II said, our witness “makes an extraordinarily valuable contribution” to society: it helps to ward off “a headlong plunge into the most dangerous crisis” that can afflict the world—namely, a “confusion between good and evil.” If we live what we believe, we are public benefactors: “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.”

Asked why we believe in God, we can answer firmly: because this is the truth; atheism is not a reasonable alternative. Asked why we are Catholics, we can answer unhesitatingly: because this is the Church founded by Jesus Christ, the Son of God; she alone has the fullness of the truth that God has revealed to humankind.

St. Peter and all the other apostles except St. John gave the ultimate witness to Christ—namely, martyrdom. In fact, the word martyr is a transliteration of a Greek word meaning witness. It was originally used of the apostles, who were eyewitnesses of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. With the spread of persecution, it came to include people who had endured hardships for their belief, and finally, those who had suffered death.

Martyrdom is not just a thing of the past. The case of St. Maria Goretti, in particular, could easily become our own. As a young girl, she was repeatedly approached by 19-year-old Alessandro Serenelli, the son of the owner of the farm where she and her family lived and worked. She rebuffed him but said nothing because he had threatened to kill her and her mother.

Finally, when she was 12, Alessandro attacked her outright. She resisted, crying out: “No, it is a sin! God does not want it! You will go to Hell!” Furious, he seized a knife and stabbed her 14 times. She was rushed to hospital but died on July 6, 1902.

In 1885, as St. Charles Lwanga and his companions were led to martyrdom in Uganda, one of the king’s counsellors taunted them: “No doubt your god will rescue you.” Matthias replied, “Yes, but you will not see how He does it, because He will take my soul and leave you only my body.”

Martyrs reason like Christ: “What profit does a man show who gains the whole world and destroys himself in the process?” In canonizing martyrs, the Church confirms “the truth of their judgement,” Pope John Paul II said—that love for God entails the refusal to betray his commandments “even for the sake of saving one’s own life.”

“Finally,” as St. Thomas More told his daughter, “it isn’t a matter of reason; finally it’s a matter of love.”

In the end, as Christ said, we must love him above all else: “Whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter, more than me is not worthy of me.”