Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward.

It is interesting that Jesus tells us to rejoice when they insult you and persecute you. The normal reaction to contempt, discrimination, criticism or rejection is resentment, revenge or hatred, which in turn oppresses and hurts us.

On the contrary, Christ invites us to react lightly, with inner freedom. Because being under pressure because of our relationship with Christ gives us the opportunity to be particularly close to him. Jesus himself knows very well this situation and can understand and comfort us, who more than Christ, knows what it feels to be under persecution, criticism, rejection, injury ... when He lived all this in his own flesh and was not heard from his mouth no word of hate or revenge.

This does not mean that He is inviting us to jump for joy because we are persecuted, he does not even want us to become masochistic or to lead us to desire martyrdom, or to be proud of the persecution. This is not the meaning. But if we are persecuted or insulted because of Jesus, it means that we are becoming more and more like him! It is a demonstration that we are really children of God, that we will inherit the kingdom of heaven, that we will have a great reward in heaven.

Our God is not a hard God without compassion ... He is a God who has become the object of mockery of many who do not respect his commandments, who has been marginalized and rejected by his children. And he has suffered all this in order to find us.

Persecution, in all its forms, thus becomes a source of strength for us, because it allows us to experience that we depend solely on it. Living against the wind thus becomes an opportunity to further strengthen our union with Christ. It becomes a test in which God invites us to prove his fidelity.

I do not think any of us wants persecution, but it is a historically proven fact that the church has grown stronger in periods of strong persecution. And sometimes I think a little persecution would not hurt us.

I am not asking you to pray for God to send us the persecution, but to begin to rejoice in those situations that lead you to reflect on your relationship with God. These are the times when you and your faith are questioned, which leads you to understand if your faith is just a hobby, if you go to church on Sundays just because you like to meet other interesting people, or if, instead, you , faith in Jesus Christ is really the foundation of his life.

Remember that we have real hope, precisely because we have Christ on our side. Let's not be content with a mediocre Christian life, Jesus' promise is clear: