Day 95. The Road: The Way of the Martyr
You, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing: … May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.
Testament, by Trappist Monk Dom Christian.
Words addressed to his anticipated assassin, a year before his martyrdom in Algeria in 1993
One final perspective remains in our reflection on the scene of the Transfiguration. We’ve considered the way of the minister through the eyes of Peter. Through John, the beloved disciple, the way of the mystic has become clearer to us. All three disciples model, in different expressions, the way of the missionary – a call that is universal to all Catholics, but lived by some in a most clear and courageous way. Today we consider James, the first apostle to die for the sake of Jesus’ name. In him we find the way of the martyr.
The face of Christ is illuminated in its richest light by the courageous example of the martyrs. While the witness of the word is an eloquent sign directing us to the living Word of God who is Jesus, the witness of blood is a heroic demonstration of the power of the cross. The martyr follows most visibly the way to Golgotha and imitates our Lord’s sacrificial self-gift as the ultimate expression of love. Martyrs, despite great suffering, express profoundly the words of St. Paul, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55)
The word martyr has not fared well in modern times. As with so many Christian terms we’ve considered in this novena, martyr is much misused. A martyr is not someone who walks into a crowded market and blows himself up. Such is the action of a coward, a fool, or worse. Even in speaking of honorable achievements, the word is often misapplied. A martyr is not one who sacrifices greatly for a good cause. Nor is it one who dies heroically for the sake of others. Noble accomplishments, to be sure, but the Church does not honor them with the title of martyr. Martyrs are witnesses, as the Greek root indicates. In Christian tradition, the title refers to those who confess Christ at the cost of their lives. Only the woman or man who is put to death for the sake of Jesus’ name can be rightly called a martyr.
The history of Christianity is adorned with countless examples of this courageous confession. Ignatius the bishop of Antioch (different from our discernment guide) was sentenced to die in the coliseum in Rome roughly 70 years after the resurrection of Jesus. On the way he wrote to his flock pleading not for life but for death: “I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread.” To those dying in the arena with her, St. Perpetua shouted encouragement even after she had been mauled by a lion, “Stand firm in faith, love one another and do not be tempted to do anything wrong because of our sufferings.”
So striking in many of these accounts is the freedom and joy with which the condemned go to their death. Many are recorded as singing on their way to execution, like the Japanese martyrs who sang from their crosses or the Carmelite sisters who went to the guillotine in the French revolution with psalms on their lips. Some martyrs kept their sense of humor even in their final minutes. St. Thomas More joked with his executioner on his way to his own beheading. Standing beside the platform, he dryly commented, “Help me up, but I’ll need no help getting down.” St. Lawrence made jokes even as he was burning to death on a large grill. Turning to the judge who ordered his execution, he said, “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.”
Astounding, too, is the charity of the martyrs expressed in their final words. Following the example of Jesus on the cross who prayed, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” (Lk. 23:34) martyrs have often called down blessings on their killers. St. Stephen, the first recorded Christian martyr, prays at his death, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). From the official transcript of his trial, we know that St. Thomas More said to his judges, “we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation.”
The promise of heaven has been rendered cheap in recent years. As I’ve already observed, it seems like everybody is going. One need only attend a few Christian funerals to conclude that the bar for beatitude has fallen fairly low. The martyrs are our reminder that the cost of discipleship is still high. They stir all Christians to make heaven the treasure for which all treasures, especially life itself, is willingly given up.
Like the way of the missionary, the way of the martyr is not exclusive to any one Christian path. Of the martyrs we’ve considered, many vocations are represented: monk (Dom Christian, with lay brothers among those also slain), wife (St. Perpetua), husband and father (St. Thomas More), deacon (St. Lawrence), religious priest (Paul Miki, Japanese martyr, Jesuit), sisters (French Carmelites) and bishop (St. Ignatius of Antioch). Martyrdom is the crowning call; the highest honor our Lord can bestow for those who seek to walk in his footsteps.
Our willingness to make this ultimate sacrifice will bring vibrancy to any vocational path we pursue. The age of the martyrs isn’t over. This past unhappy century was the most violent in history in its wholesale slaughter of Christians – like the countless souls lost to Communism, to name only one example. Am I willing to make such a sacrifice? If not, am I willing to become willing to die for my faith, by the grace of God? I challenge myself, and all who read this to reflect on these questions with the kind of soul searching and seriousness that makes the heart beat faster and the palms sweat. We cannot be cowards if the world is to be won again for Christ.
At the first beatification of the Jubilee year 2000, Pope St. John Paul II spoke of the important inspiration the martyrs offer us all. “Let us pray to God that the example of fidelity of these…Christians, especially of those families of martyrs…will spur us to renew our commitment to a courageous and fruitful evangelization at all levels of society, and that…the Mother of God and our Mother, will walk at our side along all of life's paths.”
The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. In the renewed missionary call of this the Third Millennium, let’s take stock of our comfortable Catholicism and pray for the kind of vibrant, courageous faith that led the martyrs joyfully singing to their glorious consummation.
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
Pier Giorgio responds: We who by the grace of God are Catholics must steel ourselves for the battle we shall certainly have to fight to fulfill our program and to give our country, in the not too distant future, happier days and a morally healthy society. But to achieve this we need constant prayer to obtain from God that grace without which all our powers are useless.
Let us Pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, show me how to bear all wrongs patiently. Help me to accept the sufferings which others inflict on me because of my desire to be faithful to Jesus.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who protects the innocent, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need:
(in your own words, ask for the Lord to grant you the grace of a priestly vocation. Also, pray for priestly vocations to increase in the Church).
