The meaning of martyrdom
Whenever I travel on the railroad train, I have to call back advisedly nearly whether I wear my clerical neckband, or whether I travel in 'mufti'. It partly depends on what kind of meeting or event I am travelling to, only it besides depends on whether I want to piece of work quietly on the train, or am happy to spend fourth dimension in conversation. If the quondam, so its no collar, since if I do wear a collar, I can be sure to terminate up in conversation. I am identified as a representative of the Church, so whatever feelings people take almost church or religion are liable to be expressed to me. Thirty years agone, that would often accept been respect—but times have changed.
I am certain that I was not the only cleric who felt his collar when hearing the shocking news of the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel earlier this week—for he was murdered precisely because he represented the church and Christians. Curiously, some tried to argued that he was not 'martyred' but was just 'in the incorrect identify, at the wrong time.' Andrew Forshew-Cain was quite right to point out the error in this:
He was killed considering he was a Christian and a priest. The but reason. Maxim he was only 'unlucky' is similar saying 'all lives matter' rather than 'black lives matter' and demeans his faith and his life. He wasn't 'in the wrong place'. He was in the House of God, vested, leading his people in prayer and offering the Mass. There is much that can be said about the deranged men who killed him just in their minds they did so for religious reasons. They proclaimed 'nosotros will destroy all you lot Christians' as they slit his throat. This is surely the paradigm of martyrdom. To claim otherwise is inexplicable.
The iBenedictines weblog offered a similar reflection, which included:
Fr Jacques joins the long line of those who have witnessed to Christ by their blood. He did non choose to dice, he was murdered; and he was murdered but and solely because he was a Christian. He is thus a true martyr, and it has long been the custom of the Church, when hearing of martyrdom, to praise God by singing theTe Deum.But what of all those others who accept been killed, in Overnice, in Ansbach, in then many places, are they martyrs? Not equally the Church building understands martyrdom, perhaps, but that does not mean that their deaths are any less of import, nor that their murder is any less heinous. We reserve the terms 'martyr' and 'martyrdom' for very specific conditions, just all taking of innocent human life is incorrect and cries to sky for vengeance.
Because this all felt so close to abode, I was very grateful to Sally Hitchener for posting a testimony from a similar event that happened 20 years ago in Algeria.
Twenty years ago, on May 24, 1996, a group of "Islamist" terrorists "slit the throats" of seven French Trappist monks from a Cosmic monastery in People's democratic republic of algeria. Prior to the kidnapping, the abbot, Father Christian de Chergé, had left with his family this testament "to be opened in the event of my death."
…..
If it should happen 1 day—and it could be today—that I go a victim of the terrorism… I would similar my community, my Church, my family unit, to recall that my life was given to God and to this country. I enquire them to accept that the One Chief of all life was not a stranger to this roughshod departure. I inquire them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a decease with the many other deaths that were simply every bit tearing, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.
My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the globe, even in that which would strike me blindly. I should similar, when the time comes, to take a articulate space which would permit me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my middle the one who would strike me down.
I could not desire such a expiry. It seems to me important to state this. I do non see, in fact, how I could rejoice if this people I beloved were to be defendant indiscriminately of my murder. Information technology would be to pay too dearly for what volition, perhaps, be called "the grace of martyrdom," to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the scorn with which Algerians as a whole can be regarded. I know also the caricature of Islam which a sure kind of Islamism encourages. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience by identifying this religious manner with the fundamentalist ideologies of the extremists. For me, People's democratic republic of algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body and a soul. I accept proclaimed this oftentimes enough, I believe, in the certain cognition of what I accept received in Algeria, in the respect of believing Muslims—finding there so ofttimes that true strand of the Gospel I learned at my mother'southward knee, my very first Church.
My decease, conspicuously, volition announced to justify those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: "Allow him tell united states of america now what he thinks of it!" But these people must realize that my nearly avid curiosity will so exist satisfied. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—immerse my gaze in that of the Begetter, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Souvenir of the Spirit, whose hush-hush joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the differences.
For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to take wished information technology entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything. In this "thank you," which is said for everything in my life from at present on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you lot my friends of this place, along with my female parent and father, my brothers and sisters and their families—the hundredfold granted as was promised!
And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would non be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this "cheers"—and this adieu—to commend you to the God whose face I see in yours.
And may nosotros find each other, happy "good thieves," in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen
Function of the reason that I find these reflections and then moving and helpful is that they begin to recognise that what happened to Fr Hamel is something that (increasingly) happens to anyone who is a follower of Jesus. Some have said that 'He died as a priest doing what priests do'—merely if he was murdered because he was a faithful follower of Jesus, then he died as a Christian doing what Christians do.
To come across that clearly, we demand to await at the 'martyr' language in the New Testament. Its main pregnant is 'testimony' or 'witness' (though two words in English, the single termmartyriais used), and the verb means 'to testify' or 'to bear witness'. It came to exist associated with dying for one's organized religion because of the testimony that such martyrs diameter.
Although the terms occur in most parts of the NT, they predominate in the Johannine literature, particularly in John'southward gospel and the Book of Revelation—both texts which are about witness in the context of disharmonize. John's gospel has been understood equally an overarching trial narrative, where the dissimilar characters are witnesses for either the prosecution or the defence in the trial of Jesus, with the reader invited to come to a verdict. And Revelation is written in a context of ideological conflict, between the Roman Empire/kingdom and the empire/kingdom of God.
Martyrdom makes its presence felt all through Revelation. 'Antipas' in Rev 2.thirteen, was put to decease for his faith as 'my faithful witness' in the words of the risen Jesus. (We know nothing of this figure, or even whether this was his real name.) In Rev 6, John sees 'nether the chantry the souls of those who had been slain because of the give-and-take of God and the testimony they had maintained' (Rev 6.9), again making the link between testimony and death. And the victory of the lamb comes about both by the lamb's own sacrifice and the commitment of his followers in response to that:
They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;
they did not dear their lives then much as to shrink from death. (Rev 12.11)
Just information technology becomes clear that this delivery is not something that belongs to a priestly degree or a spiritual elite, simply belongs to all who wish to follow in the steps of Jesus 'the faithful witness'—a championship unique to Revelation and characteristic of its portrayal of Jesus.
This resonates with the focus on self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness which was part of the evangelical spirituality into which I was inducted. We merrily sang 'For me to live is Christ, to die is gain…' trivial considering what that might really mean, and distracted from it by the jolly little tune to which it was ready. Merely for me it has meant (amidst other things) doing a job I might not otherwise take called, at a charge per unit of pay I wouldn't have chosen, living in places I would non otherwise have chosen, and spending time with people I would not otherwise have done. It's not, though, that any of this has felt like a 'sacrifice'; I wonder if that cheerful ditty did in fact get it right, when it included: 'In that location is no peace, no joy, no thrill/like living in his will.'
This is simply the smallest glimpse of the larger sacrifice that many others in history and effectually the earth have made and are at present making. The missionary Jim Elliot famously said: 'He is no fool who gives what he cannot proceed to gain that which he cannot lose.' That is surely the true significant of witness/martyrdom. And it is a truth which Fr Hamel lived to the end. May God grant us the grace to live in the same truth each day.
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