Every
day we celebrate many saints. Only the most known are mentioned in
the main calendars, but in fact if you look at the detailed
catalogues of saints on a daily basis, you’ll be surprised to see
their great numbers.
On
the 13th of April, two of them - Pope Martin the 1st and young
Blessed Rolando Rivi - went through martyrdom. Let us reflect and
ponder on Martyrdom.
Pope Martin I Martyr |
Martyrdom
is the highest imitation of Christ, the highest level of holiness,
because a holy life is crowned by the highest way of following the
Lord and imitating his life: giving himself to us, dying for us on
the Cross.
It
is important for each and every Christian to ask himself this
question: What is the most important aspect of Martyrdom? - not in
their eyes, but in the eyes of God.
In
our eyes, we might be impressed by the horrors of the ordeals the
martyrs go through. We might be impressed by the barbaric behaviour
that we humans are capable of doing to each another. We could be
struck by the fact that God, who certainly was very present in the
life of these saints, never intervened to stop these horrors - think
of Jesus himself, God didn’t stop his enemies and the people who
wanted to torture him and kill him to do so. Whilst it looks as if
God is ‘absent’, watching the horror and not doing anything, in
fact He is working more than ever, as we will see. You might be
struck by the fact that one of the martyrs is even a Pope, the
visible head of the Church on earth, although of course the Lord is
the Head of the Church.
So
in the end, watching the horrors of martyrdom, you might feel
helpless. You might overlook the core of martyrdom.
These
two martyrs - Pope Martin and Blessed Rivi - went through huge
ordeals and humiliations… they lived in different eras, they had
different “enemies” Rivi, who was a seminarian, had the Italian
Communists against him. The other, who was a Pope had the Byzantine
(other Christians like him) against him, because they drifted into a
heresy of not recognising Jesus’ two wills, the divine and the
human and not accepting what the Pope said.
Blessed Rolando Rivi Martyr |
Of
course each one of them in his heart presented himself as a victim to
the Lord, in the hands of his enemies, like Jesus and in Jesus…
offering life for the Lord’s cause.
But
now contemplate the darkest moments in the tortures of each one of
them, - some lasted hours some lasted days - and think: what is the
core of Martyrdom? Is it just dying for Christ because of the hatred
for Faith?
"Martyrdom
is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means
bearing witness even unto death" (Catechism no. 2473)
Many
people die for very noble causes. So what is the core reason that
makes somebody a Christian martyr? Martyrdom is the highest Grace and
the highest achievement for any follower of Jesus. I think that the
highest act God can do (in such horrendous ordeals) is for us to be
elevated and given the Holy Spirit and so we become capable with His
Help to forgive our torturers and pray for them. This is the core of
Martyrdom. Remember Jesus on the Cross saying: “Father forgive
them, they don’t know what they are doing”;
"Father forgive them, they don't know what they are doing" |
remember Jesus having
to forgive Judas, remember Mary, mother of Jesus, who had to forgive
Judas, remember the first Martyr after Jesus and Mary: Stephen, who
forgave the persons stoning him (see the Acts of the Apostles
chapters 6-7).
St Stephen Protomartyr |
If,
while submitted to such horrors, a human being reaches - by the power
of the Holy Spirit - the point to forgive and pray for his
persecutors, then we have arrived at a fairly deep understanding of
what is happening in the heart of a martyr.
The
risk is to consider their fortitude, resilience, patience,
sufferings… thinking that martyrdom is a matter of self control,
pure human faithfulness or personal resilience and fortitude. While
in fact these aspects are only the crust of martyrdom.
Can
we in any form relate to that?
Well,
the first point to clarify is to say: one doesn’t reach martyrdom
in one shot. In order to reach that high state of docility to the
Holy Spirit, there is a life of spiritual growth behind it. Martyrdom
in itself is the crowning of that journey of growth. Behind it there
is a journey of forgiveness that started probably years before and
then grew.
In
the “Our Father” we receive the seed of Christianity and the core
of Martyrdom: “as we forgive those who trespass against us, hate
us,...”. How many times during one day do we have the opportunity
to forgive?
But
without the Grace of God we can’t forgive, pray for or bless… So
from day one, the real journey toward the real martyrdom starts this
way: opening our heart to the direct and personal action of the Holy
Spirit in our heart, wanting to come in it, heal it, strengthen it,
so it becomes capable of forgiving. Only God forgives. We just offer
our “yes” to Him, so he comes in us with his power of healing and
forgiveness and helps us forgive, heals our heart, changes it, opens
it, makes it a heart of flesh, helps us embrace our “enemy”,
helps us pray for him, communicate His Grace to him. We need to
bestow God’s Grace on all our enemies. You might object: ‘they
are not worth it, they are bad people!’ Ok, but weren’t we all
bad people in the beginning? Aren’t we all persons who were saved
by Jesus without any merit from our part? So why do we harden our
heart towards our ‘enemy’?
God
can help us forgive, what He needs is not our capacity to forgive but
our desire - our “yes” for forgiveness.
My
prayer could be:
“Lord
I can’t forgive, because my heart is hurt.
I
know you want me to forgive. I want to do your will.
But
I find that I can’t do it, the damage is too big and it hurts.
You
can’t ask for something that You can’t realise in us.
So
please, Graciously, come and heal my heart.
Pour
in it your Grace, free me from all that bitterness, hurt, pain,
darkness.
Change
my heart, open my heart, expand my heart…
and
now, graciously, give me the Forgiveness
you want me to give to this
person
because
I don’t have it.
Help
me love this person as you love them,
with your own love.
Amen”
You
could add: “I ask you this through the powerful intercession of
Mary your mother and my mother, Mother of Mercy”.
There
is a big difference between thinking that God wants us to be capable
of forgiving, and God wanting us to forgive by Him coming in our
heart, healing it, and giving us the capacity to forgive. He has the
capacity, we have the desire, and we express it in a prayer (like the
prayer shown above).
If
we make this prayer, Miracles can happen, we are touched by the power
of the Holy Spirit, we experience the fact that God can really
intervene in our heart and change us, and as Origen, the theologian
says: we start to become Christians (see his comment on the “Our
Father).
This
spiritual experience is necessary… it is even a condition for any
prayer to succeed and be heard: “forgive us … as we forgive”.
This “as we” is here to remind us every day of our divine
vocation: to allow God himself, Jesus himself, the Great Divine
Forgiver, to come in us, dwell in us with His Holy Spirit and
forgive, embrace, love, shower His Grace on all our “enemies”.
This is our vocation.
This
is the attitude of the heart and all this happens first in the heart.
Of course this doesn’t mean that the bad things that happened
didn’t happen! This doesn’t mean that you agree with any wrong
doing against you. It only means that you don’t hold any hatred or
resentment against this person, it means that you want to be a real
Son of God, capable of allowing Jesus himself to come in you and
realise the divine work.
Note:
A real sign of strength is to become by the grace of God capable of
allowing Jesus to do in you what He is doing on the Cross: forgiving
your ‘enemies’. It is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of
power and spiritual strength. The weak are violent… they hate. The
strong are humble, meek, they allow the power of the Holy Spirit to
work in them and through them, showering Him over the world. Who wins
in the end?
It
doesn’t mean that your “enemy” will necessary accept your
forgiveness. Nonetheless you give it generously, otherwise you are
blocking the Grace of God, stopping God from working in you.
It
doesn’t mean that you have every time to accept any injustice and
never rise against it. Jesus said: ‘turn the other cheek’, but He
also replied to the centurion who slapped him on the face: ‘why do
you do that?’. But you can notice that his general attitude was
forgiveness, embrace, patience, love, showering the Grace of God on
his torturers. Our Heart has to be clean, never holding any grudge
against any person, on the contrary, taking the opportunity to have
our divine ‘revenge’ against our enemies: by praying for them.
This is how Christianity spread: the forgiveness of the Martyrs is
seed of new Christians.
Only
the Power of Jesus’ forgiveness, only the Power of His Blood can
change the world and is in fact changing the world (the hearts).
Because the world is a world of hearts, who are called to be changed
from ‘hearts of stone’ to ‘hearts of flesh’.
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