Sunday 1 February 2026
Delving into the beatitudes after Mass, I turned to Bishop Barron’s homily for the week.
The section he picked up on struck me as particularly relevant.
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you.”
As Bishop Barron put it, if you’re not facing resistance from some quarter, you’re not doing it right.
I was struck by the clarity of this. How easy it is to keep your head down. Worst still, to actively avoid living publicly in faith.
Thinking more about this I realise that there is hardly anything about me that says I am catholic. You would have to look carefully to notice the Benedict medal on my wrist, or catch me on the short walk home from church on Ash Wednesday, with my forehead marked with ash.
In a dysfunctional world, righteousness will be persecuted.
A rightly ordered person will benefit some, but anger others who are invested in this dysfunctional world.
As a Christian, especially a Catholic, you are a contradiction, and that means trouble to others. We can’t be surprised by that.
The test, he said, was simple. Are you exciting any opposition in your faith? If not, you’re not living it well. “You’re conformed too much to a fallen world.”
Crikey.
You can’t help be stirred by that. And a little nervous. It’s not about wading into a fight, but it is about living faithfully, visibly, unafraid. And I think about the friends I haven’t told of my conversion, or the moral questions I keep to myself, and everything else. And how much I’m falling short.