As young Jesuits, years ago now, at the evening meal we would listen to the daily recounting from a book entitled ‘the Martyrology.’ We would be eating dinner and hear accounts of heads being knocked off, bodies boiled in iron boxes, lions chewing up believers and such gruesome pictures. While eating and listening, I would wonder if I could finish the meal and even more, if I could finish my vocation as a Jesuit in such terrible situations. I always managed to finish with dessert though.
Here on my desk is a five-by-five-inch little platform with a bent miniature fence post with some straggly barbed wire hanging on it and a small figure of the Franciscan Maximillan Kolbe who replaced a condemned man who had been sentenced to death in Auschwitz and so gave his life. Albert Delp and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two other W.W. II Christian martyrs, had also read today’s Gospel and listened to its last verse. This week we will commemorate the murdering of five El Salvadorean Jesuits, their house keeper and her daughter. They had also read these verses from today’s Gospel and these all did persevere.
In our listening to or reading these verses we might wonder if we are rather reading today’s newspaper or listening to or watching the daily news. There are wars, earthquakes, famines and dangerous uses of power. We hear Jesus speaking to His followers as He predicts how speaking and living His ways are going to be met with arrests, persecution, betrayals, even by family members. They will confront and then be seen as inconveniences and insults to the oppressors and dominators. In some way, they, as with Jesus Himself, will get what they bargained for.
I heard the whole Martyrology during my first five years as a Jesuit and each of us has listened to and perhaps prayed with these very verses from Luke’s Gospel. I then and now, and perhaps you as well, did and do wonder at what point would I excuse myself from His company with good excuses, such as “Well, I could stay alive to be available to do other good works.” Yes, a normal thought pattern. We can ponder whether the deaths of Kolbe, Delp, Bonhoeffer and the El Salvadorean companions brought about anything productive or helpful to the making of peace with Justice. Wouldn’t negotiations or denial work out better in the long run?
We are left with the final verses from both the First Reading from the Prophet Malachi and today’s Gospel and we pray, perhaps, to resist the self-condeming thoughts that we would not have the grace of perseverance and would drop out. We do, in our own small lives, live the daily martyrdom of living with our own earthquakes, wars, betrayals.
We ponder. What is worth living for and worth dying for? How precious is all that we give our every day to and for. We may not shed our blood for a cause or person, but that same blood gives us a life worth living for and that is an every-day offering. A good life is more than good when it is given to the living of others. Each day is a “thank You” for what we can share.
Rev. Larry Gillick, SJ
I entered the Society of Jesus in 1960, after graduating from Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and attending St. Norbert College for two years. I was ordained in 1972 after completing theological studies at the Toronto School of Theology, Regis College. I presently minister in the Deglman Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton and give retreats.
I enjoy sharing thoughts on the Daily Reflections. It is a chance to share with a wide variety of people in the Christian community experiences of prayer and life which have been given to me. It is a bit like being in more places than just here. We actually get out there without having to pay airlines to do it. The word of God is alive and well.
