June 30, 2026 • 34 mins
In this meditation, Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on the witness of the early Christian martyrs, whose courage and fidelity helped spread the faith throughout the world. While most Christians today are not called to shed their blood for Christ, we are all called to be martyrs in the original sense of the word: witnesses who make Jesus Christ present through our lives.
Drawing from the teachings of St. Josemaría Escriva, Fr. Peter invites us to embrace the "martyrdom of the ordinary" through daily self-giving, fidelity in prayer, and love for those around us.
Listen and reflect on:
- The witness of the early Christian martyrs
- The meaning of martyrdom today
- Daily self-giving and sacrifice
- Making Christ present through ordinary life
- Love as the mark of a disciple
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:12):
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmlybelieve that you are here, that
you see me, that you hear me.
I adore you with profoundreverence.
I ask your pardon for my sinsand the grace to make this time
(00:34):
of prayer fruitful.
My Immaculate Mother St.
Joseph, my father and Lord, myguardian angel intercede for me.
Lord, as we come before you, weask you to help us imitate your
(00:56):
role models that you'vepresented to us.
And those are the protagonistsof the writings after the four
gospels.
The first history of the churchbooklet, which is the Acts of
the Apostles.
(01:18):
The actual writer was SaintLuke, but the author was the
Holy Spirit.
It's the word of God.
The first history of the churchwas written by the Holy Spirit.
And the rest of the NewTestament, the epistles of Saint
Paul, Saint Peter, Saint James,Saint Jude, Saint John, are
(01:44):
formative letters written to acluster of the first disciples
of the disciples, the earlyChristians of the Gentile world,
barring the letter to theHebrews, which was more aimed at
(02:06):
the Hebrew-Jewish world.
And that world in Ephesus orColossae or Philippi or Rome
consisted of forty familiesdispersed throughout those
cities, which weregeographically much smaller than
the cities we know today.
(02:29):
And those letters were read inliturgical gatherings or
fraternal gatherings at a biggerhouse, and someone who knew how
to read would read thoseletters.
And there'd be presbyters, notall of them were priests, and
(02:50):
they would elaborate on thosewritings of St.
Paul and the four Gospels of ourLord, which at first were handed
out orally, committed tomemorization.
A lot more memorizing was goingon in those times than now.
And so the inspired word of Godis intimately associated with
(03:17):
those early followers of ourLord.
At the end of June, the churchcommemorates the Roman martyrs.
Roman martyrs can be restrictedto Rome itself, the city of Rome
and its environs.
(03:38):
But also you can make a caseRoman martyrs would apply to the
North African world, the Gallicworld, the Mideastern world,
because the Empire embraced amajor portion of Europe,
modern-day Europe, North Africa,Middle East.
(03:58):
And that is very relevant todaybecause if the Catholic
Christian, or even non-CatholicChristian, could identify
themselves with a certain timeperiod, since I'm old enough to
say, not the time period of theearly 60s or the 50s or the 40s,
(04:24):
I'm not that old, or the 19thcentury, or the 12th century, or
the 8th century, or the seventhcentury.
But those first three centuriesof the church's history when the
church was Pope, bishops,priests, laypeople.
(04:45):
And in those years, those earlyyears of the church's history,
I'm thinking of I'd have toreally make do my research, but
I'm morally certain it's upthere if not, the earliest
document after the NewTestament, the writings of St.
(05:07):
Paul are older than the gospel,some of them anyway, is this
anonymous letter to Diagnatus,who's the recipient, and it
spells out the lifestyle ofthose early Christians, and
(05:30):
emphasizes that they are, likeeverybody else, same kind of
dress wear, regional accents,same lines of work, same
problems, same issues, thoughthere are certain distinguishing
properties.
The most salient is charity witheveryone, including those who
(05:57):
hate them, as the letter goes.
And maybe I'm reading into it alittle bit too much, but I'm
imagining the author giggling alittle bit because he says they
actually are chaste.
And just judging by the tone,that that wasn't it's normal to
(06:18):
be chaste, but normal doesn'tmean common.
And basically that wasemphasized it wasn't common.
And he specifies that theystayed with one wife.
They didn't exchange wives.
I guess that's one of theaberrations of that time.
And he says, what's mostincredible is that these
(06:39):
ordinary people inneighborhoods, same lines of
work, will actually die for thefounder of Christianity.
If it comes to that, they willhave the courage to sacrifice
their very lives, in many cases,with unbearable tortures and
(07:02):
loss of human life underfrightening conditions.
Historians of the churchcharacterize those first three
or four centuries at most, asthe age of martyrs.
In what sense?
(07:25):
Well, they took a while tobecome Christian.
That's where OCIA, which waspreviously RCIA, I'm sure the
letters will change in thefuture, but anyway the content
is the same, learning yourfaith, that it took a while to
become a Christian officiallysacramentally, because the
(07:48):
elders and the priests want tomake sure that the candidate for
baptism knew what she or he wasdoing.
Most likely they would notsurvive.
In many cases they did, but in alot of cases they didn't.
All you needed is a familymember tattling on you, a
(08:13):
neighbor reporting you, or acensus of the neighborhood of
the city, and that would do youin.
Popes didn't stand a chance.
Virtually they were all martyrs,not literally, bishops, priests,
because they were more out inthe open.
And does that have a certainrelevance, that age of
(08:37):
martyrdom?
Obviously it does.
All the saints, all the martyrsdo have personal and practical
bearing on our own lives,especially when the great
majority of martyrs wereordinary people.
Again, there was no religiousorders there, and there was a
(09:03):
relative scarcity of priests,bishops.
Many times they would land inprison and be executed because
uh the methodology of theauthorities of that time was to
cut off the head ofChristianity, do away with the
hierarchy.
And if you caught a Pope or abishop in the Colosseum or the
(09:24):
amphitheater, he would go anddie a grisly death in front of
100,000 people if it's theColosseum in Rome, hence the
Pope's conducting the stationsof the cross in the Colosseum.
It's the locale for many, manymartyrs.
Some of them are listed in thefirst Eucharistic prayer.
Half of the second list inEucharistic Prayer One are
(09:48):
teenage girls.
So back to the Roman martyrs.
In those days they saw, just togive a little bit of a context,
martyrdom as a sacramental act,even though there are seven
sacraments, so those are thesacramental acts when they're
(10:09):
administered.
But why was martyrdom describedas a sacramental act?
What is a sacrament?
What's a sign that has a realspiritual effect instituted by
Christ, to give the Cliff Noteversion?
And what would happen is thesepeople were normal.
(10:31):
You were arrested and thrown inthese unsanitary, stuffy, uh,
packed jails with some degreeof, at best, discomfort, and
usually some element of torture.
(10:54):
And the torture would be agrisly death, all sorts of
horrible ways of dying.
And the normal reaction was apanic attack.
And if that was a member of yourfamily, the family would be
shattered.
(11:15):
Your sense was, can I actuallygo through with this?
And with everything that goesalong with it, even leaving
family behind and work behindand all that.
And obviously, everybody'spraying for that person in the
(11:36):
Acts of the Apostles.
When Peter was in prison, theywere all clamoring for him, and
they clamored for any Christianwho was in prison, because it
was, on a certain level, prettybad news for the family, for the
friends, for the church.
And then eventually, at the hourof truth, they would die in a
(12:04):
heroic way.
At times singing psalms withjoy, with incredible courage
that is supra-human andsuperhuman.
Supreme beyond human andsupreme, heroically human.
(12:26):
And it was a sacramental actbecause it was crystal clear
that at the moment of truth theLord intervened, Jesus
intervened in a veryextraordinary way.
It was called a sacramental actbecause it was a beautiful sign
that the Lord gives us the graceto be witnesses.
(12:48):
And the witness of dying foryour faith in public, which
softened the people in those uhareas surrounding the place of
execution, whether it's Lyon,whether it's Rome, whether it's
the many cities mentioned in theNew Testament.
(13:10):
Now, we're not in an age ofviolent martyrdom where we're
arrested and tortured andhanged.
I mean, that's happen.
But that being said, St.
John Paul said that the age ofmartyrdom that has surpassed
every other age, and maybe theother ages combined as well, is
(13:34):
the 20th century, where that'sthe century with the most
martyrs, which has spilled intothe 21st.
But again, what practicalbearing does it have for us?
Well, let's look at the wordmartyr.
It's really a Greek wordoriginally, and martyr doesn't
precisely mean spilling yourblood for the faith.
(13:57):
It means being a witness of yourfaith.
And what's the commondenominator between being a
witness under normalcircumstances, at home, at work,
in any kind of social gathering,and spilling your blood and
dying for the faith?
(14:18):
Both cases witnesses makingJesus Christ very real for
others.
That's what it means.
And amid a time of severepersecution, St.
Jose Maria jots down in the way,it's one of the aphorisms, I
(14:40):
think it's number two in theway, that and he puts it in the
third person because I don'tknow who who he was referring
to, but now I do know becausethere's been research done.
They said about him, even thoughyou wouldn't know it unless you
would read from other sourcesthat commented on the background
(15:03):
of these aphorisms in the way,that during the Civil War or
around that time, uh someone whoexchanged some words with Saint
Jose Maria exclaimed, This manreads the life of Jesus Christ.
(15:26):
And Saint Jose Maria piggybackson that experience, and he
writes the following May yourbehavior and your conversation
be such that everyone who seesor hears you can say, This man
or this woman reads the life ofJesus Christ.
(15:52):
The contents can be summarizedwith one Greek word, and that
Greek word is martyr.
And in the way of the cross, inone of the points of meditation,
Saint Jose Maria talks about twokinds of martyrdom.
(16:17):
And one kind, which is themartyrdom that is collectively
understood, dying for yourfaith.
He experienced that kind ofmartyrdom, even though he wasn't
exactly executed or killed, buthe was running, literally
(16:38):
running for his life during theSpanish Civil War, that had
killed, annihilated seventhousand priests and religious.
That's equivalent to three, morethan three, I would say, big
(16:59):
dice in the U.S.
Could be Chicago, Los Angeles,or New York.
That's a lot of priests in apopulation at that time in the
30s, probably of 25 millionpeople in Spain, maybe less.
And St.
(17:21):
Rosemir had a certain reputationamong the young, among
university students, and theywere going after him as well.
And unfortunately, any loss ofhuman life is unfortunate on a
certain level.
They thought they had executedhim.
(17:41):
And for the rest of his life, heincluded that priest in his
mass.
There was a time when he was inseclusion, in hiding with a
group of other people in anattic in a building in Madrid,
and these militia, because halfof Spain was controlled by the
(18:03):
communist regime, and they wentafter all the priests, burned
down churches and convents, andexecuted as many people as they
could.
Summarily, no trial, no nothing,captured them, brought them to
the park, and fired awayliterally.
And if you go to the churches inMadrid, you'll see frescoes of
(18:28):
actual young men, seminarians,priests who were executed.
I went on a pilgrimage with someseminarians, and we stayed at
different places, and everyplace had memorials of martyrs
(18:49):
and frescoes in the church onthe wall behind the altar of
actual young men, priests whowere executed.
It was tough to see after a fewtimes.
And so he was he was a youngpriest amid that situation and
(19:12):
in hiding.
And again, he was hiding in anattic, and he heard the militias
going up the stairs, casing eachfloor, and he finally told the
people near him, he wasn'tdressed as a priest.
He was he said, Listen, we wemay get executed.
I'm a priest.
(19:33):
I could hear your confession.
Um, because this would be a goodtime to do it, because this
doesn't look good.
As we were coming up the stairslittle by little.
And for some reason they neverwent into the attic, which would
be the first place you wouldlook, but they never there, so
he survived that.
And he was always running forhis life, he was always in
(19:56):
hiding.
So, in other words, uh, withthis convoluted background, he
knew what it was like to bemartyred, in the sense that he
was waiting to be capturedbecause these militiamen were
going up the stairs, and it wasjust a matter of time before
they went to the attic andcaught them and brought them
outside and fired away.
(20:17):
And he says here that he more orless experienced the two kinds
of martyrdom, or more precise,he says there's two kinds of
martyrdom.
And again, he's never refers tohimself, but when some of those
points of meditation refer tohim, even though no one would
(20:40):
know at the time.
After many years, when researchwould be done, they would
realize, well, he's the genesisof that point.
And so he he's exper he saysthere's two kinds of martyrdom.
One is to actually die for yourfaith, and the other kind of
martyrdom is to die for Christ,to give yourself to Christ, to
(21:03):
die to yourself day in and dayout, amid the ordinary life, the
ordinary activities thatcharacterize the life of a lay
woman or a lay man, married orsingle.
And he said, if he comparesthose two, because he
(21:24):
experienced the first one, isclose to it anyway, he says, for
him, the martyrdom of theordinary, of the day in and day
out, total self-giving ofoneself, is the more heroic life
to give to the Lord, even thoughwe're not gonna sneeze or
(21:47):
underestimate the value ofactually dying for your faith.
And he's basically saying you'vegot to die your for your faith
continuously amid work, amidfamily life, amid suffering that
comes your way, amid fidelity toprayer.
And so, yes.
(22:09):
We're called to be martyrs inthe sense of witnessing that
Jesus is very real.
We notice if we read it in theGreek, I'm thinking of Acts one,
(22:30):
chapter eight, verse eight,excuse me, where the Lord
literally gives his marchingorders to his disciples before
he ascends into heaven.
And he basically says thefollowing you shall receive
(22:50):
power when the Holy Spirit comesupon you, and you will be my
witnesses, in parentheses,martyr.
You will be my witnesses inJerusalem, where the faith
(23:11):
begins, the holy city, the cityof the redemption, and in Judea,
the province in which Jerusalemis located.
And in Samaria, enemy territory.
(23:32):
Jews and Samaritans don'tassociate with each other.
In Samaria, and to the very endsof the earth, witnesses, and
what is that witness?
Jesus spells it out moreprecisely in the Last Supper
that he raised the bar that,with all due respect, is
(23:55):
literally impossible to reach.
Then why does he establish thatbar?
Because we could approach it.
And with God's grace, we canapproach it.
We get close to it.
And witness or martyrdom is infunction of how close we get to
(24:16):
this bar, which is that hementions at least three times.
Love as I have loved.
You gotta go way beyond, whichis tall order to begin with,
love neighbor as self.
Love as I have loved.
(24:37):
And in that way, they will knowthat you're my disciples by the
love you have for one another.
What kind of love for oneanother?
As I have loved.
I'm thinking of an incident withSt.
(25:07):
John Paul.
Now, as an elderly priest, Ihave plenty of real-life
experiences that I'm not thathard up for anecdotes, but in my
early years I was.
And those early years overlappedwith the early pontificate of
(25:28):
the great Pope St.
John Paul.
And an older priest friendrecommended that I read, I don't
know if it's still in existence,Catholic Digest, because I was
saying, listen, I need morestories to tell.
So, well, tried Catholic Digest.
And you know, I'm flippingthrough, and some of the
(25:51):
articles are pretty interesting,others are cheesy as they say
today.
And then one was on an encounterwith John Paul in Miami when he
came to Florida, you know, manyyears ago now.
And this woman was carting herfriend around with a wheel in a
(26:14):
wheelchair.
Her friend was crippled or inher legs.
She had some disability, or shegot into an accident or
whatever, but she was in awheelchair and she was crippled.
And she had want to kill twobirds with one stone, get close
(26:35):
to the Pope, and with her friendin a wheelchair, that was more
attractive to the Pope becausehe was always very deferential
towards the sick, the infants,uh, anyone who was undergoing a
significant suffering, he wasattracted like a magnet.
(26:56):
And um, lo and behold, heapproaches the woman in the
wheelchair and her friend who'scarting her around, wants to say
something, but she's so moved byhis presence that she's
paralyzed and can't sayanything.
She's speechless and she'scrying.
(27:18):
And the Pope blesses her, tracesthe crucifix on her forehead,
and um says, God bless you, mydaughter, and moves on.
And the article was based on theway he looked at the woman, the
friend, not the woman, thewheelchair, well, both.
And you know, significant-sizearticle describing that when the
(27:45):
Holy Father looked at her andshe explained why she was
paralyzed in speech, he said,I'm not exaggerating, but it was
the look of Jesus Christ thatshe felt intense love through
(28:10):
those penetrating eyes of JohnPaul.
And I was involved with WorldYouth Day in Denver, and we
don't have time for me to give adetailed narrative, but again,
(28:32):
that martyrdom, that witnessmaking Jesus real, I felt like
St.
John Marie Viennae without theprefixes of ST, period.
I never heard so manyconfessions in my life, started
Wednesday morning, on aWednesday morning finished
Saturday afternoon, and it wasalmost around the clock, uh,
(28:56):
with very little sleep, verylittle food, and trying my best
to do my liturgy of the hoursand spend time in prayer myself.
How do we live that martyrdom ofthe ordinary?
It's little tiny martyrdoms.
I'm using some ideas of St.
Jose Marie and Friends of God inthe homily in the footsteps of
(29:21):
Christ, where he gives someconcrete examples on how to be a
martyr of the ordinary.
He says, being punctual at yourestablished time for mental
prayer, quiet time, and to befaithful to the amount of time
you've established.
It can be half hour, it could be20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10
(29:43):
minutes.
And then you show up and you doit on time.
No matter how unless it's anemergency, it's non-negotiable.
That the rosary is said withheart.
There'll be distractions, itdepends on each person's power
of concentration.
(30:04):
It means turning work into acolossal act of adoration.
It's not the same as mentalprayer, but similar,
nevertheless, that the medium ofprayer is giving God the best I
have.
(30:24):
And I do it out of love for Him.
I want Him to get the best outof myself.
Never everyone can beobjectively the best, but I'm
going to try to make it better.
And I'm going to be on top of mygame in terms of giving first
family and friends every day,not just in isolated fashion or
(30:46):
disjointed fashion, that theykind of notice that this man or
woman reads the life of JesusChrist.
There's a warmth there, there'san affection there.
They are recipients of a specialkind of love.
(31:08):
And St.
Rosa Maria says in point 917,the way that our colleagues
should feel their hearts on fireor moved by the kind of love.
Now that takes self-giving.
And it has to be it's rooted inpiety, and it's going to mass
often.
It's spending time before Massin front of the Blessed
(31:29):
Sacrament.
It's having a good list ofself-denial.
It's, as St.
Pope Francis says, that we couldfall into the spiritual illness
of spiritual Alzheimer's wherewe forget Jesus' doctrine on the
cross.
It means accepting traffic jams,people who may not like us that
(31:51):
much, mishaps during work,fatigue, sickness, being in a
low mood, whatever it is, andthat we embrace that cross and
offer it up, and that we try tolead a moral life, that we live
custody of the eyes, custody ofthe heart, custody of the
(32:14):
imagination.
And, you know, in a givenmoment, not really heroic, I
wouldn't think it would beexcessive to say it's martyrdom.
But if I live in these smallself-giving ways, the
accumulation of those deeds oflove, it's not neurotic minutia,
but deeds of love in littleways.
(32:36):
Okay, now I am a witness thatChrist is real amid the
ordinary.
I'm a martyr of the ordinary.
Well, we go to that doublemartyr, the blessed mother, who
from the beginning gave herselftotally to embracing God's plan,
(33:02):
God's will, and acted completelyfor the glory of God through her
son Jesus Christ.
And then by compassion, she diedon the cross with her son,
watching him die a grisly death,undergoing the ultimate shame
(33:28):
and humiliation of a crucifixionand death.
We pray to Mary, our refuge, ourhope, queen of martyrs.
Mary, pray for each one of us sothat we're enlightened to
embrace a martyrdom of theordinary, and if it's ever God's
(33:51):
will, a martyrdom of theextraordinary.
I thank you, my God, for thegood resolutions, affections,
and inspirations you'vecommunicated to me in this
meditation.
I ask your help in putting theminto effect.
My Immaculate Mother St.
Joseph, my father and Lord, myguardian angel.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, amen.
My Lord and my God, I firmlybelieve that you are here, that
you see me, that you hear me.
I adore you with profoundreverence.
I ask your pardon for my sinsand the grace to make this time
(00:34):
of prayer fruitful.
My Immaculate Mother St.
Joseph, my father and Lord, myguardian angel intercede for me.
Lord, as we come before you, weask you to help us imitate your
(00:56):
role models that you'vepresented to us.
And those are the protagonistsof the writings after the four
gospels.
The first history of the churchbooklet, which is the Acts of
the Apostles.
(01:18):
The actual writer was SaintLuke, but the author was the
Holy Spirit.
It's the word of God.
The first history of the churchwas written by the Holy Spirit.
And the rest of the NewTestament, the epistles of Saint
Paul, Saint Peter, Saint James,Saint Jude, Saint John, are
(01:44):
formative letters written to acluster of the first disciples
of the disciples, the earlyChristians of the Gentile world,
barring the letter to theHebrews, which was more aimed at
(02:06):
the Hebrew-Jewish world.
And that world in Ephesus orColossae or Philippi or Rome
consisted of forty familiesdispersed throughout those
cities, which weregeographically much smaller than
the cities we know today.
(02:29):
And those letters were read inliturgical gatherings or
fraternal gatherings at a biggerhouse, and someone who knew how
to read would read thoseletters.
And there'd be presbyters, notall of them were priests, and
(02:50):
they would elaborate on thosewritings of St.
Paul and the four Gospels of ourLord, which at first were handed
out orally, committed tomemorization.
A lot more memorizing was goingon in those times than now.
And so the inspired word of Godis intimately associated with
(03:17):
those early followers of ourLord.
At the end of June, the churchcommemorates the Roman martyrs.
Roman martyrs can be restrictedto Rome itself, the city of Rome
and its environs.
(03:38):
But also you can make a caseRoman martyrs would apply to the
North African world, the Gallicworld, the Mideastern world,
because the Empire embraced amajor portion of Europe,
modern-day Europe, North Africa,Middle East.
(03:58):
And that is very relevant todaybecause if the Catholic
Christian, or even non-CatholicChristian, could identify
themselves with a certain timeperiod, since I'm old enough to
say, not the time period of theearly 60s or the 50s or the 40s,
(04:24):
I'm not that old, or the 19thcentury, or the 12th century, or
the 8th century, or the seventhcentury.
But those first three centuriesof the church's history when the
church was Pope, bishops,priests, laypeople.
(04:45):
And in those years, those earlyyears of the church's history,
I'm thinking of I'd have toreally make do my research, but
I'm morally certain it's upthere if not, the earliest
document after the NewTestament, the writings of St.
(05:07):
Paul are older than the gospel,some of them anyway, is this
anonymous letter to Diagnatus,who's the recipient, and it
spells out the lifestyle ofthose early Christians, and
(05:30):
emphasizes that they are, likeeverybody else, same kind of
dress wear, regional accents,same lines of work, same
problems, same issues, thoughthere are certain distinguishing
properties.
The most salient is charity witheveryone, including those who
(05:57):
hate them, as the letter goes.
And maybe I'm reading into it alittle bit too much, but I'm
imagining the author giggling alittle bit because he says they
actually are chaste.
And just judging by the tone,that that wasn't it's normal to
(06:18):
be chaste, but normal doesn'tmean common.
And basically that wasemphasized it wasn't common.
And he specifies that theystayed with one wife.
They didn't exchange wives.
I guess that's one of theaberrations of that time.
And he says, what's mostincredible is that these
(06:39):
ordinary people inneighborhoods, same lines of
work, will actually die for thefounder of Christianity.
If it comes to that, they willhave the courage to sacrifice
their very lives, in many cases,with unbearable tortures and
(07:02):
loss of human life underfrightening conditions.
Historians of the churchcharacterize those first three
or four centuries at most, asthe age of martyrs.
In what sense?
(07:25):
Well, they took a while tobecome Christian.
That's where OCIA, which waspreviously RCIA, I'm sure the
letters will change in thefuture, but anyway the content
is the same, learning yourfaith, that it took a while to
become a Christian officiallysacramentally, because the
(07:48):
elders and the priests want tomake sure that the candidate for
baptism knew what she or he wasdoing.
Most likely they would notsurvive.
In many cases they did, but in alot of cases they didn't.
All you needed is a familymember tattling on you, a
(08:13):
neighbor reporting you, or acensus of the neighborhood of
the city, and that would do youin.
Popes didn't stand a chance.
Virtually they were all martyrs,not literally, bishops, priests,
because they were more out inthe open.
And does that have a certainrelevance, that age of
(08:37):
martyrdom?
Obviously it does.
All the saints, all the martyrsdo have personal and practical
bearing on our own lives,especially when the great
majority of martyrs wereordinary people.
Again, there was no religiousorders there, and there was a
(09:03):
relative scarcity of priests,bishops.
Many times they would land inprison and be executed because
uh the methodology of theauthorities of that time was to
cut off the head ofChristianity, do away with the
hierarchy.
And if you caught a Pope or abishop in the Colosseum or the
(09:24):
amphitheater, he would go anddie a grisly death in front of
100,000 people if it's theColosseum in Rome, hence the
Pope's conducting the stationsof the cross in the Colosseum.
It's the locale for many, manymartyrs.
Some of them are listed in thefirst Eucharistic prayer.
Half of the second list inEucharistic Prayer One are
(09:48):
teenage girls.
So back to the Roman martyrs.
In those days they saw, just togive a little bit of a context,
martyrdom as a sacramental act,even though there are seven
sacraments, so those are thesacramental acts when they're
(10:09):
administered.
But why was martyrdom describedas a sacramental act?
What is a sacrament?
What's a sign that has a realspiritual effect instituted by
Christ, to give the Cliff Noteversion?
And what would happen is thesepeople were normal.
(10:31):
You were arrested and thrown inthese unsanitary, stuffy, uh,
packed jails with some degreeof, at best, discomfort, and
usually some element of torture.
(10:54):
And the torture would be agrisly death, all sorts of
horrible ways of dying.
And the normal reaction was apanic attack.
And if that was a member of yourfamily, the family would be
shattered.
(11:15):
Your sense was, can I actuallygo through with this?
And with everything that goesalong with it, even leaving
family behind and work behindand all that.
And obviously, everybody'spraying for that person in the
(11:36):
Acts of the Apostles.
When Peter was in prison, theywere all clamoring for him, and
they clamored for any Christianwho was in prison, because it
was, on a certain level, prettybad news for the family, for the
friends, for the church.
And then eventually, at the hourof truth, they would die in a
(12:04):
heroic way.
At times singing psalms withjoy, with incredible courage
that is supra-human andsuperhuman.
Supreme beyond human andsupreme, heroically human.
(12:26):
And it was a sacramental actbecause it was crystal clear
that at the moment of truth theLord intervened, Jesus
intervened in a veryextraordinary way.
It was called a sacramental actbecause it was a beautiful sign
that the Lord gives us the graceto be witnesses.
(12:48):
And the witness of dying foryour faith in public, which
softened the people in those uhareas surrounding the place of
execution, whether it's Lyon,whether it's Rome, whether it's
the many cities mentioned in theNew Testament.
(13:10):
Now, we're not in an age ofviolent martyrdom where we're
arrested and tortured andhanged.
I mean, that's happen.
But that being said, St.
John Paul said that the age ofmartyrdom that has surpassed
every other age, and maybe theother ages combined as well, is
(13:34):
the 20th century, where that'sthe century with the most
martyrs, which has spilled intothe 21st.
But again, what practicalbearing does it have for us?
Well, let's look at the wordmartyr.
It's really a Greek wordoriginally, and martyr doesn't
precisely mean spilling yourblood for the faith.
(13:57):
It means being a witness of yourfaith.
And what's the commondenominator between being a
witness under normalcircumstances, at home, at work,
in any kind of social gathering,and spilling your blood and
dying for the faith?
(14:18):
Both cases witnesses makingJesus Christ very real for
others.
That's what it means.
And amid a time of severepersecution, St.
Jose Maria jots down in the way,it's one of the aphorisms, I
(14:40):
think it's number two in theway, that and he puts it in the
third person because I don'tknow who who he was referring
to, but now I do know becausethere's been research done.
They said about him, even thoughyou wouldn't know it unless you
would read from other sourcesthat commented on the background
(15:03):
of these aphorisms in the way,that during the Civil War or
around that time, uh someone whoexchanged some words with Saint
Jose Maria exclaimed, This manreads the life of Jesus Christ.
(15:26):
And Saint Jose Maria piggybackson that experience, and he
writes the following May yourbehavior and your conversation
be such that everyone who seesor hears you can say, This man
or this woman reads the life ofJesus Christ.
(15:52):
The contents can be summarizedwith one Greek word, and that
Greek word is martyr.
And in the way of the cross, inone of the points of meditation,
Saint Jose Maria talks about twokinds of martyrdom.
(16:17):
And one kind, which is themartyrdom that is collectively
understood, dying for yourfaith.
He experienced that kind ofmartyrdom, even though he wasn't
exactly executed or killed, buthe was running, literally
(16:38):
running for his life during theSpanish Civil War, that had
killed, annihilated seventhousand priests and religious.
That's equivalent to three, morethan three, I would say, big
(16:59):
dice in the U.S.
Could be Chicago, Los Angeles,or New York.
That's a lot of priests in apopulation at that time in the
30s, probably of 25 millionpeople in Spain, maybe less.
And St.
(17:21):
Rosemir had a certain reputationamong the young, among
university students, and theywere going after him as well.
And unfortunately, any loss ofhuman life is unfortunate on a
certain level.
They thought they had executedhim.
(17:41):
And for the rest of his life, heincluded that priest in his
mass.
There was a time when he was inseclusion, in hiding with a
group of other people in anattic in a building in Madrid,
and these militia, because halfof Spain was controlled by the
(18:03):
communist regime, and they wentafter all the priests, burned
down churches and convents, andexecuted as many people as they
could.
Summarily, no trial, no nothing,captured them, brought them to
the park, and fired awayliterally.
And if you go to the churches inMadrid, you'll see frescoes of
(18:28):
actual young men, seminarians,priests who were executed.
I went on a pilgrimage with someseminarians, and we stayed at
different places, and everyplace had memorials of martyrs
(18:49):
and frescoes in the church onthe wall behind the altar of
actual young men, priests whowere executed.
It was tough to see after a fewtimes.
And so he was he was a youngpriest amid that situation and
(19:12):
in hiding.
And again, he was hiding in anattic, and he heard the militias
going up the stairs, casing eachfloor, and he finally told the
people near him, he wasn'tdressed as a priest.
He was he said, Listen, we wemay get executed.
I'm a priest.
(19:33):
I could hear your confession.
Um, because this would be a goodtime to do it, because this
doesn't look good.
As we were coming up the stairslittle by little.
And for some reason they neverwent into the attic, which would
be the first place you wouldlook, but they never there, so
he survived that.
And he was always running forhis life, he was always in
(19:56):
hiding.
So, in other words, uh, withthis convoluted background, he
knew what it was like to bemartyred, in the sense that he
was waiting to be capturedbecause these militiamen were
going up the stairs, and it wasjust a matter of time before
they went to the attic andcaught them and brought them
outside and fired away.
(20:17):
And he says here that he more orless experienced the two kinds
of martyrdom, or more precise,he says there's two kinds of
martyrdom.
And again, he's never refers tohimself, but when some of those
points of meditation refer tohim, even though no one would
(20:40):
know at the time.
After many years, when researchwould be done, they would
realize, well, he's the genesisof that point.
And so he he's exper he saysthere's two kinds of martyrdom.
One is to actually die for yourfaith, and the other kind of
martyrdom is to die for Christ,to give yourself to Christ, to
(21:03):
die to yourself day in and dayout, amid the ordinary life, the
ordinary activities thatcharacterize the life of a lay
woman or a lay man, married orsingle.
And he said, if he comparesthose two, because he
(21:24):
experienced the first one, isclose to it anyway, he says, for
him, the martyrdom of theordinary, of the day in and day
out, total self-giving ofoneself, is the more heroic life
to give to the Lord, even thoughwe're not gonna sneeze or
(21:47):
underestimate the value ofactually dying for your faith.
And he's basically saying you'vegot to die your for your faith
continuously amid work, amidfamily life, amid suffering that
comes your way, amid fidelity toprayer.
And so, yes.
(22:09):
We're called to be martyrs inthe sense of witnessing that
Jesus is very real.
We notice if we read it in theGreek, I'm thinking of Acts one,
(22:30):
chapter eight, verse eight,excuse me, where the Lord
literally gives his marchingorders to his disciples before
he ascends into heaven.
And he basically says thefollowing you shall receive
(22:50):
power when the Holy Spirit comesupon you, and you will be my
witnesses, in parentheses,martyr.
You will be my witnesses inJerusalem, where the faith
(23:11):
begins, the holy city, the cityof the redemption, and in Judea,
the province in which Jerusalemis located.
And in Samaria, enemy territory.
(23:32):
Jews and Samaritans don'tassociate with each other.
In Samaria, and to the very endsof the earth, witnesses, and
what is that witness?
Jesus spells it out moreprecisely in the Last Supper
that he raised the bar that,with all due respect, is
(23:55):
literally impossible to reach.
Then why does he establish thatbar?
Because we could approach it.
And with God's grace, we canapproach it.
We get close to it.
And witness or martyrdom is infunction of how close we get to
(24:16):
this bar, which is that hementions at least three times.
Love as I have loved.
You gotta go way beyond, whichis tall order to begin with,
love neighbor as self.
Love as I have loved.
(24:37):
And in that way, they will knowthat you're my disciples by the
love you have for one another.
What kind of love for oneanother?
As I have loved.
I'm thinking of an incident withSt.
(25:07):
John Paul.
Now, as an elderly priest, Ihave plenty of real-life
experiences that I'm not thathard up for anecdotes, but in my
early years I was.
And those early years overlappedwith the early pontificate of
(25:28):
the great Pope St.
John Paul.
And an older priest friendrecommended that I read, I don't
know if it's still in existence,Catholic Digest, because I was
saying, listen, I need morestories to tell.
So, well, tried Catholic Digest.
And you know, I'm flippingthrough, and some of the
(25:51):
articles are pretty interesting,others are cheesy as they say
today.
And then one was on an encounterwith John Paul in Miami when he
came to Florida, you know, manyyears ago now.
And this woman was carting herfriend around with a wheel in a
(26:14):
wheelchair.
Her friend was crippled or inher legs.
She had some disability, or shegot into an accident or
whatever, but she was in awheelchair and she was crippled.
And she had want to kill twobirds with one stone, get close
(26:35):
to the Pope, and with her friendin a wheelchair, that was more
attractive to the Pope becausehe was always very deferential
towards the sick, the infants,uh, anyone who was undergoing a
significant suffering, he wasattracted like a magnet.
(26:56):
And um, lo and behold, heapproaches the woman in the
wheelchair and her friend who'scarting her around, wants to say
something, but she's so moved byhis presence that she's
paralyzed and can't sayanything.
She's speechless and she'scrying.
(27:18):
And the Pope blesses her, tracesthe crucifix on her forehead,
and um says, God bless you, mydaughter, and moves on.
And the article was based on theway he looked at the woman, the
friend, not the woman, thewheelchair, well, both.
And you know, significant-sizearticle describing that when the
(27:45):
Holy Father looked at her andshe explained why she was
paralyzed in speech, he said,I'm not exaggerating, but it was
the look of Jesus Christ thatshe felt intense love through
(28:10):
those penetrating eyes of JohnPaul.
And I was involved with WorldYouth Day in Denver, and we
don't have time for me to give adetailed narrative, but again,
(28:32):
that martyrdom, that witnessmaking Jesus real, I felt like
St.
John Marie Viennae without theprefixes of ST, period.
I never heard so manyconfessions in my life, started
Wednesday morning, on aWednesday morning finished
Saturday afternoon, and it wasalmost around the clock, uh,
(28:56):
with very little sleep, verylittle food, and trying my best
to do my liturgy of the hoursand spend time in prayer myself.
How do we live that martyrdom ofthe ordinary?
It's little tiny martyrdoms.
I'm using some ideas of St.
Jose Marie and Friends of God inthe homily in the footsteps of
(29:21):
Christ, where he gives someconcrete examples on how to be a
martyr of the ordinary.
He says, being punctual at yourestablished time for mental
prayer, quiet time, and to befaithful to the amount of time
you've established.
It can be half hour, it could be20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10
(29:43):
minutes.
And then you show up and you doit on time.
No matter how unless it's anemergency, it's non-negotiable.
That the rosary is said withheart.
There'll be distractions, itdepends on each person's power
of concentration.
(30:04):
It means turning work into acolossal act of adoration.
It's not the same as mentalprayer, but similar,
nevertheless, that the medium ofprayer is giving God the best I
have.
(30:24):
And I do it out of love for Him.
I want Him to get the best outof myself.
Never everyone can beobjectively the best, but I'm
going to try to make it better.
And I'm going to be on top of mygame in terms of giving first
family and friends every day,not just in isolated fashion or
(30:46):
disjointed fashion, that theykind of notice that this man or
woman reads the life of JesusChrist.
There's a warmth there, there'san affection there.
They are recipients of a specialkind of love.
(31:08):
And St.
Rosa Maria says in point 917,the way that our colleagues
should feel their hearts on fireor moved by the kind of love.
Now that takes self-giving.
And it has to be it's rooted inpiety, and it's going to mass
often.
It's spending time before Massin front of the Blessed
(31:29):
Sacrament.
It's having a good list ofself-denial.
It's, as St.
Pope Francis says, that we couldfall into the spiritual illness
of spiritual Alzheimer's wherewe forget Jesus' doctrine on the
cross.
It means accepting traffic jams,people who may not like us that
(31:51):
much, mishaps during work,fatigue, sickness, being in a
low mood, whatever it is, andthat we embrace that cross and
offer it up, and that we try tolead a moral life, that we live
custody of the eyes, custody ofthe heart, custody of the
(32:14):
imagination.
And, you know, in a givenmoment, not really heroic, I
wouldn't think it would beexcessive to say it's martyrdom.
But if I live in these smallself-giving ways, the
accumulation of those deeds oflove, it's not neurotic minutia,
but deeds of love in littleways.
(32:36):
Okay, now I am a witness thatChrist is real amid the
ordinary.
I'm a martyr of the ordinary.
Well, we go to that doublemartyr, the blessed mother, who
from the beginning gave herselftotally to embracing God's plan,
(33:02):
God's will, and acted completelyfor the glory of God through her
son Jesus Christ.
And then by compassion, she diedon the cross with her son,
watching him die a grisly death,undergoing the ultimate shame
(33:28):
and humiliation of a crucifixionand death.
We pray to Mary, our refuge, ourhope, queen of martyrs.
Mary, pray for each one of us sothat we're enlightened to
embrace a martyrdom of theordinary, and if it's ever God's
(33:51):
will, a martyrdom of theextraordinary.
I thank you, my God, for thegood resolutions, affections,
and inspirations you'vecommunicated to me in this
meditation.
I ask your help in putting theminto effect.
My Immaculate Mother St.
Joseph, my father and Lord, myguardian angel.
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