At mass today, the priest said, "Don't raise your hands, because I don't want to shame you. But have you been persecuted or mocked for the sake of your faith this week? If you had, this room would be standing room only. You are failures. You are not bringing Jesus to those who you claim to love." 

He proceeded to deliver his homily with the cadence of a Baptist minister. Except where most preachers might expound on these things for two or three hours, he delivered the Truth condensed and straight from the Bible -- his exhortation was no longer than fifteen or twenty minutes long, but long enough that we all were forced to question if we'd been doing enough. Did we know the "joy from suffering for the Lord, Jesus?" 

He left us with a challenge, saying that next week if he were to ask the same question again he hoped that everyone present might raise their hands. 

We live in such a comfortable era as Americans. Persecution is scarce. Furthermore, if someone is going to persecute you, they're going to use more passive aggressive means now since it's practically illegal to lynch Christians. Nevertheless, we Christians avoid and protest mockery, too. Many of us expend more energy being anti-government rather than spreading the gospel. We fight for our rights, for the right to free speech. But we rarely want to hurt someone's feelings by caring for their soul.

Only a couple weeks ago my husband and I were approached at a "Christian" place and told to "not talk about Catholicism". Stunned, we submitted to the censoring of our faith because we did not want to cause "drama". But we should have loudly proclaimed, "We will not stop talking about Jesus and the Church He established." We should have been more willing to embrace the mockery that might've ensued, or even the persecution were it to happen.

Today's mass was a direct rebuke from the Holy Spirit. Free speech and personal rights are meaningless in America if we're not using these liberties to preach the Good News.