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We have a most peculiar set of Readings for Mass today. There is mention of present and future conflict in every passage:
+ cultural conflict in the story from Jeremiah
+ conflict within the Church, as read in the Letter to the Hebrews
+ conflict among family members as heard in the Gospel.
Then the Lord speaks of setting the earth on fire, and of being, Himself, the source of division among people. Hardly words you’d expect from Him whom the Scriptures describe as the Prince of Peace.
So, what are we to make of all this? We could posit that there are different ways of suffering, as well as different means of experiencing martyrdom. And while only a few will be called to shed their blood, all of us should be prepared to suffer for the Faith at one level or another.
The Twentieth Century was the bloodiest of them all for martyrs for the Faith. More Christians were put to death in the Twentieth Century than in the previous nineteen centuries combined. However, for our purposes today, I want to bring the concept of martyrdom closer to home so that it can speak more closely to our own experience.
There is, today, what theologians describe as a “white martyrdom,” wherein a person is called to give witness to the Faith without actually dying for it. The “death” here is more of a sociological phenomenon wherein a formerly life-giving relationship is damaged or brought to an end because of an attack on the faith of a believer. Our Readings demonstrate how this “white martyrdom” takes place in three different ways:
+ culturally
+ inter-personally, or
+ in an interior dimension.
Let’s look first at Cultural Martyrdom.
While Christians are being decapitated by Muslims in the Middle East, here at home we have entered into an era which sociologists and historians label as a “Culture War,” where some people are fighting to change the very basis of Judeo-Christian cultural values, and others are working to maintain and even strengthen those values. This would entail the sometimes hostile exchange over some hot-button topics such as:
+ the protection of the sanctity of life
+ same-sex “marriage”
+the death-with-dignity debate, and
+ transgender ideology.
The debate exists not only between Christians and non-Christians, but often between practicing Catholics. Here we are called to give witness to the Faith and to the values and virtues which our Faith puts forth. This word, “witness” is the closest English translation to the Latin word martyrum, meaning to speak up, to discuss, to challenge, but also speaks to a mode of living by which one’s faith becomes evident. It involves not an in-your-face proselytism, but a genuine evangelization, bringing Gospel values into the marketplace because we care for the immortal soul of even those who would disagree with us.
A difficulty we might face here is that atheists, agnostics, and those who despise organized Religion tend to have better-prepared arguments than we have. We might know the Faith down to our toes, but remain inarticulate when discussions, debates, or even arguments arise. Our quest to evangelize, then, begins with updating ourselves in Church Teaching, and strengthening our knowledge, so that we can discuss things intelligently.
But evangelizing goes much further than simply winning arguments. It involves:
+ living a virtuous life
+ loving those whose values contradict the words of Christ
+ praying for the conversion of our adversaries, and
+ voting for political candidates who pledge to uphold the values we hold dear.
None on this will be met with gratitude by those who oppose Gospel values, but this is what “white martyrdom” entails. The Prophet Jeremiah nearly lost his life in this way.
Now let’s look at Interpersonal Martyrdom.
This is what Our Lord addresses when He speaks of division within families. The division in worldview may be light, or quite pronounced. Prudence and Charity must direct us here. For instance, several years ago, while riding with my sister and her husband to Thanksgiving Dinner at our brother’s house, as we approached his home, my brother-in-law said to his wife, “Okay, let’s go over the list again.” What list, I wondered? She responded:
+ “With Dan you don’t approach the topic of the President…
+ with Mike, you don’t speak about the war… and
+ with Kathie you don’t ever mention women’s ordination.”
Pretty good advice, without which Thanksgiving Dinner would become disastrous.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote that the fire of which Our Lord speaks is the fire of His love. We see this depicted in the image of the Sacred Heart: the Lord’s heart is displayed with flames emanating from the top. This is not a fire that destroys things, but a fire that makes things pure, bright and free. Being a Christian, then, means daring to entrust oneself to this burning love, and then bringing this light, this purity, and this freedom to the world. Benedict writes further: The message of the Church is there precisely in order to:
+ conflict with our behavior
+ tear man out of his life of lies, and
+ bring clarity and truth."
“Truth makes demands,” he continues, “and it also burns.” This means that Christ comes to divide each of us from whatever divides us from Him.
This leads us now to The Interior Dimension of Martyrdom.
This is a type of martyrdom in which we not only attempt to break bad habits, but with His Grace, begin to put to death anything within ourselves that is displeasing to God. Here the Author of The Letter to the Hebrews writes in a fairly chiding manner: “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” This is an admonition which means, “You haven’t really tried very hard.” Here the struggle to live the Faith becomes internalized. We’re not fighting against cultural influences now, but against the temptation to complacency, to choose what appears to be the easier path: giving-in, rather than tackling the sometimes hard work of maintaining virtue while others are not, or are even mocking us for it.
However, we’re not alone. We read of “a great cloud of witnesses,” that is, the Saints in heaven who struggled against sin in their earthly lives but, by the very struggle, witness to the deeper meaning and higher value of a virtuous life. This suggests that we could become a “martyr for holiness,” enduring the Cross as did Jesus because of our hope to share in His Resurrection, both in the life of heaven to come, and in a life of Grace here on earth.
We learn further that “Christ endured opposition from sinners in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart.” It can be easy to grow weary and lose heart with all the opposition we experience on cultural, inter-personal or interior levels. Yet, the fire of Christ’s love will purify, strengthen, renew, and encourage us to face martyrdom if we’re called upon to do so, and to become part of the great cloud of witnesses with the Saints, so that the Faith may be handed down from one generation to the next until the Lord returns to claim His Kingdom.