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.