Category Archives: Martyrdom

On Liberty of Conscience

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The character of evil, in imitation of its greatest champion, is such that it is ever on the prowl looking to devour the freedom of each man.  One of the means by which such freedom is protected is liberty of conscience.  This natural right of conscience protects each man from having to act in such a way that he is forced to participate in something that he knows to be evil.  As the prevailing culture moves further and further from its Christian roots, the protection by law of the rights of conscience becomes increasingly important.  Therefore, it is worth examining more thoroughly in order bring into relief why it is so vital.

The Character of Conscience

First, we must clear up some of the popular misconceptions about conscience.  It is not a thing like the proverbial angel on the shoulder, but a mode of judgement.  More specifically it is a judgment of practical reason that is linked to the power of man to do what is right and shun what is evil within the concrete circumstances of human life.  Since it is a power of practical reason, it depends upon a knowledge of the principles that lead to genuine human thriving even if it is only concerned with applying those principles.  It is then the power of man to link truth with goodness. 

Conscience, even if it issues commands to the will, is not an act of the will.  Therefore, we must always keep conscience from becoming synonymous with self-will.  Most people treat conscience as if it were freedom to do whatever they want rather than being beholden to the truth.  It carries about with it a certain obstinacy of “sticking to your guns” no matter what.  Therefore, authority is quick to use its power to command actions in conformity with cultural norms.  This is nothing more than Power attempting to replace conscience. 

Conscience protection is the Catholic’s last line of defense against the growing power of the State.  The next step is to cross over into the field of martyrdom.  So we must fight vehemently to keep it in place.  The necessary principles for this defense were laid out quite articulately over a century ago by St. John Henry Newman.  In a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, the saint gives us a defense of the Supremacy of Conscience that fits with a true and Catholic understanding of conscience and its inviolability.

Conscience and Character

Newman notes that all men are by nature bound to observe the natural law.  Our apprehension of this Divine Law occurs within the realm of conscience.  Even “though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.”  Steeped within Catholic tradition, Newman views conscience as the voice of God and not merely the creation of man.  It may be more or less heard correctly by each man, but it still remains what he calls the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”

Based upon the fact that conscience is properly viewed as the voice of God, the Fourth Lateran Council said: “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.”  To act against conscience is to act against God.  Despite the fact that God has implanted this voice of conscience commanding us to do good and avoid evil, the ear of the intellect needs to be trained and given its “due formation.”  This formation must come through reason enlightened by Divine Faith because the latter was given to purify the former.  To fail to form the conscience properly constitutes a great evil, perhaps one of the greatest because it chooses to deny conscience its rightful dignity.

A man has a right to something because he has a corresponding duty.  The right of conscience flows from his obligation to obey it.  But this obligation does not flow from a need to be true to oneself, but to obey God.  As Newman puts it, if conscience is the voice of the Moral Governor then the rights of conscience are really the rights of the Creator and the duties toward Him.  “Conscience,” Newman says, “has rights because it has duties”. This ultimately is what makes freedom of conscience so important and why we must protect it at all costs.  St. Thomas More is the model in this regard.  He was a martyr because he obeyed the dictates of God mediated through His conscience.

As religious liberty goes into decline, conscience protection becomes more and more important.  Pope Leo XIII called it true liberty, the liberty of the sons of God that shows that “the dignity of man and is stronger than all violence or wrong.” (Libertas, 30).  When all the power of the State bears down upon a single man and he still refuses to join in evil, it shows that man is bigger than the State and shows that he is made for God. Leo XIII calls it “the kind of liberty the Apostles claimed for themselves with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity confirmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian liberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man toward God” (Libertas, 30).

What Happens to Aborted Children?

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At the heart of the Pro-Life movement is the overwhelming concern not just for the temporal well-being of members of society, but for their eternal salvation.  Christians are, by definition, Pro-Life because they desire that society at its core be built upon conditions that are conducive to the salvation of souls.  That is what makes abortion and particularly pernicious offense against life—it puts not only the soul of the mother and those who cooperate with her in jeopardy, but the eternal destiny of the child in danger as well.  Many Catholics are quick to declare these children martyrs and assume that they are in heaven because of it.  However, this belief is by no means definitive and there are good reasons to think that this might not be the case.  Once our gaze is turned towards these innocent victims and the question of their eternal destination, we find that our zeal for souls drives us to eliminate abortion all the more.

To grapple with this issue, we must start with what we can say with assurance.  Despite not being healed from Original Sin and its wounds, these children are not necessarily destined for hell.  Original Sin is not a condition of guilt but one of deprivation.  Mankind is deprived of the gift of sanctifying grace, a necessity for entrance into the Beatific Vision, at their conception.  This does not make the child guilty, only unequipped.  Hell is a punishment for actual sin, and with no actual sins committed, the child does not merit hell.  This is why Pope St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that mothers can entrust their aborted children “with sure hope [to] the Father and His mercy” (EV, 99, Acta Apostolicae Sedis version).

In the Summa, St. Thomas draws a very important distinction in this regard that is worth discussing.  He says that often “children are punished in temporal matters together with their parents, both because they are a possession of their parents, so that their parents are punished also in their person, and because this is for their good lest, should they be spared, they might imitate the sins of their parents, and thus deserve to be punished still more severely” (ST II-II, q.108, art.4 ad.3).  The “good” that St. Thomas is referring to presumptively would refer to not just towards their temporal welfare but their eternal as well.  But this could refer not only to the good of reward but also the good of receiving less of a punishment than a person might otherwise.

So we can say that the child is not destined to hell per se, but this does not mean that they are destined for heaven either.  There is still the open question of Limbo as an option.   Assuming that John Paul II’s comment about a “sure hope” means hope in the theological sense then the eternal salvation of the child is at least a possibility.  In other words we can now turn to the question about how it is that a child might be equipped for Heaven through the infusion of sanctifying grace.

How then might their salvation be possible?  The first would be through a special miracle akin to the sanctification that is presented in Scripture.  Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, and the prophet Jeremiah whom St. Thomas said were sanctified “outside of the common law as though miraculously in their mother’s wombs” (Commentary on the Sentences, dist.6, q.1).  Although this means it is theologically possible, the acts of sanctification were extraordinary and a result of the mission of the three children.

Deprived of the ordinary means of salvation through baptism, it is also possible to posit that they received a Baptism in Blood.  In short, the children would be classified as martyrs.  Scripture once again offers us an example in the Holy Innocents.  In adults martyrdom occurs when a person dies for some supernatural reason such as in defense of some Christian virtue or as testimony of faith.  Despite being deprived of the use of reason, the Holy Innocents have long been considered to be martyrs because they died in defense of Christ.  This consideration is based upon both Divine Revelation and the Church’s binding and loosing authority.  The Church may have the authority to declare martyrdom, but it cannot be without reason.    It is not clear that the children are being put to death for a supernatural reason as in the case of the Holy Innocents.  Either way though the Church would need to officially declare them as martyrs in order for us to consider them to actually be martyrs.

There is a third option.  Because “God wills that all men be saved” we might assume that prior to death each child is given an opportunity to be saved.  This would include infants in the womb.  We can posit then that they are each tested in some way and given a chance to accept the gift of sanctifying grace.  The problem with this view is that it would require cooperation with actual grace and the ability to use their reason.

Given the inherent difficulties which each of these the solutions, we can begin to see why Limbo remains as a theological possibility not only for unbaptized children, but children in the womb.  What is clear however is that we need to treat the issue of abortion as a real threat to the eternal salvation of the child in the womb and continue to fight for its elimination in our society.   

God’s Salt

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In his extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine says that Our Lord has laid out for us “the perfect standard of the Christian life.”  Prepared from all eternity, it is the most perfect sermon.  We should be hanging on the Word’s every word.  From beginning to end Our Lord has one goal in mind, to give the blueprint for sainthood.  The outline is made in the Beatitudes and the “how-to” follows.  The first words then of the “how-to” section are vital to understanding what it means to be a Christian and therefore merit our close scrutiny.

After defining Christians as those who find their joy in being persecuted, Our Lord tells His disciples they must be salty; “You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?  It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Mt 5:13).  To modern ears the Saline Commandment might strike us as a bit odd, especially because we only think of salt as a seasoning.  But Our Lord had something deeper in mind making this a most perfect metaphor for the Christian mind, something that we can begin to grasp more clearly if we look at salt itself.

The Master of Metaphor

First, we must admit that Our Lord was a master of metaphor and the reasoning for this is simple.  Our Lord did not need to search for a metaphor to describe the Christian, He simply created the metaphor.  Salt may have plenty of practical uses (all of which could be accomplished another way if Our Lord so decreed), but salt is what it is precisely because Our Lord wanted to use it to reveal the truth to His disciples.  In this case the truth of what it means to be a true disciple.  Catholics used to grasp this intuitively because they had a sacramental vision of reality.  Thanks to an unhealthy scientific excess, we have lost that ability and need to regain it.  That begins by resisting the temptation to simply say salt is “nothing but” Sodium Chloride and to probe deeper into its meaning. 

Salt itself is formed by the evaporation of salt water.  The process of evaporation involves two outside elements—sun and air or wind.  Salt cannot escape the sea water without these two things.  Now in sacramental language, the seas water is associated with chaos.  The Sun is Christ and the Wind is the Holy Spirit.  Putting them all together we find that His disciples cannot escape the chaos of the world without Our Lord and the Holy Spirit.  This is to make sure that the “try-hards” recognize that the Beatitudes are absolutely impossible without the infusion of grace.  Salty Christians then are formed.

The Real Saline Solution

We can glean more of Our Lord’s meaning, especially what He means when He calls them “salt of the earth” by examining how salt was commonly used.  Prior to refrigeration, salt was the primary preservative for food.  By reducing the water molecules in the food through osmosis, bacteria had no medium in which to grow.  What little bacteria did land on the food would die because it attacked their DNA.  In short, salt was used to stop decay.

So too it is with the Christian in the world.  Our Lord is saying that once they become salt, the disciples keep the world from decay.  This role of Christians is one that is easily overlooked but one that is worth examining more closely.

When God saw all of the evil that was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, He told Abraham that He was going to destroy it.  But it wasn’t just as a punishment for the evil that He threatened to destroy it, but because there was no salt to keep it from decaying.  He could find no righteous men to preserve it.  Sodom and Gomorrah were fully decayed and their destruction was inevitable.  Had their been salt, they would have been preserved.

Christians are “salt of the earth” precisely because they preserve it and enhance its flavor.  All around us we see signs of decay, but true Christians can slow that decay by their very presence.  It is saints that change the world, not primarily by their actions, but by their sanctity.  The solution to our cultural crisis is simple—be a saint.  It is saints who have turned every culture around and it is saints that will turn ours around.  Saints are those who are committed to God’s will no matter what and those are the ones that He uses to season the world. 

Because of its dehydrating qualities salt was often used in war as a means of destroying crops.  So too God will use some of His salt to destroy the crops of the Evil One.  As His salt we must, each and every one of us, be prepared to be poured out on the ground.  Martyrdom is never really that far away for the Christian and we must be prepared for it to come.  But even if it doesn’t God’s salt must continue to keep the bacteria from spreading from within their own sphere of influence.  The thing about salt is that we immediately recognize its presence as well as its absence.  We must be salty then.

Before closing, let us take to heart Jesus’ words regarding losing our savor.  For salt cannot actually lose its savor without ceasing to be salt.  Despite the fact that we no longer use this language, it is important for us to do everything we can to stay in a state of grace.  If we lose our savor, it can be restored by becoming salt again, but we are at a great risk for being trampled underfoot.  All the saints prayed for the gift of perseverance so let us join their litany to stay salty.

Preparing for Martyrdom

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Very few men have changed the world as much as Francesco di Bernadone did.  While in prayer one day in a run down chapel in Assisi, Italy, he received a Divine mandate to “rebuild my Church.”    After a false start by literally rebuilding the church he was standing in, he set out to reform the crumbling Church.  In the process, St. Francis as he is better known, became one of the most beloved saints for his radical commitment to Christ and His Church.  But the rebuilding of the Portiuncula was not his only “blunder”.  He also thought he could win the martyr’s crown once by visiting the Sultan and trying to get him to convert.  He failed on both accounts, winning the Sultan’s esteem but not his soul.  Francis may have been called to be a great saint, but not a martyr, mainly because he misunderstood martyrdom.

