The Martyrdom that Flows from Faith, 28th Saturday (I), October 19, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of the North American Martyrs
October 19, 2019
Rom 4:13.16-18, Ps 105, Lk 12:8-12

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Throughout this week, the first of four in our biennial liturgical listening to the Letter of the Romans, we have been pondering the faith that makes us “right” with God, that “ad-justs” us to his gracious, unmerited, initiative-taking action in our life, that opens us up to receive God’s gift. It’s faith that is meant to flourish in love. To focus, as many of the Pharisees did on our fulfilling the works of the law, is to infect our Covenant with God with a certain pride, focusing on our action rather than on God’s. What’s supposed to happen is that we recognize God’s action in our life, and respond with faith in all that we do, including in the way that we relate to God in doing what and all he asked.
• Today St. Paul focuses anew on the figure of Abraham, who was saved by faith well before God had even given the Mosaic law. Abraham believed in God and left Ur at 75. He believed in God when God said he would become the father of many nations, even though he and his wife were already AARP members, and kept on believing even though it would take 25 years for that promise of God to be fulfilled. He believed in God even when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, believing — as the Letter to the Hebrews stresses — that even if Isaac were slain, God would raise him from the dead, because precisely Isaac was the son of the promise. St. Paul says today that we are all called to be spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham by faith. “He is our father in the sight of God,” he states, and his descendants shall be fundamentally those who imitate his faith, who receive from God the gift of faith and respond like Abraham.
• This is a faith to which we are called to testify. In the Gospel today, Jesus speaks about that witness. Yesterday, if we did not celebrate the Feast of St. Luke with its proper Gospel, we would have heard Jesus telling us not to fear the Pharisees or anyone who could just harm or kill the body. Rather he told us to fear God who could cast body and soul into Gehenna, while reminding us that we don’t have a harsh judge for a Father but one who counts every follicle and cares for us more than all the sparrows. If that’s the case, then we should boldly show our faith in public. Jesus affirms, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.” But that work is not a “work of the law,” understood as something coming primarily from us, but rather it is a faith-filled response to grace. This is what Jesus indicates when he says, “When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities, do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.” God himself will act to help us, but in order to receive that help, in faith we need to be open to receiving it.
• The question is whether we are truly open. That’s what’s alluded to in the other part of the Gospel when Jesus says the mysterious words, “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” Jesus, Mercy Incarnate, will forgive those who speak against him — probably because he knows they speak out of ignorance, like, for example, St. Paul prior to his conversion — but to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is fundamentally to say that one doesn’t need the Holy Spirit, one doesn’t need God, one is fine on one’s own, even to speak in defense of the faith before religious and civil authorities. In the Catechism, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as the one unforgivable sin is described as impenitence: it won’t be forgiven not because God doesn’t want to forgive, but because he can’t, since we won’t allow him, either because we don’t think we need his forgiveness, or we don’t think he would forgive us, or we simply refuse to ask for it if he recognize he would forgive and we need it. But we can expand the notion of that blasphemy by saying that it’s the general category of those who think that they don’t need God’s help, or that God won’t give it, or who refuse to ask for what they know God would give.
• God normally puts us in circumstances in which we will have the chance to grow in faith, just like he tested Abraham’s faith and Abraham passed that test. When we are in front of others, including hostile situations, it’s an opportunity for us to give witness together with the Holy Spirit, as Jesus said during the Last Supper in the words that are today’s Alleluia versicle: “The Spirit of truth will testify to me and you also will testify.” It’s a chance for us to open up in faith to God’s help. It’s a chance for us to become like Abraham.
• Today we celebrate some of the greatest examples of those whose faith led them to give an extraordinary witness together with the Holy Spirit. 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. His faith inspired him to continue to acknowledge Christ before others, even if they were not ready yet to accept Christ. 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. He continued to acknowledge Christ. 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. Their acknowledgement, together with the work of the Holy Spirit, proved fruitful in the end. 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!” He wanted to acknowledge Christ before others not just in life but in death, giving witness to the faith he was preaching in the power of the Resurrection and the meaning of our carrying the Cross and following Jesus all the way. 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. Every time we celebrate Mass the Holy Spirit comes down upon us so that we can leave proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord. Every time we receive Jesus, he strengthens us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit give witness with him. “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim [his] death … until he comes again.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: