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Boston Catholic Journal - Critical Catholic Commentary in the Twilight of Reason

Boston Catholic Journal

Martyrology for Today


CRITICAL CATHOLIC COMMENTARY

in the Twilight of Reason


 

 

Mary, Conceived without Sin, Pray for us who have Recourse to Thee

Mary, Conceived without Sin,

pray for us who have recourse to Thee

 


 

 

 

MISFORTUNE


and what we should learn from the trials of Job
 

“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither:
the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done:
blessed be the name of the Lord. In all these things Job sinned not by his lips,
nor spoke he any foolish thing against God.” 
 (Job 1.21-22)  


 

Job lost everything
 

Everything: children, house, health, good name, property ... you name it, and Job lost it. Covered with boils from “the sole of his foot to the crown of his head,” he sat upon the ashes he poured over his head and scraped himself with a potsherd. Even his wife reviled him: “Curse God and die.” Three friends came, barely recognizing Job, and sat a week with him in silence. They then proceeded to “console” Job ... by convicting him of his sins ... sins he never committed.     

Finally, Job himself uttered what we all have uttered at one time or another in our lives:

“Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?”

In other words, would that his nakedness had never been clothed in honor and glory — for then he would not know the pain of losing what he never had.

But God had,

“...  made a fence for him, and his house, and all his substance round about, blessed the works of his hands, and his possession hath increased on the earth?”  (Job 1.10)

God prospered Job.

The evil one, knowing this, tore down the hedge, devastated Job’s house, and tempted Job to despair ... to give up on God.         

And yet ... incredibly, “in all these things Job sinned not.”

Job was blameless before God. 
 

We know Job

We have been Job ... in one form or another at some point, perhaps at many points, in our lives. We have been devastated, deprived of what we esteemed good, lost our health, our jobs, our dignity, security ... and, for great sorrow, even our families.

How do we console ourselves? Most often, as Job’s friends had consoled him, we tell ourselves that our misfortune is, in some incomprehensible sense, just ... that we are suffering the rigors of an exacting and ineluctable justice that we had somehow eluded for sins or crimes we no longer remember ... from which we had inexplicably managed to escape, and which have finally caught up with us and demanded tribute.

However, the fact of the matter is that — at least in the case of Job — Job’s misfortunes were not just. There was no proportion between what he suffered and what he had done — indeed, Job had done nothing but good! Job’s misfortunes, we find, were not God’s “payback.”

And neither are ours.

Even were justice demanded of us for our sins — and unlike Job, our own sins are many — we can never make adequate restitution, never pay reparation, for we are too poor. We had squandered that patrimony of grace which had been given our First Parents in justice, and we forfeited it just as they did — even after Baptism washed us of that Original Sin, that primal effrontery through which our patrimony became our poverty!

Only what is without sin can cancel sin. And that justice has already been rendered — through Jesus Christ on the Cross.         

Yes, God is just. But it was not Job — and it is not us — it is God Himself who paid the price of justice in the shattered humanity of Christ.         
 

Rendering Justice to God

God did not – and He does not – exact the restitution of justice from us. We do not possess the tribute, the wherewithal — and we are fools, or deceived, if we believe that we can render justice to God. Only God can render justice to God. Why? Because the plenitude of justice that is God and that is due God is infinite because God Himself is infinite. His justice — like His love, goodness, and mercy — is the perpetual act of His being: it is, as it were, the very fabric of His Being: a “Being-good,” a “Being-loving,” a “Being-merciful” ... and a “Being-just”.

Love, mercy, goodness, justice are not merely “parts” of God's Being — rather, His being is a “Being-good,” “Being-loving,” “Being-merciful” ... and “Being-just.” These infinite and eternal acts (the acts of being: a-being-loving, a-being-good, a-being-just) do not simply coincide with His Being as something extraneous to it — they constitute His Being! To sin against justice, then, is to sin against the infinite justice of God Who alone is a Being-just ... and note merely a “just” being. How, then, can finite man make infinite restitution?  We cannot. Only Christ, being God, could — on the Cross. That is why Jesus is called, “the Just One.” *      
 

So, what of Job? What of us?