When pressed, most of us would say that martyrdom consists in dying for the faith.  That of course is part of it, but it is not really the primary part.  The primary part is in the literal meaning of the term martyr.  A martyr is a witness.  And not just any witness, but is a certain type of witness that may end in death, but it need not per se.  That is why we refer to Our Lady as Queen of Martyrs and her spiritual son St. John the Evangelist as martyrs even though they did not die by the sword.  They both attest to the fact that death is not the end or the goal, but a means by which the martyr witnesses to Christ.  Otherwise we would not be able to differentiate it with dying for a cause.  As noble as that might be, it is not the same thing as Christian martyrdom.

Martyrs as Witnesses to What?

The key in grasping the distinction is understanding what it is that a martyr is witnessing to.  He is witnessing to the truth of the Resurrection of Christ and his own personal share in it.  His Master too was once put to death, but by His own power He destroyed death’s hold over Him and all those who are in Him.  “O death where is your victory.  O death where is your sting” (1Cor 15:55).  The Christian martyr may fear the pain leading up to death, but has no fear of death itself.  In fact, her eyes are fixed on the prize, so much so that she is willing to undergo any amount of pain to obtain it.

The hagiography of the martyrs is full of stories of incredibly painful deaths that the martyrs suffered at the hands of their persecutors.  But hardly a single story describes the pain, only the joy.  We might be tempted to think it is merely omitted for the sake of the reader.  Tempted, that is, until we realize that the descriptions of their countenance seems to suggest the exact opposite.  They seem to feel nothing.  They don’t sweat while they are being boiled alive (St. Cecilia), their bodies are riddled with arrows and spears while they continue preaching (St. Edmond), they sing Psalms for 15 days in a starvation bunker (St. Maximilian Kolbe) and they joke while being roasted alive (St. Lawrence).  You might think they felt no pain at all based on the descriptions. 

And herein lies the important truth of martyrdom—they most probably didn’t feel pain.  Or at least, if they did, it was way out of proportion to what was actually happening.  And that is because martyrdom is a gift from God so that the merits of witnessing even to the point of death are given to the martyr.  They are witnessing not to their faith in the Resurrection, but to God’s power that was made manifest through the Resurrection.  The martyr is tried so far beyond human capacities that it becomes so blatantly obvious that it is only by the power of God that a human being could endure these things.  The martyr then is both a witness and an instrument.  Martyrdom is not really about the martyr at all but about God.  It is a very public witness to His power over death as shown by how hard it is to actually kill the martyr.  The witnesses to the martyrdom are left without a doubt that something supernatural has happened, even if they later choose to deny it.

Why St. Francis was Wrong…and Right

St. Francis wasn’t wrong in thinking that martyrdom would fulfill his vocation to rebuild the Church.  He was wrong by not seeing it as the means God had chosen for him to do it.  It was a gift that he tried to seize.  But he was absolutely right in his assessment that it would rebuild the Church.  This is why Tertullian uttered his famous dictum that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” 

God never gives up on man so that when the world goes deaf, He simply speaks in sign language using martyrs.  Trapped in paganism and hedonism, Rome was transformed by the Christian martyrs who witnessed to the power of their God over death (no other god had that) and no fear of pain and suffering.  Roman soldiers thought they were brave until they watched a young girl march to her death with a smile on her face.  After trying to kill her they knew something Divine was happening.  They saw a way out of the maze of their Godless existence.  And the Church grew at 40% per decade into the middle of the fourth century on the preaching of the martyrs.

Martyrs have been and will remain an integral part of the preaching of the Church.  In some times and places they used only words to preach and in other ages, especially those in which the world grew tone deaf to Divine invitations, the preachers were the martyrs. 

One can’t help but see the parallels between our own decadent society and the decadence of Rome that is leading to widescale deafness.  The public witness of many Catholics is falling upon deaf ears so we should expect that God will raise up a generation of martyrs soon.  Our role is to prepare ourselves and the next generation for this eventuality.  Like in all the previous persecution it will come with little warning and those who have prepared well for it will be able to respond to the gift.  Those who haven’t won’t.  But either way, we should expect that they will be coming soon.

A Death Like His

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For those who have spent any time in school, it is a universal experience.  On the cusp of final exams, you perform the “what’s the worst I can do and still get an A?” calculation.  Or if you don’t have an A, you’ll ask “what will my grade be if I get 100%?”.   Crunching the numbers, the study plan develops accordingly.  Outside of the academic arena this approach can get us in trouble—especially when we apply a similar pattern of thinking to life’s final exam, death.  We assume that if we have performed well during the semester of life, then death will be a breeze.  Not only does this attitude ignore the tremendous temptations that await us, but it fails to discern the truly Christian meaning of death, or more to the point, the meaning of life.  For a Christian the meaning of life is dying well.

