Martyrdom

I’d like to think I’d say “uh yea!” when Christ asks, “Will you die for me?” Quite honestly I think about martyrdom. In my fantasy theres always a gunman who asks “Do you believe in Christ?” and I’m like “heck yeah silly head!”Then at point blank he blows my head off. Gory, yea, but it is so quick and painless. There is absolutely no effort beyond the combination of lip movement and a gutteral sound, and at the end, I’m in heaven, which sounds sweet. But, I believe that Christ would say that this isn’t martyrdom at all.

See the guy in my fantasy doesn’t worship God. He wants to be heaven not because Christ is there but because he’d rather not be in hell. The guy in this fantasy knows about all the other martyrs but would prefer a bullet to the cortex because its less painful, and the question? Well that’s just because it’s the easiest way to become a martyr. No suffering, super easy, and it is all about me. So yeah. That’s not martyrdom.

Martyrdom if anything is always selfless, and always countercultural. Note that culture is a relative to the word cultus which means worship.  Every martyr that died, did so because their faith was a threat to anothers culture, and that’s what I mean by countercultural. Currently there are 1.2 billion catholics in the world, because throughout history the catholic church had  developed a culture based on the liturgy and by liturgy I mean the mass and feast days, prayer and so on. Since the worship of God was at the center of culture, despite the corruption and misuderstandings, the church has been able to hold the people together.  

Right now we are in a war between cultures. If we go back to the fantasy martyrdom it perfectly resembles the current culture of man. We fight for pleasure and ease and the individual, all of which are not bad except that we worship these values. For example we deny doing what we believe is right because to take a stand could cause us the pain of losing friendships. What we have to see is that to give in to this culture will cause us a greater pain, the loss of what we desire most, God. 

As new evangelists if we wish to bring back the catholics who have fallen, we have to build a new culture, a culture of life based on the liturgy. It is the free gift from God that orients ourselves back to the truth. The time to hide our faith is done. This is a culture of life for all and so it must be made known regardless of our own suffering , regardless of the ammount of effort and regardless of ourselves. Martyrdom does not required physical death, only a death that dies to the ways of the world, and if we can do this then we can honestly say yes when Christ asks, “Will you die for me?”

-Dominic Price