NOTES for Mat 10:16-22

When appointing the apostles to their ministry, the Lord also tells them of the fate that awaits them. His words sound like a grim prophecy or instructions before a military campaign. We are accustomed to seeing a certain flavour of pink syrup in Christianity. It was this flavour that an exotic thinker of the nineteenth century had in mind when he called religion the opium of the people. There is no point denying it: saccharine bombast and ignorant mysticism truly poison a considerable part of Christian culture.

There is nothing remotely saccharine in the Gospel as a whole, or in Christ’s words read today. He says that the world lying in evil will meet Christ’s witnesses with hatred, not only “organized” hatred coming from the authorities, but personal hatred coming from those closest to them. History has seen many attempts to soften the severity of these words, but all were unsuccessful and benefited neither Christians nor societies that claimed to be Christian ad nominem (for the most part, those were unpleasant empires that eventually collapsed beneath the weight of their hypocrisy).

Perhaps the most important thing in this passage is not even Christ’s warning that His true witnesses are intolerably inconvenient to the “respectable” world, to the point of hatred and death. In practice, what matters to us is His promise to the disciples that the Holy Spirit would be present and active within them. And acquiring the Holy Spirit, as St Seraphim put it with genius, is the purpose of the Christian life.