When St. Paul was being held captive in Rome, he penned his great opus on joy to the Church in Philippi.  Written during his first imprisonment in Babylon (c.f. 1 Pt 5:13), the Apostle reflected upon his own approach to death.  But rather than performing the “end of semester calculus” he “forgets what lies behind straining forward to what lies ahead” (Phil 3:14).  In other words, St. Paul eschews the cruise control and sprints all the way through the finish line.

This attitude is antithetical to the spirit of the world which confronts death in one of two ways.  First there is the mode of distraction.  It looms in the back of our minds, but as something we will deal with later.  Meanwhile we come up with creative ways to avoid thinking about it.  As Pascal maintains, “we run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.”  We know it is inevitable, but we hope it catches us by surprise and “peacefully”.  Second there is the wisdom of pop-psychology which summons us to “accept it.”  Paradoxically this type of acceptance is a denial.  Like its proverbial doppelganger, taxes, we simply treat it as something to be planned around and cheated.

Planning for Death

Scripture on the other hand tells us to plan for death.  As the Book of Sirach tells us, “Remember the Last Things and you will never sin” (Sir 7:36).  Biblically speaking, to remember is not simply to keep it in the back of our mind or to “accept it” but to make it a present reality.  Knowing you are going to die is one thing, knowing how you will die is quite another.  Very likely we have no knowledge of the external circumstances but we can rehearse the interior dispositions that will accompany our deaths.  Just as we plan fiscally for our deaths with life insurance and a will, we should plan physically by preparing our souls, making death a testament.

In order to hit the target, we must first distinguish what we are aiming at.  The goal is, as St. Paul tells the Romans, to be united to Christ in a “death like His” (Rom 6:5).  Our own death, not surprisingly, finds meaning in His Passion.  Like a lamb being led to slaughter, Our Lord was silent in His sufferings.  The only time that Christ lets out a cry of anguish during His Passion is at the moment of His death.  The agony of His death is so keen that He could not remain silent.  The cry of anguish was proceeded by His last words—“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  That is, Christ the Priest, has made a definitive offering of the pain of death to the Father.  A “death like His” is one that has been offered to the Father.

Life is not really pass/fail.  We run through the finish line because in death we have something, perhaps our greatest something, to offer to the Father.  Death ceases to be a punishment and becomes a true offering of our lives to God.  Death, when offered in union with Christ, becomes the pathway to Life.  It is when we receive the fullest share in the priesthood of Christ and in turn conform ourselves more fully to Him as victim.  It is only at death that we can truly offer our life to God—no other person, even Christ Himself, can do that for us.

A Priestly Annointing for Death

To prepare us for the greatest of our priestly tasks, the Church “completes the holy anointings that mark the whole Christian life…completing our conformity to the death and Resurrection of Christ, just as Baptism began it” (CCC 1523) in the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.  This Sacrament, even though it is often touted as a Sacrament of Healing, is first and foremost a priestly anointing so that “the sick person receives the strength and the gift of uniting himself more closely to Christ’s Passion: in a certain way he is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior’s redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus” (CCC 1521).

A proper understanding of death as primarily a priestly occupation, enables the Christian, even when facing great bodily pains surrounding death, can remain spiritually joyful.  God loves a cheerful giver.  Unfortunately this aspect of death as a definitive offering has been lost to the prevailing culture.  We collectively accept the wine and myrrh thinking we can anesthetize death, depriving the person of their opportunity to give their life to God.  This is also why euthanasia is the very opposite of mercy, robbing the person of the only true gift they have to offer to God.

Seeing the Sacrament of the Anointing as an anointing for a good death also helps bring out another important facet of death.  The dying person often sees himself as a burden upon other people, especially his loved ones.  But the Church says that there is an Ecclesial grace attached to the Sacrament such that the “sick who receive this sacrament, ‘by freely uniting themselves to the passion and death of Christ,’ ‘contribute to the good of the People of God.’  By celebrating this sacrament the Church, in the communion of saints, intercedes for the benefit of the sick person, and he, for his part, though the grace of this sacrament, contributes to the sanctification of the Church and to the good of all men for whom the Church suffers and offers herself through Christ to God the Father” (CCC 1522).  By uniting themselves to Christ in a “death like His,” the sick man finds joy, able to say with St. Paul, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church…” (Col 1:24).  Far from being a burden, the sick actually lighten the burden on the other members of Christ body.

