The first paper in this two-part meditation is given HERE. We are grateful to Fr Edmund Montgomery for his insights into our Faith, an to the Faith of the Martyrs in this land.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In our First Conference we heard how the true understanding of martyrdom is to ‘bear witness’ and we explored both martyrdom in this sense in Scripture, in tradition, and in our lives, too.
A witness in Court, as we know, is required to affirm: ‘I swear by almighty God, that the evidence I shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ They are on oath before God that their testimony is true.
To be a martyr is to be a witness. To be a witness is to be obliged to tell the truth. So that our lives may tell the truth, we must live lives of integrity: faithful to the Lord’s commands, the teaching of His Church, and the obligations we have taken on as members of the Order. It all has to be, as it were, a seamless garment: we claim to be Catholics, good, then we must show that by the conduct of our lives, otherwise our witness testimony will be seen to be unreliable; we claim to be members of the Order, good, then we must show that by the conduct of our lives, otherwise our witness testimony will be seen to be unreliable.
But we also witness to each other. St Paul put it like this, ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.’11 St Paul literally writes, ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of martyrs...’
Our testimony, our witness to each other than encourage or discourage each other. To be absent from Mass, to not support our parish priests, to be never amongst those who volunteer that can be a real counter-sign to our witness as Catholics; to be absence from Order events, to not support our confreres, to not be involved in the works of the Order unless it fits with our social lives or plans for recreation that can be a real counter-sign to our witness as members of the Order.
St John, writing in the last book of the Bible, Revelation, sees a vision of heaven, ‘After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.’12 The multitude in heaven, that is – everyone in heaven – are dressed in white and holding palm branches. The palm branch, as you know from Christian iconography and symbology is the attribute of the martyr. St John foresees that everyone in heaven is a martyr. We get to heaven if we bear witness. The testimony of our lives is written by our deeds and our testimony bears witness to what we truly believe is important, our real priorities, where we consider our true energies should be directed. Please God these all align with our duties as Catholics and our obligations in marriage and family life, religious profession, ordination, and to the Order.
Let me share with you an episode from Penal Times here in England of a case so famous and so instructive in the Law it became almost a maxim of law in citing precedent. A number of Catholics attended a clandestine Mass, offered in secret as the Mass and priesthood were both outlawed under Elizabeth Tudor.
Nevertheless, these faithful Catholics, huddled around a makeshift Altar, took the risk – took their lives in their hands – by seeking out the Mass in a time when to attend would mean imprisonment for the laity and certain death for the priest. However, this Mass was a trap. The priest sent to ‘say’ the ‘Mass’ was, in fact, an agent of the Crown, and as the ‘Mass’ began, so the guards fell on the gathering, arresting all present. At their trial, the Catholics were defended by an excellent lawyer, Edmund Plowden, who challenged the basis on which they were arraigned.
Plowden admitted that it was contrary to the law to assist at Mass and to do so carried grave penalties. Yet, argued Plowden, how could there be a Mass? The so-called ‘priest’ was an agent of the Crown, there was no priest, and if no priest, no Mass, and if no Mass, no crime. The brilliant argument won the acquittal of the accused. And the legal principle, challenging the basis of a charge, has passed into legal parlance as ‘The case is altered, quoth Plowden’!
The bravery of those Catholics who ventured out to attend Mass, mindful of the grave penalties attached to breaking the Penal Laws, gave witness – they were true martyrs. They need not shed blood to be shown to be so, rather the courage of their witness is the authentic understanding of martyrdom.
Let us put ourselves ‘on trial’ by way of an Examination of Conscience: if the charges read that we were both Catholics and members of the Order of Malta, to convict us, there would need to be evidence ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. What would acquit us? A ‘reasonable doubt’ that we are authentically living and daily striving to be good Catholics and good confreres of the Order. It can be a helpful way to consider our responsibilities as baptised persons and our particular state in life as well as the obligations attached to belonging to the Order, too.
But let me offer a word of encouragement to you also. I have been deliberately challenging in my choice of topic and the message I wanted to share with you today: that true martyrdom lies in bearing witness and that our lives – and our deaths – must testify to what we believe. We must take seriously our obligations and our responsibilities to God and to each other because we can be a source of encouragement of discouragement to each other by whether our example is edifying or otherwise.
It is certain that by the faithfulness to God and your lives of prayer you have been, and will continue to be, the witnesses or martyrs that the Lord desires us to be. The courage that the martyrs showed in the last moment as they were lead to the scaffold was only possible because they had already lived heroic lives and so, in the end, their death was a consequence of how they had lived. Their martyrdom began not with the first foot on the ladder to the scaffold but by their daily decision to love God above all things and to love their neighbour as they loved themselves. The true path to martyrdom is a desire to put to death all those parts of your heart and mine that cannot be offered to God or that God cannot bless. In this, the martyrs are not so different to you and me. The daily struggle of martyrdom and the aspiration that our lives give testimony and true witness that we live what we believe requires that we are willing to accept a form of martyrdom that requires us to seek authenticity and integrity in our lives as Catholics and as members of the Order.
From the perspective of Eternity, we will see on the Last Day at the General Judgment the consequences of both sin and grace, the impact that each of our lives and our choices for God or otherwise have had on the lives of others, on the course of human history, on the unfolding of God’s Divine Will and the effect of our witness and the testimony of our lives. I am confident that, through God’s grace, Divine Providence will both help us to strive for the good and given we all fall short, that God’s Providence will correct what we have omitted, undone, or deliberate chose to do, contrary to His Will.
But let us not forget that we have deep and serious obligations to God and to each other. We must renew these commitments and ask for God’s grace every day to carry them out. But more than this, we must decide, choose, to fulfil them. When this is a struggle, or requires effort, or makes us need to change our plans or make sacrifices, then let us see in this our own small martyrdom, and overcome these struggles with something of the same courage by which our forebears lived and ultimately, died for the faith.
Let’s commit ourselves to be authentic martyrs, true witnesses bearing testimony to what we believe by the manner of our lives, asking the prayers here of Ss Peter and Paul and the martyrs whose relics are only feet away from us, Ss Primus and Secundus, as we conclude:
Our Father – Hail Mary – Glory Be
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
11 Heb 12:1-3
12 Rev 7:9
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