"These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me." (John 16:1-3)

We read this scripture in Gospel Doctrine yesterday and it was poignant to me. Jesus was about to be betrayed and murdered. Not thinking of himself, he knew what troubles lay ahead for his disciples and sought to strengthen them. These fledgling disciples were born Jewish. Their families, their friends and other loved ones were Jewish. They grew up as little children playing with their cousins and struggling to suppress their giggling in the synagogue. They grew and began to feel the weight of sin and began to take their religion seriously. With their best effort to learn perhaps they sensed something was missing. They dropped their nets and received this strange man Jesus to be a prophet and their world began to be turned upside-down.

The Pharisees saw that their craft was in jeopardy and drew a line in the sand. The Pharisees need not have drawn the line. What was being restored was as much for them as anyone, yet they drew it. Something new was here and if the old would not see it, it would simply be overthrown, though in their eyes they were still in-charge.

Seeking to strengthen these disciples, Jesus told them what would happen. He told them they would be excommunicated. This church in which they had grown up and loved would reject them, they would not tolerate them, just as they would not hear the voice of "that prophet".

It would not stop there, he told them that the powers of darkness would be stirred up to such a degree by the light that they bore that the ultimate sacrifice would eventually be required of them by these same "friends".

What a heart breaking, gut wrenching thing to happen to a person, to be looked upon as worthy of being cast out, ignored, belittled and murdered in the "name of God" by their kinsmen.

All this because they would not "know" either the Father nor the Son.