The great spiritual masters of the Church all speak of the art of dying well.  Like any art, it can only be done well when it is practiced and prepared for.  Remember death and you will do well in life.

Why Christianity Cannot be Separated from the Cross

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All too often in our haste to “defend” God, we fail to ask, and more importantly, answer, what are the most foundational questions of the Christian life.  Take, for example, the question of suffering.  Quick to build the bridge made by man’s free will, we cleanly unite God’s omnipotence and His omnibenevolence with suffering.  Meanwhile, we fail to ask the more personally relevant question as to why it seems that Christians suffer more than non-Christians.  Of course this is not true in every individual case, but there is a certain universality we all observe.  Not to minimize the suffering of the various groups at the hands of genocidal maniacs, but all of the totalitarian regimes of the past two and a half centuries had a common target: Christians.

For many Christians this is a sign that, very soon, a great chastisement is going to be visited upon mankind.  It is only a matter of time before God removes His hand of mercy and rains fire from heaven, wiping out our modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.  Others can only see God’s “mercy,” unable to fathom such vengeance from Heaven.  In the usual manner of finding the Catholic solution, neither is entirely true nor are they entirely false.  That the world in recent times has gone off the rails and that Heaven cannot remain silent is without question.  But what if God’s vengeance is being rained out upon the earth and is filtered through the hands of mercy?

Before you dismiss this as theological doublespeak, hear me out.  No mere theological sleight of hand, it actually answers the foundational question I opened with.  Christians are the ones who suffer more because they are the ones who actually bear the brunt of the chastisement.  In so doing they act as the hands of God’s mercy keeping the punishments from falling upon the rest of mankind.  God’s mercy and His justice, two sides of the same coin.

There is a Scriptural precedent that illuminates this idea.  When God “contemplates” destroying Sodom and Gomorrah He admits to Abraham that He will hold back its destruction if He finds righteous inhabitants within those cities.  It is only when He finds none that He allows the destruction to happen.  It wasn’t just because He refused to destroy the righteous (even they would eventually die), but because the righteous act as a shield to those around them, holding back the full consequences of sin that would lead to the destruction of the unrighteous.  In shielding those around them from the flaming arrows, the righteous still get burned (usually by the very people they are shielding).  The just debt for sin is still paid through the application by the Christian of the merits of Christ.

Justice?

All this talk of God’s justice seems absurd when Christians are “punished” for not just their own sins, but the crimes of others.  There is nothing just in this.  Except that is, if it is willingly borne and the person is rewarded accordingly.  This is why it is such an important question—it is a reminder of what it means to be a Christian.  “When Christ calls a man,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, “He bids him come and die.”  In becoming a Christian through Baptism, we are brought into the very life of Christ.  Through the Sacrament of Confirmation, we are offered as sacrificial witnesses (i.e martyrs).  Christians recapitulate Our Lord’s life and death so as to share in the reward of His resurrection.  This is no mere theological metaphor, but an absolute truth and one that ought to inform our every action.

Christ came to make reparation and to save souls.  He did this through His suffering and death.  The Christian merely continues that mission—armed with power that He won for them as the God-Man.  The first soul that I must save is my own, but this is no mere “me and Jesus” thing.  He will use my willingness to save others (see Col 1:24).  The Church in her members too must go through His Passion and spread its power throughout the world.  Therefore you can never define a Christian without making reference to the Cross because a Christian is not a Christian without picking up the Cross.  It is not my Cross that I carry, but His.  The job of the Christian is to carry it through the streets so that others can come in contact with it.

All too often we forget that this is in fact what we signed up for when we chose the Christian life.  We volunteered to be “other Christs,” allowing His life to become incarnate once again in us.   That may sound really sweet when we are talking about being nice to other people and spreading Jesus’ love.  But that is not the only part, nor is it really the most important part.  We have accepted a life of suffering for the salvation of souls.  That can never, ever be forgotten.  The more often we recall this fundamental truth and embrace our crosses, the greater our reward.  That is why there is nothing unjust—it is only through suffering voluntarily accepted or undertaken that “an eternal weight of glory, that far outweighs our afflictions can be built up within us” (2 Cor 4:17).  Suffering can only be understood in relation to the promise of the reward.  In other words, our willingness to suffer is a measure of the depth of our faith.