We came into this world with nothing. We will leave it with nothing. We think that we have worked for, earned, all the good things we enjoy, and reckon the day they may be taken from us injustice, not understanding that injustice was never done us, for we never merited, deserved, any of these things. What, then, of all our hard work and sweat? 

Ask yourself from the depths of the truthfulness of your being:  have you worked harder, more diligently, more desperately, more deservingly, than the poverty stricken farmer in sub-Sahara Africa? Why is he not adorned as you? Why is his plate empty? Because you are “more just” and these things are “more justly” yours (your “due” in justice?) — but somehow not his?

If you possess power, wealth, esteem, glory, in this world, do not congratulate yourself on your diligence, your “uncanny” insight, your “good luck” and success. Given the blandishment of the evil one — the “father of lies” — which we find in the temptation of Christ, it is, I suggest, far more appropriate to tremble.

Behold Job. And also behold Christ — Christ Who was also tempted by that same evil one who, in his empty promise, is frightfully revealing:

 

“And the devil led Him into a high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and he said to Him:
To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them.”
  (Saint Luke 4.5-6)

 

Ask yourself soberly: whence your prosperity, your power, your wealth? From whom, and to what end? And at the cost of whose dignity and through the poverty of how many did you acquire it? Prosperity, many Protestants hold, is a sign of God’s favor, a token of His predilection: if you are “just” and “Godly,” God will prosper you.

Misfortune and suffering, then, are — much in line with the reasoning of Job’s “consolers” — afflictions from God. They are the penalty — meted out by God — for “injustice” and “ungodliness.” Material prosperity, on the other hand, together with wealth and power — these are Gods blessings for the “just.” It is, in a word, their “reward” ... their “due” in all justice.
 

But it was not Saint Paul’s ...  nor the “reward” due in “justice” to the other Apostles:

“Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode;
And we labour, working with our own hands: we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it.
We are blasphemed, and we entreat; we are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now”
(1 Cor. 4.10-13)
 

This was the insidious trap set for Job by the devil through his “consolers” ... and by our own self-recrimination in the face of misfortune. We are confronted with misfortune. Who is to blame? With incredible subtlety, the devils suggests that either we are guilty — or God is! If we are not guilty for this misfortune, then God is. If God is not, then we are. But neither is the case!

In other words, Job brought it unknowingly upon himself — and God (not the devil, mind you ...) was perfectly willing to be complicit in this injustice —by punishing Job for what he did not do! What is more, He punished Job by “unjustly” taking away “what was his.” It was a masterpiece of illusion! Diabolically brilliant! Job was tempted by the devil to despair in having “unjustly” lost all that was “not his in justice” to begin with!

In a supreme irony, Christ was tempted by the same devil to idolatry through an empty promise to give Him what was already His to begin with.        
Remember, who precisely was it who had said that wealth, material prosperity, and power was his to give? And who was it that took it away from Job – that was his to give and his to take?

Misfortunes are not from God. Nor are they the penalty of your sins, for you would then have nothing (given your countless sins and the justice that would be exacted for each.)         

Misfortunes, suffering, want, pain, destitution, illness, are not lofty, if cruel, tributes to justice! They are evils! Evils out of which God ever brings good ... as He did with Job who, “in all these things ... sinned not.”

Misfortune is not of your own making — still less is it from God. Saint Paul understood this.

You must also:

“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world
of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armor of God,
that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect.” 
(Ephesians 6.12)
 

Let us see misfortune for what it is — and not for what the “father of lies” would entice us to believe. Evil is from the evil one,” endlessly contending with the ever-redemptive love of God lifting us up from the squalor of misery through the arduous path to holiness, calling us from that relentless malice that would pull us down to despair.

