The opposition from the good.

I took a break from my In Conversation with God books for a few months. After reading them for seven years, I finally had gotten a bit tired of that part of my routine. However, I found myself missing them and picked them back up this week. How timely I found this reading from today, what with all the things that it seems we often cannot agree upon as well as the extremely low standards of courtesy held in many places.

It is difficult to understand calumny or persecution -- either open or veiled -- in an era in which one hears so much about tolerance, understanding, fellowship and peace. But the attacks are more difficult to understand when they come from good men, when Christian persecutes, no matter how, another Christian, or a brother his brother. Our Lord prepared his own for the inevitable times when those who would defame, calumniate, or undermine their apostolic work would not be pagans or enemies of Christ, but brothers in the Faith who would think that with these actions they would be doing a service to God. (cf John 16:2). ... It is particularly painful for the Christian to whom it happens. The motives of the calumniators are usually due to human passions that can distort good judgment and complicate the clear intention of men who profess the same faith as those they attack, and who make up the same People of God. There are at times jealousies that supervene, rather than zeal for souls, rash allegations that appear to derive from envy, and make it possible to consider as evil the good being done by others. There can also be a kind of blinkered dogmatism that refuses to recognize for others the right to think in a different way in matters left by God to the free judgment of men. The opposition from the good usually shows itself in antipathy towards some brothers in the Faith, in a more or less masked opposition to their work, and a criticism that is as destructive as it is ill-informed. ...

The moments in which we encounter opposition and difficulties without exaggerating them are particularly propitious for exercising a whole range of virtues: we should pray for those who do evil to us, even without our knowing it, so that they may leave off offending God; we can strive to make amends to the Lord, to be even more apostolic, and to protect with exquisite charity those weaker brothers in the faith who on account of their age, their lack of formation, or the special situations they find themselves in, could sustain a greater harm to their souls. ...

In Conversation with God - Vol. 4 - Ordinary Time, Weeks 13-23