Suffering and Our Lord’s Agony in the Garden

What does that actually look like?  Perhaps this is more of a self-indictment than anything else, but I suspect this is where many of us struggle.  We don’t ask the question because we don’t like the answer.  We know everything of what has been said is objectively true.  Yet, it does not ring true within our hearts.  There are three reasons for this, each of which can be illuminated by looking closely at Our Lord’s Agony in the Garden.

First, there is the natural repulsion to suffering.  As mortal creatures, there is always a physical recoil of pain and suffering.  No one will naturally “feel” like suffering.  Even Our Lord felt this pull to a certain extent in the Garden.  But, like Our Lord’s “not my will but your will be done”, one can will to suffer without actually feeling like it.

Second, and this is often the biggest obstacle, is the fact that no one can will to suffer in the abstract.  We often avoid thinking about suffering because we imagine our worst fears becoming reality.  But Christ could only say, “Your will, not mine” after the sufferings He was about to endure were brought before His mind.  We can fall into a trap by getting ahead of ourselves and letting our imagination (with the help of the Evil One) get ahead of reality.  We cannot say yes until we know what we are saying yes to.

Third, we know that we should want to suffer, but we find no strength to do so and therefore grow discouraged or forget about it altogether.  There is only one way out of this trap—admit our weakness to Our Lord.  He will only heal what we ask Him to heal.  The great sufferings of the saints are not because they were strong-willed, but because they humbly knew they were not and allowed grace to make them stronger.  There is no “fake it ‘til you make it” on this one.  Instead we can only begin by saying “I want to want to suffer for You” and allow Him to implant that desire in us.    All too often our unwillingness to tell Jesus how weak we really are is the biggest impediment to our spiritual growth.

Why should we look to Our Lord so closely in the Garden?  It is not just He is a model, but because every action He performed, including this one, was done to win specific graces for us.  Those moments when we struggle with this part of our Christian vocation are the moments that we need to turn to Him in the Garden and ask that He give us those graces He fought so hard to win for us.  In a certain sense, not to take hold of the graces He won is to make Him suffer in vein.

Now it becomes clear as to why the “blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”  Only by re-presenting the sacrifice of Christ to the world, can Christians win the world.  Those who were our enemies, now become our friends.  History is rife with examples of true Christian heroes—the ones who rather than defeating their enemies, win them over.  This same challenge is before us.  How much suffering is one soul worth?

On Martyrdom

Martyrdom

The recent murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel by two Islamic jihadists while he was celebrating Mass has served as a stark reminder to those in the West the deathly reality that many Christians in the East face daily.  Nearly all the Catholic media covering the brutal act label him as a martyr.  While it is not unreasonable to think that he may in fact have been martyred, it is premature to proclaim him as one.  Not everyone who is killed for the faith is a martyr, but instead the Church has several conditions she checks before declaring someone a martyr.  In the mind of the Church, martyrdom is not something we can manufacture ourselves but instead is a vocation or calling by God.  This means that we must be patient and allow the Church to play her role as Mother in discerning the authenticity of the vocation before calling someone a martyr on our own.

In recognition that there were those who were loosely bestowing the title of Martyr, Pope Benedict XVI in a letter to the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints defined it as “(T)he voluntary enduring or tolerating of death on account of the Faith of Christ or another act of virtue in reference to God.”  He also reiterated the conditions for declaring a true martyrdom.

First there are the motives of the martyr himself.

“The martyrs of the past and those of our time gave and give life (effusio sanguinis [lit., ‘shedding of blood’]) freely and consciously in a supreme act of love, witnessing to their faithfulness to Christ, to the gospel and to the Church.”

The key to understanding martyrdom is connected to its literal meaning—witness.  A martyr accepts death voluntarily so as to witness to a good that is higher than life in the body.  He testifies by his actions the truth of the Gospel, most especially that Christ has definitively defeated death by His Resurrection.  Death has no sting for the martyr and therefore in steadfastness to his testimony of Christ, he is willing to endure it—“for to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

In this way Christian martyrdom is different from simply dying for a cause.  A martyr bears witness to the truth, and not just any truth, but a truth that is referred to God (i.e. we know He requires them of us and rewards us for them).  Faith requires both an inward belief and an outward expression and martyrdom becomes a supreme act of faith.

