I Chose You And Appointed You

Jesus Christ, who was sent to death because he claimed to be God, was raised up again, and became again a living man.  Indeed, his friends doubted . . . and doubted again, and continued to deny it until they saw it for themselves, and even touched, felt, and proved it to be so.

These people did not want to believe Jesus Christ when he claimed to be God, did not want to believe in the life of this body that they had themselves felt with their hands when it was dead, unless they could feel for themselves that it was alive again; they set out throughout the world of their time, not to proclaim in the first place and loudest the universal love that Jesus taught them, the justice for the little ones, for the weak and the oppressed, the goodness for each living person on behalf of each living person - but to proclaim first and loudest that Jesus Christ, the man who was our friend, Jesus Christ, the friend of the poor and of sinners and of the downtrodden, Jesus Christ who threatened the selfish and the proud with an eternity of suffering, Jesus Christ who was spat upon, mocked , struck, and scourged, who was tortured amidst laughter, Jesus Christ who was hung upon a cross, who was bled dry, who let out his last breath with a moan, Jesus Christ who froze upon the cross, who no one doubted was dead, Jesus Christ with whom we lived, who died before us, who was buried in a grave not far from us, with a great stone rolled over where his body lay, and where soldiers stood to keep us from opening the tomb and stealing his body, this Jesus Christ is risen because he was, because he remains today, tomorrow, and forever, truly man and truly God.

Christians believe what these people went tho proclaim to everyone who would listen and even more so to everyone who did not want to listen.  They presented themselves as witnesses of Jesus Christ, of his life, his death, and his Resurrection, as witnesses of the Law that he taught, of the examples he gave and the promises he made.  They presented themselves as the personal witnesses of the very person of Jesus Christ.

(Eleven) out of twelve of them suffered martyrdom one after the other because they refused to keep quiet.  What they said and what they wrote we continue to read even today; we continue to repeat even today.

Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel
Died 1964.  A French laywoman, writer, and mystic devoted to caring for the poor and to evangelizing culture.