_____________________________________________________

* Acts 7.52

 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal
www.boston.catholic.journal.com

May 26, 2025, Feast of Saint Philip Neri

   Printable PDF Version

 

 

 

 

 
 
Pope Leo XIV and Francis - the Obession Continues
 
 

Leo XIV Continues Francis’s Obsessive Agenda:

Deconstructing the Catholic Church

 
 

What appeared to be a promising beginning, is unfolding as not just more of Francis, but the fulfillment of Francis’s most obsessive — and destructive — agenda for the Post-Catholic Conciliar Church of Vatican II which is now more, than ever, appears entirely estranged from the Church that baptized, taught, blessed, sanctified, and buried her children for the 2000 years prior to that catastrophic Council that built bridges to the world by burning bridges to her past — and lost God in the sorry trade.

Let us consider one change in appointments that he has made — which is really no change at all —  that is indicative of more than his  his pontifical posture, but his “progressive” (unorthodox)  theology under the tutelage of his predecessor, promoter, and friend, Francis:

 

The Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences

Leo indeed removed Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia, a man of unenviable repute. It is true. It is also true that he replaced him with a man little — if any — better than he was.

Indeed, while Cardinal Baldassare Reina is now Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family SciencesPaglia remains President of the Pontifical Academy for Life!

Quite a shake-up, no?

No.

There is much more to this pontifical legerdemain than this ecclesiastical shell game, and the personalities that appear to prevail indicate more about Leo than his growing absence of transparency ...
 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

Comments? Write us:  editor@boston-catholic-journal.com

 

 


 
 
 
 
 

The Most Urgent Question of Our Time:

 

When the Son of Man Comes, will He Find Faith on Earth? 

(St. Luke 18.8)

 

No more stunning, no more frightening, and perhaps no more ominously portentous words are spoken in all the Gospels, in fact, in the entire New Testament — perhaps even in the entirety of Sacred Scripture itself; words that have become increasingly fraught with significance with every passing year of the most unfortunate papacy of Francis — a papacy not just  likely … but I believe with certainty … will be understood not simply as among the worst … but the worst … the most destructive to the Faith and to the Church in the annals of 2000 years of Church history.

Indeed, with every generation following that devastating Second Vatican Council — that scorched earth assault on Tradition and historical Catholicism — the question increasingly verges on an implied and obvious answer.

Indeed, we must wonder if the question that Christ poses … “When the Son of Man comes will He find Faith on earth?” … is, in fact, spoken of this generation, or of one soon — very soon, to come.
 
As with so many of Christ’s teachings, this troubling question is too often and too deftly explained away — especially by the overwhelming number of the liberal theologians and bishops who have proliferated and multiplied since 1962 — which is to say, by “the learned and the wise”. If we heed them, it would appear that either Christ does not know what He is saying, or we do not know what He is saying — although we all agree that He said something ... that sounds suspiciously clear.
 
We must, however, pay careful attention to these twelve words, …. perhaps more now than at any
other time in Church history.


“When the Son of Man comes will He find Faith on earth?”


These are twelve words, however, to which we must pay careful attention, perhaps more now than at any other time in Church history.


However reluctant we are to take Christ at His word — which becomes increasingly inconvenient to us — we must recognize that Jesus never spoke idly: His words, His teachings — and yes, His Commandments — were always uttered to one explicit end: the salvation of souls — attaining to Heaven and everlasting happiness and to avoiding Hell and eternal misery.

 

The Jewish religious authorities — “the learned” of His own time — had scornfully dismissed Christ’s warning that not so much as stone would remain standing in the great Temple 1 ... the very Temple within which, 70 years later, these words were fulfilled when Rome laid waste in days what took 46 years to build.


We tend to view such alarming statements made by Jesus — and there are many — with the same scorn and disdain today.

Indeed ... what has become of the “Faith of our Fathers?”


A mere fifty years ago we ourselves would have instinctively replied “Of course He will find faith! There simply must be some deeper, some obscure and less evident meaning to this that we do not presently understand — and what He appears to be saying, He is not really saying at all. Surely the “learned” of our own day can deftly explain the answer to this troubling question. In the end, they will conclude, Jesus is really asking something entirely different from what He appears to be asking and that it has nothing to do with our very real defection from the Faith.”


It is likely that many Jews of Jesus’ time — both the learned and the unlearned — had replied in much the same way. In fact, they did. 

In other words, to us, our faith, the Faith of the Catholic Church for two millennia, could no sooner disappear than ... well, the stones of the great Temple 2000 years ago!

If, however, we take a careful inventory of our present and undeniably dismal and increasingly scandalous situation in the Church — especially as it has unfolded in the last five decades — Jesus does not quite appear as ... “perplexing” ... as so many apparently make Him to be.

Candidly Ask yourself the following:

Has the Faith — the Catholic Faith — flourished in the last 50 years, or has it withered?

Are vocations to the Priesthood and Religious life growing or dwindling?

Are Catholics having more children or are they having fewer children?

Are Missionary efforts, to the end of (dare we say it?) “conversion” as mandated by Christ encouraged as intrinsic to Catholicism — or are they discouraged as impolite, obtrusive, culturally imperialistic and inherently inimical to the “Ecumenical spirit of Vatican II” — especially as interpreted by Pope Francis for whom “proselytism is solemn nonsense,” to use his own words, words that mock the sacrifices of countless missionary saints through the 2000 years preceding Vatican IImore enlightened” understanding  of the Great Commission*?

Rather, we find that “conversion” to Christ and His Church is actively discouraged — that especially under Pope Francis it is no longer understood as a holy and inherently necessary endeavor — instead, it is disdained, even dismissed, as “socially and culturally incorrect” — indeed, we find that promoting our Catholic Faith — as Christ has commanded us to— has been  forbidden by Francis and his “progressive” coterie of feckless and disaffected cardinals and bishops! What pope, prior to Vatican II, could ever have envisioned this?

Is our understanding of the Catholic Church, as an absolutely unique institution indispensable to the ordinary means of salvation, emphasized as urgently today (if it is emphasized at all) as it was a hundred years ago? Fifty years ago? Indeed, is the concept itself — of the singularity and indispensability of the Holy Catholic Church — still deemed an actual dogma and a viable concept at all?


For all our insolence and equivocation, we know the answers, and we are uncomfortable with them, for they fly in the face of Christ and all that He taught — to say nothing of Sacred Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the Sacred Deposit of the Faith entrusted to the Catholic Church by God Himself.


Indeed, Christ’s question takes on a greater sense of urgency still, for the sheep are scattered and confused as never before. The papacy of Francis has been disastrous for the Church. Why? Precisely because he has taken Vatican II to its logical conclusion: the irrelevance of the Church.


Ubi est Pastor?


Where is the Shepherd? Who is earnestly addressing this spiritual malaise and religious decay due to the indolence and dereliction of the vast majority of American and European bishops who appear far more eager for secular plaudits than the now quaint and discredited notion of “the salvation of souls.” Pope Francis has effectively declared this mandate defunct in favor of the rehabilitation of bodies, societies, economies, and “the environment”. That the passing material environment of man is infinitely less important than the eternal abode of his soul, often appears to elude Francis. Indeed, it appears to elude most Catholics whose mantra increasingly coincides with the world’s: Social activism! ... not interior conversion away from this world ... and to Christ.


Shame! Shame on us! By our silence, our fear of being disparaged by “other Catholics” for the sake of Christ, we condone this travesty — are complicit in it ... even promote it!

 

What will motivate us to recognize, and to redress, this frightful and ultimately deadly state of affairs?