The reason why it is important to never lose sight of the fact that it is an act of witnessing is because death is not the goal.  Otherwise it would be akin to suicide.  In this way it is very different from something like Islamic “martyrdom” which usually consists in killing oneself (and taking others with you).  But Christian martyrdom is solely about witnessing even if that witness requires death.  This is why Peter and John after being chastised and beaten by the Jews were joyful in their witness to “obey God rather than men” even though they were not actually killed.

The second condition that Benedict XVI reiterated was related to the circumstances:

It is of course necessary to find irrefutable proof of readiness for martyrdom, such as the outpouring of blood and of its acceptance by the victim.

There is a certain amount passivity in the martyr that is akin to the passivity of Christ on the Cross.  Although the martyr is ready to suffer death, he does not seek it.  This ready acceptance of death in testimony of the Faith that is often the most difficult to establish.

Finally there is the intention of the persecutor.  He must show that it is a hatred of the faith that motivates him.

It is likewise necessary, directly or indirectly but always in a morally certain way, to ascertain the odium Fidei [“hatred of the Faith”] of the persecutor.

If we look at the case of Fr. Hamel specifically, it seems pretty clear that the killers were acting based on a hatred of the Faith.  Attacking a Catholic priest during Mass (assuming no other personal mitigating circumstances) would seem to be motivated primarily by a hatred of the faith.

Fr. Hamel

It is the other two conditions that would need to be established as well.  If the media reports of the incident are accurate, it appears that Fr. Hamel did in fact resist the attackers.  He apparently kicked at them just before they killed him.  An eyewitness named Sr. Danielle also said he resisted: “”They forced him to his knees and he tried to defend himself and that’s when the drama began,” said the nun.

This may seem as if this is just being a nitpick.  Clearly he was killed because he was a Catholic priest celebrating Mass.  Isn’t that enough?

In short, no, but it is important to understand what is being said.  If martyrdom is a vocation then to say that Fr. Hamel may not be a martyr is taking nothing away from him.  Nor is anything being said about his tremendous courage in facing his attackers and standing up to them.  There is nothing wrong with trying to defend yourself in that situation.  He should be lauded for his courage.

But, it is uncharitable on our part to refer to him as a martyr before the Church does.  It is akin to the habit of prematurely declaring someone a saint.  We should always act upon the presumption that the person is in purgatory.  Even if he is not, our prayers will have already been applied to him such that they will be part of the reason why he avoided it.  Because God is eternal, He knows of our prayers before we even pray them so that the merits can be applied retroactively.  Even if we are seeking his intercession, “our prayer for the dead is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective” (CCC 959).

There is another reason why we should have a clear idea of what true martyrdom consists in and that is because the Sacrament of Confirmation marks all of us are marked for martyrdom even if we may not actually be called to it.  The sacramental grace that is bestowed on us in Confirmation is the “power of the Holy Spirit” by which we are enabled to believe firmly and profess boldly the Gospel (i.e witness).  When the Bishop lays his hands on the Confirmandi’s head,  he is setting them aside as a sacrifice to God the same way that the Levitical priests always laid their hands upon the head of victim of the burnt offering sacrifice to God, they always laid their hands upon its head (c.f. Lev 1:3 and Exodus 29:10, 15).  In Baptism we are made as “sons in the Son” and in Confirmation we are made to share His lot as a sacrifice.

Just like the solder who trains as if he is going to battle even if he may never make it on the front lines, we must train as if God will call us to martyrdom.  As Aquinas says “the virtue of martyrdom consists in a preparation of mind should the situation arise.”  We must know exactly what we are training for—to witness to an unwavering faith in the power of the Resurrection even if it means accepting death.

All too often we treat martyrdom as some shortcut or something we just fall into.  But every one of the true martyrs readied themselves long before the actual event.  They were in the habit of building their love for God through a total self-denial.  This is why the distinction between red martyrdom and white martyrdom is misleading.  There is only one martyrdom.  The material of the so-called white martyrdom is simply preparation for the real thing.  We may not all be called to it, but most certainly we are called to prepare for it.

Are you ready?