Over the weekend Tim and I were blessed to attend the Stuebenville San Diego 18:23 conference. Steubenville San Diego is a large Catholic teen conference that gathers 5,000 teenagers from different states. It is loud and chaotic but you can tell that Jesus is truly touching the hearts of many youngsters. Luckily they decided to form a young adult sub-conference last year for 18-25 year olds. Tim and I have never attended any type of Steubenville conference before so it was quite the experience for us. In this post I am going to focus on the final talk of the weekend that was given by Deacon Ralph Poyo. We entered midway into the talk as he was discussing the early Christian Martyrs.
Deacon Ralph was explaining to us that if he were a Christian living in Rome during that time, he would be placed in a very difficult situation. If Romans came and asked if he were Christian he would be giving himself, his wife, and children a death sentence. I had no idea that children were used for entertainment in the Coliseum. It makes sense that this would be the case but somehow I had been ignorant to this. At that moment if he said yes he would know that they would take his children away from him and take them to the Coliseum to "play lambs". The children would be told that they would get to pretend to be lambs and they dressed them in lamb skins. As they were crawling out into the Coliseum blood would be poured onto their lamb skins. They would then get cheers from the crowds as they ran around pretending to be lambs unknowing that starving lions were about to be released. When asked if he believed in Jesus Christ he would say yes knowing that his children would meet this fate. Wow. As he said this I had to think would I do this? I can't imagine not wanting to protect my children from this. And then I realized that I would be protecting them from things of this world rather than doing my ultimate job of leading them to heaven. His story was not finished though.
He and his wife would have been separated from their children and brought to the Emperors' palace. They would have been impaled, covered in tar, and made into human tiki torches for the Emperors' parties. He would answer yes knowing that this would be their fate. It is really horrible to imagine that this happened but what would motivate someone to say yes to this fate? His answer was only the love of Jesus Christ. The faith of the Martyrs was so strong that they knew that they had to die for Jesus and that death was not the end. So the question is will we die for Jesus?
In order to help us evaluate how strong our faith is he lead us through an exercise. He asked us to stand if we believed that Jesus was the son of God and wanted to follow him. I am pretty sure everyone stood up. Then he asked us if God asked us to pick everything up and move to Africa to live a simple life would we do it? I didn't even make it past the first test, I sat down. I could not just pick up and leave,I would have to pray and really think about the decision. Tim remained standing which surprised me. Later I found out he was assuming he would at least get to take me with him. The next question was if we would be willing to give up hopes for marriage and family and serve him as a single person. Tim sat down since he felt that God does not want that for him. However we later discussed that if we did get a clear sign from God that he wanted us to live single consecrated life in the next five months we would obey. Half of the room was still standing at this point. Then he asked what if a group of men come up and threaten to rape you if you do not denounce your faith. Some people sat down but others remained standing. He took it even further and the last question what if someone came up with a gun and asked if you were a Christian and they would shoot you if you said yes. Some people remained standing. My faith is not as strong as that, but as a Christian I am truly called to die for Jesus. So how am I willing to die for Jesus? The truth is that I realized how selfish I am and how much more I need to lay down my life for Christ. It was a really great, but a sobering and painful realization to have. We need to surrender everything to him, not our will be done but his. So how much are you willing to die for him? I really recommend that you spend some time in prayer and reflection thinking about this.
As our country continues to become more hostile towards Christianity ,especially Catholicism we really need to be prepared to stand strong for our faith. I am really excited that our Church will not comply with the HHS mandate but what am I willing to do? Am I willing to risk not paying my taxes so that my money won't fund abortions? Am I willing to go to jail? Am I willing to lose my job if it comes to that? Honestly I do not know how much persecution I am willing to take but I will certainly be praying that God prepares me to do so! We need to pray for courage and faith!
