The Lord’s Encouragement toward Martyrdom, By Word and By Example, 28th Friday (II), October 19, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
2018 Men’s Silent Retreat
“The Bravery to Live One’s Catholic Faith to the Full”
St. Damiano Retreat Center, White Post, VA
Friday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of the North American Martyrs
October 19, 2018
Eph 1:11-14, Ps 33, Lk 12:1-7

To listen to a recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• We begin this retreat by focusing on the biggest things, the reason why we exist. St. Paul describes it in today’s first reading from his letter to the Christians in Ephesus.

• • “Chosen in accordance with the purpose of one who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will so that we might exist for the praise of his glory.”
  • Hearing “the Word of Truth”
  • The “Gospel of Salvation”
  • Faith: “Believed in him”
  • “Sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, the first installment of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s possession to the praise of his glory.”
  • This leads us to cry out with the words of the Psalm, “Blessed is the people God has chosen to be his own.” We are God’s people, blessed in this way.
• The problem is that we often don’t live like the chosen people ought. We’re not always fully “in” to what the Lord wants to do. This is what we see in today’s Gospel with the Pharisees, who were outwardly the most religious of the Jews, but their hearts were far from it. Jesus warns against their leaven. He reminds us that we can’t have a secret life that will not be revealed.
• Then he teaches his disciples not to be afraid of the Pharisees, because that fear would allow their cancerous leaven to take root by intimidating us to try to meet their standards.
  • “Do not be afraid of those who who kill the body but after that can do no more.” The theme of this retreat is courage.
  • Jesus teaches us the remedy: holy awe of God. “Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna.” He wants us to focus on God rather than on Pharisees and others.
  • Then he teaches us that our fear for God shouldn’t leave us cowering, because God indeed loves us more than the sparrows and has numbered all the hair on our head.
• The martyrs are the ones who live with this type of providence-inspired courage, knowing that the opposition of this world can not frustrate God’s having chosen and destined us, it cannot eliminate the word of truth and the Gospel of salvation, it cannot rob us of the inheritance toward redemption God has given.
• Today we celebrate some of the greatest martyrs. The eight Jesuits whom we call the North American Martyrs — Jesuit Saints René Goupil, Isaac Jogues, John de Lalande, Anthony Daniel, John de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel — in the early 1600s, zealously brought the Gospel to New France, which encompassed most of eastern Canada as well as some of the areas of upstate New York. Practically speaking, it meant carrying the word of Jesus Christ to the native Americans — the Hurons, the Mohawks, the Iroquois — who by the time the Jesuits arrived in 1625 had already earned a reputation for resisting missionaries and making them martyrs. St. Jean de Brébeuf was one of the first Jesuits to arrive in 1625 at the age of 31. Earlier, he had been rendered an invalid by tuberculosis, but having recovered his strength, he wanted to use the health he had to pass on the treasure of the faith, becoming rich in what matters to God and seeking to help the natives likewise grow in that richness. As soon as he arrived, he began to study the difficult Huron language. Over the course of three years of hard work, living alone among the Indians, with much suffering and constant danger, he did not gain a single convert. When England took over Canada in 1629, he was summoned back to France. It would have been easy for him to say he had paid his dues and spend the rest of his life at the Jesuit institutions of Europe, but when France re-obtained title to the Canadian colonies four years later, he was on the first boat back. For 16 more years he labored about the Hurons, with his perilous adventures covered in detail in The Jesuit Relations. He would drag his canoe and bags over mountains and valleys for miles, going from location to location, wherever the Hurons were. His apostolate began to bear fruit, especially with the young. In 1649, the Iroquois attacked the village where he was stationed and he was sentenced to death. His death is about as gruesome as that of any missionary ever recorded. He was stripped naked and beaten with clubs on every part of their body. Then they cut off his hands, applied white-hot tomakawks to his armpits and groin, and fastened searing sword blades around his neck. Next, they covered him with bark soaked in pitch and resin and lit him on fire. During all of this, as the eyewitness account records in The Jesuit Relations, he continued to encourage and exhort the