There are, after all, other contenders in this world for the souls of men ... seen and unseen! As our own wick smolders, others blaze! The burning Crescent of Islam, poised like a scimitar, and every bit as deadly, glows and grows in the east, and with it, not an ethnic, but a Religious Cleansing to which the world remains indifferent — an expunging of every vestige of Christianity in partibus infidelium. And even Islam has its secular collaborators: the European Union — once a continent raised up from utter barbarism to a civilization formed and ennobled by its Catholic heritage — will no longer tolerate the inclusion of its indissoluble Christian heritage within its Constitution. Not only does it thoroughly repudiate its own Christian cultural heritage — it prohibits it — even banishes it! This is nothing less than self-loathing. And perhaps it ought to be.


Surely, then, in our effort to remedy this impending state of dissolution, we will first turn to our bishops, since they are, preeminently, the “Teachers and Guardians of the Faith”. But more often than not — much more often than not — in the well-appointed office at the end of the corridor we do not find a shepherd of souls but a deeply sequestered, occasionally avuncular, and predictably remote ... “administrator.”


Relegating his prime responsibility as Teacher and Promoter of the Faith ... to others, in the form of Lay committees and subcommittees largely “chaired” by liberal Catholics more concerned with social issues than the salvation of souls, are we confident that the patrimony of our faith will somehow percolate through this strata of already contaminated soil and reach our children authentically and intact? Is our fear mitigated ... or further exacerbated ... by our bishops’ resolute lack of diligence in being attentive to what Catholic colleges and theologians in their own dioceses are really teaching — and who are teaching the teachers ... who, in turn, are teaching our children?


Do you think that your bishop actually — that is to say, cognitively — is aware of, or even concerned with — what the teachers themselves are actually teaching?


Not in this diocese. Not in Boston. In fact, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley had routinely feted, praised, and held up as exemplary, the clueless “Catechists” who churn out our children to the Sacrament of Confirmation — with no clue whatever of that in which they are being confirmed. By comparison, even the dismal failure of our public schools in Boston must be deemed a stunning success.


For most of us — especially in the Archdiocese of Boston, but no less elsewhere — the answer is, as they say, a “no-brainer:” it is a universally resounding no. Most of us find, to our growing dismay and deepening cynicism, that our bishops appear to have “more important,” more ... “pressing” things to do ... than to communicate the Faith to the faithful ... especially the children.

Really, we beg the question: if no one teaches the teachers — who, then, teaches the children? If they are not brought the faith by those to whom it has been entrusted — the bishops, the episcopacy — who will bring it to them?

Will they — how can they — acquire the Faith ... if no one brings it to them? Saint Paul is very clear about this:


“How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent ...?” (Romans 10.14-15)


Ask yourself candidly: do you know more ... or less ... of your Catholic faith than your children? Very likely more — although, in all honesty, it is probably little. You politely assent to the now quaint Catholic notion that “parents are the primary teachers of their children,” but knowing little of your own Faith, you simply shell out $175.00 per child and pan off this grave responsibility to others of whom you know nothing, and who themselves largely know nothing of the faith they presume to teach. You go through the motions as careless of what your children are taught in their 10 years of “Religious Education” as your bishop is of what the teachers teach. 10 years later, and $1500 poorer per child, you scratch your head and wonder why Johnny still does not know God, and why Judy never goes to Mass — and yet we have agreed that you know more than your children ...

What, then, we must ask — with growing apprehension — will your children teach their children ...?


What will they — who know even less than you — teach those who know nothing?


Total Ignorance


The momentum, as we see, is inexorable — until it culminates in total ignorance: every generation knows less of their faith than the generation preceding it. It is, in the end, the devolution from doctrine to legend, from legend to fiction, and from fiction to myth.

That is not just a poor, but a stultifying and ultimately deadly patrimony.

This default — at every level — in transmitting the authentic Catholic faith intact ... leaves Jesus question very suddenly very real.


“Recently, a Gallup poll was taken on Catholic attitudes toward Holy Communion. The poll showed serious confusion among Catholics about one of the most basic beliefs of the Church. Only 30 percent of those surveyed believe they are actually receiving the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.”  


The problem is more than mathematical; as we have seen, it is exponential. 70% of Catholics do not possess this most fundamental, this most essential understanding of the core article of genuine Catholic doctrine: that “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, you have no life in you.” Heavy stuff!

It is not just a matter of the greatest concern, but nothing less than a matter of the gravest dereliction that most Catholics do not realize — do not know — that the very Mass itself is an abbreviation of “The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass”, and that it is really a Sacrifice, the actual re-enactment of Calvary before their very eyes!

This failure of understanding ... culminates in a failure in Faith. It possesses, in significant ways, the remorseless characteristics of mathematical certainties. Not understanding, grasping — having never been taught — the most elementary features of the faith, how can they be understood to possess what they have not acquired, and how can they transmit, pass on, what they do not possess? It is inescapable.  

Prognostication, of course, is for fools.


But the words of Christ are certainties that will come to pass.


“Weep not for Me, but for your children”, 5 Christ told the sorrowing women on the road to Calvary.

Jesus’ question, then — “When the Son of Man comes will He find faith on earth?”—  is not a “rhetorical question” at all; it is a question fraught with enormous significance ... the frightful answer to which appears to be unfolding before our very eyes ... but that is if you take Christ at His word — and given Jesus’ track record on things yet to come, we would do well and wisely to give pause for more than thought.

Are you worried now ...? Not nearly enough.

And this is all the more frightening still.

 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

Comments? Write us:  editor@boston-catholic-journal.com

   Printable PDF Version

 

 


 

 

The Holy Catholic Faith

Where is it And Who is Keeping it?

The Catholic Church that we Once Knew and Recognize no Longer

Has the Post-Conciliar Church

Lost Custody of the Faith?

 

All indications are that is has.

The “Dark Ages” — that disdainful term for the period in history following the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. until the 15th century (a period correctly described as the Middle Ages) is understood by the secular world to have lasted roughly 1000 years, beginning in Florence, Italy.

Within the post-Conciliar Catholic Church, however, it appears that the term extends well beyond the 15th century; indeed, some 500 years beyond it! According to contemporary Catholic thought articulated within the past five papacies, the “Dark Ages” really ended in 1965 at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. All the doctrines and teachings prior to that Council were only imperfectly, deficiently, and insufficiently articulated or defectively understood.


The 1000 Years of Darkness

Only the Second Vatican Council finally attained to enlightenment in the divine economy, and after 1,965 years of suspension, it alone has provided the final, sufficient, and correct understanding of God and Church, man and nature. Prior to that, according to post-Conciliar thought, Catholics had essentially lived in darkness, specifically the darkness of the “pre-Conciliar Dark Ages.” It may be said that where the Rational Enlightenment “saved the world from religion,” Vatican II saved the Church from Catholicism.
 

Continue reading

 



Martyrology for Today

Semen est sanguis Christianorum (The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church) Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50

 

 

ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

 

 

Wednesday May 28th in the Year of Grace 2025

 


This Day, the Twenty-Eight Day of May

At Canterbury, in England, St. Augustine, bishop, mentioned on the 26th of this month.

In Sardinia, the holy martyrs Emilius, Felix, Priam, and Lucian, who were crowned after having combated for Christ.

At Chartres, in France, under the emperor Domitian, St. Caraunus, martyr, who was beheaded, and thus acquired the glory of martyrdom.

At Corinth, St. Helconides, martyr, who was first subjected to torments in the reign of the emperor Gordian, under the governor Perennius, and then again tortured under his successor Justin. But being liberated by an angel, she had her breasts cut off, was exposed to wild beasts and to fire, and at length terminated her martyrdom by decapitation.

Also, the martyrdom of the Saints Crescens, Dioscorides, Paul, and Helladius.

At Thecua, in Palestine, the saintly monks who became martyrs by being killed by the Saracens, in the time of Theodosius the Younger. Their sacred remains were gathered by the inhabitants of the place and preserved with the greatest veneration.

