“Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, and the Gospel shall save it.”
Being a follower of Jesus and the Gospel was often a dangerous risk, but for so many men and women from the earliest centuries of the Church right up to the present, they found torture and death preferable to denying their faith in Jesus and the demands of the Gospel.
We know that all the apostles, with the exception of John, suffered martyrdom, as did thousands of those who accepted belief in Jesus and paid for it with their lives in the early years of the Church.
The old adage, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” has proven to be true. Wherever missionaries preached the Gospel, their work bore much fruit. Everywhere, those in power sought to stamp out this new religion, which challenged the way they viewed God and the poor. They were treated harshly as they viewed it as challenging their power. Missionaries were killed, and those who refused to reject this new religion suffered the same fate.
The missionary impulse of the Church would not be stopped: “Go and teach all nations.” Throughout the Roman Empire, the Slavic peoples lived in what became Europe, as well as in the Far East, South America, North and Central America, and Oceania. Land after land, century after century, the list of martyrs grew, as did the growth of the Community.
Even in our own day, missionaries from the US have been martyred for their care for the poor and marginalized. We honor their fidelity: Staley Rother, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clark, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Stang. Fortified by the Eucharist, they remained faithful to the Lord Jesus incarnated in the poor. May we follow the call of the Eucharist to be broken and poured out for the incarnations of Jesus whom we meet as beacons of hope and love.
Let Us Pray:
Jesus, you gave us your all on the cross. In this Jubilee Year, you call us to be beacons of hope to all whose hope is dimmed by poverty, isolation, persecution, loneliness, and fear. We carry within us the hope we receive in each Eucharist to be you. Give us an abundance of your grace to bring hope and peace. Amen.
