When They Exclude You…

The Problem of Rejection and Resentment

“Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.” (Luke 6:22)

My fellow pilgrims,

Today I wish to discuss with you a topic regarding a facet of discipleship that many of us encounter as we, in obedience to our call to proclaim the Good News of Jesus and His Love. I am speaking of is the response we sometimes elicit from those to whom we are trying to reach, namely, a shunning and rejection of not only of the message we bring but of our person.

Now, Jesus has told us to expect resistance and rejection from the “world” but when that response comes from friends and family, and members in our own “Christian” community we are, very often, deeply hurt by this reaction, a hurt that, if we don’t counteract can limit us in being instruments and messengers of God’s Love in the world.

The reason these hurts ensuing from rejection and shunning limit us is because our human ego sometimes becomes too attached to the role and message we have been called to. This happens when we take too personal an interest in what we are doing and saying for the Lord and thus, when we, in obedience to what Jesus is calling us to do, are rejected by others we take it personally. This injury, left untreated, is left to molder in us, can become an inner resentment that prevents us from being conformed to the image of Jesus and His Love for which we were created and for which we were sent, thus inhibiting the anointing that He places on our service to others.

First of all we must remember that when we are ministering to others in Jesus’ name, we are NOT ministering in our own person. So when rejection occurs in the carrying out of our call, we must detach our own feelings and person from what we do and leave the work that God wants to do in that person to the Holy Spirit. Leave everything at the foot of the Cross, knowing that you have been faithful to what has been asked of you. As it says in psalm 37(v.5), “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will accomplish what His will through your service”.

Secondly, if, in spite of your best intentions, you happen to fall in such a situation, merely repent of your attachment, confess it to the Lord, and “He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgement as the noonday” (Ps. 37:6). Pray that the Lord will redeem your error and bring about His will through your faithful efforts. Remember what Jesus told us, “If they reject you they are really rejecting me”. So then don’t get in the way and let Jesus handle the situation.

This lesson that I am passing on to you I have learned at the cost of my own mistakes and through the saving insight provided me through Holy Spirit, the inspiration of the Word of God, and the teachings of St. Francis de Sales.

Francis had to learn this lesson himself as he endured the rejection of those whom he was trying to reach with the Gospel of Love.

In a presentation on Salesian spirituality, an anonymous religious Sister of the Visitation said the following in summarizing this teaching, “So, human liberty resides, not in not caring about what happens (even if that were possible) but in caring more that God’s results be accomplished whatever the outcome. As indicated …., the practice of Salesian liberty becomes a freedom to serve in a spirit of detachment or indifference to our personal “I’d rathers.” And its effects in one’s personality and life, according to Francis in this same letter “are a great inner serenity, a great gentleness and willingness to yield in everything that isn’t sin; it’s a flexible disposition, able gracefully to do the virtuous or charitable thing.” In short, the freedom of the children of God is the birthright of those who know they are loved. This freedom leads one to detachment of the heart from all things so that it is free to follow the known will of God.”

(excerpted from — http://www.visitationmonastery.org/stlouis/talk_living_in_the_moment.htm )

Brothers and Sisters, I pray that, through the Holy Spirit, this teaching has reached your hearts as it has in mine and that it will bear fruit in your lives to the Glory of God the Father. May the Lord Bless you all. …. Bartimaeus