At Paris, St. Germanus, bishop and confessor, whose celebrity for holiness, merit, and miracles, has been transmitted to us by the writings of bishop Fortunatus.

At Milan, St. Senator, bishop, very renowned for virtues and learning.

At Urgel, in Spain, St. Justus, bishop.

At Florence, St. Podius, bishop and confessor.

And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.

Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis. (All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us,” from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints)
 

Response: Thanks be to God.


 



Roman Martyrology by Month




Why the Martyrs Matter



Each day we bring you a calendar, a list really, of the holy Martyrs who had suffered and died for Christ, for His Bride the Church, and for our holy Catholic Faith; men and women for whom — and well they knew — their Profession of Faith would cost them their lives.

They could have repudiated all three (Christ, Church, and Catholic Faith) and kept their lives for a short time longer (even the lapsi * only postponed their death — and at so great a cost!)

What would motivate men, women, even children and entire families to willingly undergo the most evil and painfully devised tortures; to suffer death rather than denial?

Why did they not renounce their Catholic Faith when the first flame licked at their feet, after the first eye was plucked out, or after they were “baptized” in mockery by boiling water or molten lead poured over their heads? Why did they not flee to offer incense to the pagan gods since such a ritual concession would be merely perfunctory, having been done, after all, under duress, exacted by the compulsion of the state? What is a little burned incense and a few words uttered without conviction, compared to your own life and the lives of those you love? Surely God knows that you are merely placating the state with empty gestures …

Did they love their wives, husbands, children — their mothers, fathers and friends less than we do? Did they value their own lives less? Were they less sensitive to pain than we are? In a word, what did they possess that we do not?

Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves are given in the Sacrament of Confirmation — but cleaved to it in far greater measure than we do: Faith and faithfulness; fortitude and valor, uncompromising belief in the invincible reality of God, of life eternal in Him for the faithful, of damnation everlasting apart from Him for the unfaithful; of the ephemerality of this passing world and all within it, and lives lived in total accord with that adamant belief.

We are the Martyrs to come! What made them so will make us so. What they suffered we will suffer. What they died for, we will die for. If only we will! For most us, life will be a bloodless martyrdom, a suffering for Christ, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside the arena. The road to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses, and upon the Crosses people, people who suffered unknown to the world, but known to God. Catholics living in partibus infidelium, under the scourge of Islam. Loveless marriages. Injustices on all sides. Poverty. Illness. Old age. Dependency. They are the cruciform! Those whose lives became Crosses because they would not flee God, the Church, the call to, the demand for, holiness in the most ordinary things of life made extraordinary through the grace of God. The Martyrology we celebrate each day is just a vignette, a small, immeasurably small, sampling of the martyrdom that has been the lives of countless men and women whom Christ and the Angels know, but whom the world does not know.

“Exemplum enim dedi vobis”, Christ said to His Apostles: “I have given you an example.” And His Martyrs give one to us — and that is why the Martyrs matter.

  • A Martyr is one who suffers tortures and a violent death for the sake of Christ and the Catholic Faith.

  • A Confessor is one who confesses Christ publicly in times of persecution and who suffers torture, or severe punishment by secular authorities as a consequence. It is a title given only given to those who suffered for the Faith  —  but was not  killed for it  —   and who had persevered in the Faith until the end.


Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Boston Catholic Journal

Note: We suggest that you explore our newly edited and revised De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus — The Torments and Tortures of the Christian Martyrs for an in-depth historical account of the sufferings of the Martyrs.

* Those early Christians who renounced their Catholic Faith in times of persecution. When confronted with the prospect of torture and death if they held fast to their faith in Christ, they denied Him and their Faith through an act of sacrificing (often incense) to the pagan Roman gods and in so doing kept their lives and/or their freedom and property.

 

 


 

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Scio opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum 
I know your works ... that you have but little power, and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.
(Apocalypse 3.8)

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