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
THIS IS MY HOUR
1. My Hour: An Overview of the Spiritual Life
The stages of the spiritual journey are described by many saints, most notably by St. John of the Cross. What follows is a simplification of that description using the analogy of an hour measured with the minute hand of a watch. The stages described will be recognizable to most, though the story goes beyond where any one of us is located today. Still the effort will bring rewards. If Jesus knew his hour, we have learned that we should also expect to know our own. Therefore, we stay alert for what the Holy Spirit will reveal.
The Hour shown at right has five phases and four transitions. Each phase is represented by a vowel: A, E, I, O, U. Each phase in the spiritual journey has three aspects:
Process, what God does in us during this phase;
Result, what God brings about at the end of this phase;
Obstacle, what impedes or delays us in this phase.
In the days ahead we will examine each phase and each transition. Today we begin with the first section, “A.”
Spiritual Life Survey Phase: “A”
PROCESS: ATTENTION. In “A” the Process is Attention. God works at getting our attention. We live in a distracted culture and our hyper-busy existence closes us to God’s action and intervention. In this phase God works to break into our crowded lives to make his presence and power known.
RESULT: AWARENESS. God makes us Aware of his personal presence and invites us into a relationship with him. There are generally no feelings associated with this realization. It comes as a simple understanding: we “get it” that it is possible to go from knowing about God to knowing God.
Even so, we haven’t personally experienced this yet in our own lives.
OBSTACLE: APATHY. The obstacle at this stage is Apathy – knowing that we can have a relationship with God, we remain indifferent to his presence. Maybe I dismiss it as something for “religious types” and not for me. Maybe I avoid it because religion has too many rules and I want to feel free. Whatever the reason, we put God off or ignore him altogether.
Reflection: In my journal, I write two or more examples (briefly) of times in my early spiritual life when God got my Attention; when I became Aware of his reality.
Did I respond with openness or with Apathy?
Day of Decision
The “A” phase ends with a Day of Decision. This can be a single, decisive moment, a series of related choices or a growing acceptance based on our Awareness. The Decision is to accept God’s invitation to know and to follow him more closely. While some experience this as an emotional time, others experience a simple, peaceful clarity. Still others realize only in hindsight that a threshold has been crossed in their relationship with God.
What was my Day of Decision like? Can I remember it?
A QUOTE TO NOTE
2. Martyrs Put Christ First
We often hear people say, “Do whatever makes you happy.” But the martyrs show us that dying for the truth and bearing witness to Christ is more important than living for personal comfort or advantage.
We need witnesses—martyrs—who have given themselves totally, so as to show us the way—day after day. We need them if we are to prefer goodness to comfort, even in the little choices we face each day—knowing that this is how we live life to the full. Let us say it once again: the capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. #38, 39
Spe Salvi, On Christian Hope, Benedict XVI, 2007
How can I apply the witness of the martyrs to my own consideration of a celibate vocation?
STORIES OF FAITH
3. “Permission to Die, Mother?”
At the peak of destructive violence in the French Revolution, a group of Carmelite sisters offered a courageous and eloquent witness to the Way of Christ. Follow the link below to read a longer section of their story.
SAID TO HAVE BEEN AS RADIANT as "a queen going to receive her diadem" as she mounted the steps singing, Sister Constance is also reported to have waved aside the executioner and his two valets upon reaching the top of the steps. She thus approached the vertical balance plank unaided, chanting that God's mercy was confirmed upon her.
It was not by accident that such details were noted and reported. Normally at the top of the scaffold steps the hesitant, confused victim was seized on the left by the executioner, on the right by the first valet. The second valet quickly bound the prisoner's hands behind him while forcing him forward until he was up against the vertical plank, to which he was attached with straps.
The confident waving aside of the executioners by a radiant young nun was thus impressive, especially to those hardened to this daily ritual. Luminous dignity and sense of purpose marked her approach to the vertical plank. Strapped to it, her feet left the scaffold as the first valet tipped it forward into horizontal position. In seconds the second valet had adjusted it for length so that her neck was properly placed for securing by the neck-stall. Only then could the chief executioner pull the cord, releasing the triangular blade.
Reports from this period of the Great Terror say that a dozen prisoners could thus be guillotined in 20 minutes. Witnesses recall the ominous pattern of three sounds accompanying each decapitation. First the bump of the balance-plank swinging down into horizontal position; then the click of the neck-stall closing to form a perfect circle around the victim's neck; finally the rushing swish of the falling blade's dead-thudded slice. A muffled fourth sound never spoken of, however, followed this threefold pattern. It was the soft thump as the headless body hit the red-painted cart set by the guillotine. As for the heads, they fell into a blood-stiffened leather bag placed by the executioner at the end of the machine.
The three familiar sounds announced Sister Constance's entry into the Kingdom of the Lamb. The nuns' chant rose in defiance.
For His mercy is confirmed upon us!
Excerpt from: To Quell the Terror, The True Story of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne
by William Bush
Want to Read More?
See separate document: Day 95: Way of Martyrs, Bush, Excerpt
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] Though Dom Christian and six other brothers were slain by Islamic Fundamentalists, the native of Algeria used most of his final Testament to express his esteem for the Muslim people and to distinguish Islam from violent Islamism. “I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder.”
[1] From a letter to the Romans by St. Ignatius of Antioch, Office of Readings, St. Paul Editions, 1983 p. 1597
[2] Ibid. p. 1358
[3] St. John Paul II, Address to pilgrims at the Beatification ceremony of martyrs from Brazil, Belarus, the Philippines, Thailand and Viêtnam