Christian converts around him to remain faithful. To stop his preaching, the savages then plugged up his mouth, tore off his lips, cut off his nose, and then, in mockery of baptism, put him in a tub of boiling water. They proceeded next to cut off his flesh, roast it and eat it in front of him. The final blow came when they sliced open his chest and ripped out his beating, valiant heart, so that they could drink his blood when it was still warm. This was the faith working through love that radiated through his life. The missionary life and death of Isaac Jogues are similarly inspiring examples of what that faith looks like. He arrived in New France in 1636 at the age of 29. His hard work among the Hurons bore fruit; in 1637, he rejoiced to baptize 200. In 1642, the Iroquois attacked the village where he was. He was beaten to the ground with clubs, and then had his hair, beard and nails torn away and forefingers bitten off. He was then made a slave. Eventually, he was rescued by the Dutch and sent back to France, where he was greeted both with both pity and as a hero. Because he no longer had the fingers to hold the Sacred Host, he was technically incapable of celebrating Mass, until Pope Urban VIII gave him a special dispensation. “It would be unjust that a martyr for Christ,” Urban said, “should not drink the blood of Christ.” Despite all that he had suffered, however, when the opportunity came to return to New France in early 1644, he jumped at the chance. It didn’t take long for him to receive his imperishable wreath and cash in the great portfolio of faith he had amassed through so many deeds of faith. He was ambushed at a meal by the Mohawks, who tomahawked him as he was entering the cabin. They cut off his head and placed it on a pole facing the direction from which he had come, as a warning to other missionaries.  But what the Mohawks were not planning on was that the blood of Jogues, Brébeuf and the six other North American martyrs would soften and fertilize the Indian soil to receive the Gospel. At the very place where Jogues was killed in Auriesvilles, New York, ten years later Saint Kateri Tekakwitha would be born. Even though they didn’t experience many conversions during their missionary work, the North American Martyrs’ heroic deaths, perseverance in the faith, and zeal for the salvation of their torturers would become renown not just in the Christian world, but even among the sadistic executioners. When the next wave of courageous missionaries arrived, they would Christianize almost every tribe they encountered. The blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of Christians. And we continue to grow in faith in the state that St. Isaac’s blood sanctified.”
• When we look at their martyrdoms, though, we can often focus so much on their actions, their faith, their heroism to the point of death. But that’s not the way they looked at it. They looked at it as a gift. This morning, in the lesson from the Office of Readings that the Church ponders on their feast, we pondered St. John de Brebeuf’s approach to martyrdom, which he looked at as a great grace. This is what he wrote in his diary: “For two days now I have experienced a great desire to be a martyr and to endure all the torments the martyrs suffered. Jesus, my Lord and Savior, what can I give you in return for all the favors you have first conferred on me? … I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles and martyrs, before my blessed fathers Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier—in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Savior, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day you in your infinite mercy would offer it to me, your most unworthy servant. … On receiving the blow of death, I shall accept it from your hands with the fullest delight and joy of spirit. … May I die only for you, if you will grant me this grace, since you willingly died for me. Let me so live that you may grant me the gift of such a happy death. In this way, my God and Savior, I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”
• The Prayer over the Gifts we will say today is particularly beautiful. “As we venerate the passion of your Martyrs John, Isaac and companions, grant that through this sacrifice, O Lord, we may proclaim worthily the Death of your Only Begotten Son, who not content with encouraging the Martyrs by word, strengthened them likewise by example.” The Lord’s own martyrdom, what he himself endured for us out of total trust in the Father’s providence, is the example for our own. Every time we enter into Holy Communion with him we are strengthens by his courage to follow his example. In him we were chosen and destined to exist for the praise of his glory, not just hearing the word of truth but enfleshing it, not just receiving the Gospel of salvation but experiencing it. The Eucharist is not just the first installment of our inheritance but the full foretaste of redemption as God’s possession.

The readings for today’s Mass were: