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Quo Vadis is one of those seminal Christian movies: most people love it and, despite a few historical inaccuracies and some ‘Hollywoodesque’ additions, overall it is an inspiring movie. Based on a novel by the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, it tells the story of the martyrdom of the first Roman Christians under Nero around the year 64 AD. A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie with some friends and after the three hours I thought it might be a good idea to recommend a viewing to our parishioners for the feast of the First Martyrs of the See of Rome on the 30^th June. In the movie we are introduced to a number of characters, some of them fictional, who end up in the Roman arena laying down their lives in the most gruesome ways for the sake of their Christian faith. The movie puts faces and personalities on the earliest martyrs of our Church, and while the some of the characters may be fictional, they represent real flesh and blood people, people whose names we do not know but who are remembered by the Church and commemorated each year as heroes of the faith. While we know very little about them - in fact we do not know how many died in the persecution of Nero, their influence (and intercession) is tremendous. We have the impression that they all died in the arena attacked by wild animals for the entertainment of the masses, but some were subjected to other tortures among which was the awful fate of being burned to death on poles or crosses to provide light for Nero’s entertainments. In the popular understanding the building now known as the Roman Coliseum is regarded as the place where they died, but it is in fact a later construction: many were actually martyred in Nero’s Circus, an arena which was built beside the Vatican hill. That arena is now obliterated, not a stone of it remains, but it was located on what is now one of the squares of the Vatican City State - situated between St Peter’s Basilica and the German College.

The First Martyrs of Rome

While we may like to shy away from such brutal histories, as disciples of Jesus Christ it is always a recommended exercise to acquaint ourselves with the stories of our martyrs. Down the centuries our ancestors in the faith found great edification and encouragement in reading of the courage and fidelity of those who gave their lives for Christ. In the first centuries of the Church most of the saints who were venerated were martyrs and some of them had devotional cults which would rival the great devotions of today. As we marvel at St Thérèse of Lisieux, St Pio of Pietrelcina, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, martyrs like St Cecilia, St Sebastian, St Agatha, St Lucy and St Laurence, to mention a few, were the popular saints of their time - and they are still loved and honoured today. Following the peace of Constantine and in the centuries afterwards, the remains of the martyrs were exhumed from the Catacombs and the clergy and people of various churches vied with each other to get the sacred relics of a martyr for their church. In fact, some people were so desperate they even engaged in acts of theft, raiding the neighbouring church’s shrine to make one in their own. In the Middle Ages the fervour for relics of the martyrs and other saints inspired a wholesale business in fake relics. Looking beyond the abuses and unhealthy relic-fever, we can see a genuine desire to get closer to the heroes of our faith and to have their mortal remains in the midst of their communities as an inspiration.

The Church has a long history of martyrdom. From the beginning members of our faith have been laying down their lives in witness to Christ. At times this martyrdom occurs during bouts of serious persecution, at other times it is isolated and hidden, carried out by individuals who hate Christ or the Church. Those who died were put to death for their profession of the Christian faith, or adherence to the Catholic Church, others were killed for their devotion to the life of virtue as in the case of St Maria Goretti, or as witnesses to charity as we see in the death of St Maximilian Kolbe. Others have been put to death because they are symbols of goodness in the midst of a tyranny or corrupt society as with St Thomas More and Blessed Restituta Kafka. Among the many martyrs of these times there is even one who was put to death for her holiness and as a sacrifice to Satan - the Servant of God, Sr Maria Laura Mainetti. In every case of martyrdom, the example of Jesus in his act of self-offering has encouraged these thousands and tens of thousands of disciples; with authentic martyrs as it became clear to them that they were to be killed for their Christian faith, they embraced their death in great peace, forgiving their killers and persecutors and uniting themselves with their Crucified and Risen Saviour. The last words of many of these martyrs are exemplary. St Maria Goretti, as she was dying in agony not only forgave the man who had attacked her, but actually desired with all her heart that he would be in heaven with her. The joking of St Laurence and St Thomas More at their executions may seem grotesque, but it revealed a real joy. St Thomas explained the cause of his joy as he spoke to his executioner - he asked him not to be afraid to do his job, for he was helping him to heaven.

And of course our Gospel today will also make sense. Today we hear of Jesus’ teaching on his passion and death, and also of the future persecution and martyrdom of his disciples. In an interesting Pauline moment, if I can call it that, we hear of a group of Greeks who want to meet Jesus. I call it Pauline and will explain why in a moment.   They approach Philip, who may have had Greek connections himself since he bears a Greek name.   He goes to Andrew to discuss how it is to be done, and they go to Jesus. Immediately Jesus begins to speak of his passion and death and the role of suffering. Why does he do so? Perhaps because he knows how the Greeks would normally react. Why do I call it a Pauline moment?   St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 1:23) tells us that the crucifixion of Jesus is a folly to the Greeks - in their belief system they cannot get their heads around it; as these Greeks come to the Lord he is already preaching the cross and its role in the lives of his followers. He is telling them and us that we need to change our ideas and think in the same way as he does: to look on suffering and martyrdom in different way, in a new light. The call to be a disciple of Jesus is not easy.

The hour has now come, Jesus tells them. St John’s Gospel is a highly symbolic one and his designation of “the hour” is that of Jesus’ passion and death, but, as Jesus tells his disciples, it is also the hour of his glorification. Here is the wonderful paradox at the heart of this Gospel, and the means of understanding who Jesus is: the hour of his greatest degradation is the hour of his triumph. While everyone around him sees the greatest defeat, Christ sees the victory, because in this death we see the birth of new life, grace is poured out and salvation is won; in the words of the Book of Revelation, in this death all things are made new. This is Jesus’ teaching on suffering and martyrdom - it is the victory since it yields grace and salvation. Suffering and death are not incidental or meaningless, on the contrary, they are necessary because “unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest”. Jesus tells his followers that if they love their lives more than him, they will die, but if they hate their lives in this world, then they will live.    But is this teaching just too idealistic? What about human weakness? What about fear?

Even Jesus was afraid of what was to come: we see this in the Agony in the Garden and in his words “Now my soul is troubled”. But his fear was overcome thanks to his trust in his Father and his dedication to his mission. Jesus knows he must, in obedience, assent to what is to come and so he embraces it, not with a sense of fatalism, but with his eyes set on the fruit his death will produce. Reflecting on this the vision of the Temple given to the Prophet Ezekiel comes to mind - we read his account of this vision in the first reading of last Monday’s Mass. From the Temple, which we can understand to be Christ, flows life-giving waters, waters which become a great river which flows down to renew the land and the sea. These waters bring the trees on its banks to blossom and to bear the sweetest fruit, renewed each month, while making their leaves medicinal. This is how we understand the cross. Jesus Christ, the new Temple, pours out grace from the cross bringing life and health and even making the tree (the cross) a most fruitful thing: what was once a symbol of shame and an instrument of the cruellest death is now the symbol of life - the richest life! The cross is transformed by Christ, and in terms of our own lives, we must understand this cross to be our own sufferings, our daily struggles, our trials. We can now understand his words to us today: when he speaks of service we can see it meaning two things - the first is the work of our lives - our offering, our lives of service; the second is the offering of our sufferings, our participation, as his servants, in the cross.    “If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him” Jesus tells us, and how true that is when that service is that of laying down our lives for him be it in the daily living and daily suffering, or in the extraordinary cases, in the act of martyrdom. So we need not fear if we trust; even though human emotions are strong, our faith will help us. Those words uttered from heaven in our Gospel, heard by the few, are for us, as Jesus said: the Father will glorify the Son for his sacrifice, and this is the promise given also to those who walk with Christ.

Jesus leaves us with a beautiful image in this regard. As he tells his disciples, and we presume also the Greeks who came to see him, that sentence is being passed on the world and the prince of this world is to be overthrown (meaning not just Satan, but the reign of this world), he is already lifted up in order to draw all people to himself. This is a prophecy of his death, but more. Christ, raised high on the cross, will rise above the chaos and confusion of the world so all people will see him and make their way to him. Here we now recognize the cross as a refuge, a shelter, because it is the throne of Christ on earth, our place of safety and peace.

Our Lenten observance, as I mentioned before, is to be oriented towards our transformation: our greater openness to God so he can bring the image of Christ to perfection within us. Part of this is our “change of mind” with regard to suffering. We offer penance to help increase our strength to endure the hardships which life will throw at us. Lest you think you should go out looking for suffering remember the words of St Pio of Pietrelcina to his spiritual children: do not go looking for suffering, each day will bring enough of its own. We live what we have been given to live today, and not to worry about tomorrow.

And so we may be led to consider the times we are living in today, and they are indeed extraordinary times. As the Church in our day faces many challenges, we can be sure that, as always, suffering, and yes even persecution and martyrdom, will be part of these challenges. It seems that many of us, even those of us who live in countries which are considered to be Christian, may have some form of martyrdom to face. Martyrdom today is much more subtle than in the past. For us in the West gone are the days, for the most part, when a follower of Jesus Christ will be openly put to death for their faith. The Twentieth Century has seen the emergence of a more hidden form of persecution: these persecutions are covered up or disguised in different ways. In some cases they are ignored, as, for example, the blatant martyrdom of Catholics for their adherence to the Catholic faith by the Republican/Socialist/Anarchist forces during the Spanish Civil War. While media and historians concentrate on the reprisals of Nationalist forces and blame the Church for the subhuman existence of Spaniards under the Monarchy, the deaths of over 80,000 innocent priests, religious and laypeople is quietly ignored. This martyrdom is not even denied because denials may draw the world’s attention to the reality beneath the Socialist myth which has become the accepted history of Spain. Other tyrannies are likewise passed over.

Pope Pius XII
consoles Romans after the bombing of St Lorenzo

But modern martyrdom is not confined to the actual physical killing of Christians; today we see a less obvious form. Secularist ideologists, for example, are conducting a war on Christians as they seek to undermine our faith in order to enshrine their own beliefs in our society and make us submit to them. Attempts to distort Christian doctrines and the history of the Church are a means by which they achieve this. The vilification of Pope Pius XII is a perfect example. Despite the overwhelming evidence which exists to prove that Pius saved hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Second World War; that his “silence” was designed to save as many lives as possible when he realised that heroic words led to dreadful reprisals; in spite of the evidence that he undermined and attacked the Nazis at every opportunity, the “official record” maintains that he remained untouched by the suffering of the Jewish people and was unwilling to help them. In reality this “myth of Hitler’s Pope”, as the Jewish historian, Rabbi David Dalin tells us in his study of Pope Pius’s wartime record, is not so much about Pius XII and the Jews during the war but about Paul VI and Humanae Vitae. Many of those who attack Pius XII are in fact attacking the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual morality. The means of silencing the Church on moral issues is to “reveal” the Church’s horrendously sinful, inhuman past (be it real or invented), and so destroy the Church’s credibility. This is the persecution of these times and it is more insidious, more frustrating than beheading, hanging or shooting. The recent attacks on Pope Benedict seem to be part of this agenda. This new martyrdom of the Church is psychological, designed to undermine the faith of her members and isolate those who remain true to the teaching of Christ. This form of martyrdom is difficult to bear and yet in these days it is giving us a whole new generation of Confessors which future Catholics may hold in deep veneration. It seems that in his providence, God asks each generation of Catholics to bear patiently with their sufferings so as to be an example for the generations yet to come. You personally, dear friend, have your place in this plan: you and me, and all of us, must be the ones who inspire those yet to come: it is part of our vocation as members of the Mystical Body of Christ and the Communion of Saints.

