The word martyr means “witness” in the Latin language. Martyrdom , according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is “the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith; it means bearing witness even unto death”.
Christians from the earliest times, following the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, showed extraordinary courage and fortitude in renouncing their lives for what they believed.
Down through the centuries, Church history records ‘cloud of witnesses’ who willingly and joyfully laid down their lives for Christ and his Church.
As long as Christian faith exists and lived according to the way it ought to be lived there will be martyrs.
Pope St. John Paul II, who himself went through tremendous hardships in the hands of Communists and Nazis, would describe martyrdom as “the most eloquent proof of the truth of the faith, for faith can give a human face even to the most violent of deaths and show its beauty even in the midst of the most atrocious persecution” (Incarnationis Mysterium, #13).
Christ’s own violent death gave human face to Christian living. And it is being enacted by martyrs to our own times.
The feast of Uganda martyrs gives us opportunity to examine our faith year after year. A report by Open Doors USA finds that 7,100 Christians were killed in 2015 for “faith-related reasons.” That’s up 3,000 from 2014. And a CNN report by William J.
Cadigan on January 17, 2016, says Christian persecution reached record high in 2015. We have seen in social media the scenes of beheading of Orthodox Christians in Syria in early 2015 and most recent being cruel slaughter of four Missionary Sisters of Charity and kidnapping of a Salesian priest during the Lenten period.
We have martyrs in various ages, scholarship, and position. St. Polycarp who was a bishop and advanced in age. In offering himself, he would say, “to the Lord who has been faithful to me all these years, how could I betray him”? And he would pray: “I bless you for having judged me worthy from this day and this hour to be counted among your martyrs….
You have kept your promise, God of faithfulness and truth. For this reason and for everything, I praise you, I bless you, I glorify you, through the eternal and heavenly High Priest, Jesus Christ, your beloved Son.”
In the same way, the Martyrs of Uganda through their vivid faith challenged their unpurified customs of their culture, evils of the regime, and other immoral practices of the time.
It is an accepted story that the time of persecution is the time of growth and holiness in the Church.
The blood of the martyrs is not only seed of faith; it is also the apt nutrients for the growth of the church. It also includes agony, distress and afflictions brought by lack of religious freedom, unfavourable condition for sacraments, prayer and worship, and hardships in ministry through hostile laws and deprivations. Surely, it is suffered by the ministers of the church and lay Christians in their own capacity.
Perhaps we will not be called to offer ourselves in a cruel martyrdom like the martyrs of Uganda but we are often called to suffer silently, patiently and courageously. It could be as hard as the bloody martyrdom our holy men and women suffered.
Do the Uganda Martyrs challenge our daily life or remain only something to admire and venerate? As we consider their act of faith as extraordinary, do we have something special to show in our faith? How much has their courage and sacrifice affected our moral living? These are not just rhetoric statements; they are daily challenges in our life calling us to take our faith and moral living seriously.
Lazar Arasu is a priest. www.arasulazar.org
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