Kempis, in emphasizing that we need to live in truth, has Christ telling us that doing so will lead to assaults by deceivers and detractions from the wicked (3,4).  Christ goes on to tell the disciple (that is, us) that He will teach him the truth but he must give up sin and recognize his own nothingness without Him.

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, continuing His Last Supper Discourse, warns the apostles of the resistance they will meet from a fallen, sinful world (Jn 15:18-21).  They persecuted Jesus, so why should they think they will fare better when preaching in His name?  The Lord is preparing them well for that which they will be dealing very soon.

Can anything worse be said of a Christian today than that he is “worldly.”  A culture in chaos, where truth and falsehood have reversed poles (see Rom 1:25 and read the whole section — Paul describes the world to a T), must not affect our equilibrium.  Our true north is Christ who is the Truth (see Jn 14:6).  We keep our eyes on Him and we do well.  A momentary glance away, being more concerned with self than God, and we begin to sink into the abyss (see Mt 14:29-31).  This is why we must be on guard always to embrace and proclaim the unvarnished truth, with no compromise to evil.  We will be hated for holding fast to our Faith, especially with the hot button issues of the day related to life and sexuality.  We must not be wishy-washy (see Rev 3:15-16 for a graphic example of what the Lord thinks of such folks).  We must be bold.  We must be Catholic.

Let us pray intensely for the gifts of the Holy Spirit (see Is 11:2-3) to guide us and give us a well-trained tongue (see Is 50:4).  He will not let us down (see Lk 12:10-12).