The English writer J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings once described us Christians as fighting the long defeat. He was not being negative, nor fatalistic: he believed in the victory of Christ, but he also understood the Lord’s teaching that the world will never fully understand this strange breed called Christians and that we will never completely persuade the world. We will be defeated in the sense that our victory lies elsewhere - in heaven, and this world and all that is of this world, will pass away. Tolkien is telling us not to fret - take St Paul’s advice to the Thessalonians to heart: live as well as we can here, the holy Apostle tells us, while waiting for the Lord to come. The mission Jesus gives us is to bring as many as possible with us into the victory procession which will take place at the gates of heaven. This should give us great confidence and joy - even the joy of the martyrs. We do not get too upset when things go against us, and we trust more and more in Jesus Christ. Are there times when you are surprised that, in the midst of a moral crisis, the Pope, for example, rarely seems ruffled? Perhaps you were like me when I use to get upset and defiant whenever there was a major setback for the Church or when our faith was attacked, but there was Pope John Paul II, and now Pope Benedict, calm and peaceful. Was it case that they were uninterested or unconcerned, or so caught up in diplomacy that they just let these things go? No, not at all: our Popes carry the burden of the Church on their shoulders, but in their faith they knew what Tolkien knew. They were not quietist - they trusted and they would do what they were called to do and Jesus would be their wisdom and strength: be strong, Jesus tells them and us, I have conquered the world. The virtue which they were practicing was fortitude, not a black, life-denying fortitude, but a joyful fortitude, an affirming fortitude, almost an inebriating fortitude; that fortitude which Tolkien show us in Aragorn and King Théoden in the Lord of the Rings, when at the moment it seems they are completely defeated, they lead their troops out to face the overwhelming hoards at Helm’s Deep.

Blessed Restituta Kafka,
Martyr under the Nazis, a nun who liked her beer!

One of our more recent martyrs is a marvellous example of this joyful fortitude: Blessed Restituta Kafka - the name gives us the impression of one of those indomitable nuns who could face down an invading army at ten paces. She was certainly a formidable woman. Of Czech descent, she spent her whole life in humble service of the sick and poor, and was renowned for her customary glass of beer in the evening, enjoyed with a steaming bowl of goulash after a long day in the hospital. She was a joy to know, an example of goodness, a true Good Samaritan who was never flustered, a woman whose faith could move mountains. Her very existence, however, was a threat to the Nazis who half feared her. They had to get rid of her. They got their chance when she put up a crucifix in the hospital in which she worked. After a year in prison Hitler’s secretary, Martin Bormann, condemned her to death, to be carried out on the 30^th March 1943. And so the great Restituta, unruffled to the end, went to the guillotine and to the victory which was awaiting her.

Learning from the example of our martyrs, and heeding his encouraging words in Scripture, Christ says to each one of us:

What goes through a martyr’s mind as they prepare to die? A friend of mine gave me an insight into this when she told me the story of a priest she knew. This priest, who had served in her parish, had found himself condemned to death for his Catholic faith a number of years before - he was working in a country where the Church was undergoing a silent persecution. He was arraigned under trumped up charges, and was due to be shot. In the moments before his execution he experienced a deep serenity which seemed to descend upon him - it did not come from within. In this serenity he found an incredible joy and the ability to forgive those who were to kill him. He knew that he was about to be martyred for Christ and his Church, and he understood that God’s grace was now with him. The priest was reprieved moments before he was due to be shot and lived to tell the tale. One might ask, if God knew he was to be spared, why did he give him the grace? Perhaps this priest is meant to be a witness to those who will face great suffering for Christ that God will not abandon them in their moment of trial, but will actually come to their help. When I heard of the experience of this priest the last, joyful moments of our martyrs suddenly made sense.

Be true to your faith;
endure,
do not lose heart,
do not be afraid:
I am with you.
I have conquered the world,
the victory is already won.
Trust in me.
Come, follow me.

Fr John Hogan,
Father Director,
The Fraternity of St Genesius
29th March 2009

Servant of God,
Sr Maria Laura Mainetti, Martyred in a sacrafice to satan

El Greco, The Crucifixion

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