martyrs Archives

RC#2 – The Martyr’s Cup – The Resilient Church w/ Mike Aquilina

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Episode 2 – The Martyr’s Cup

But there was another dominant reality in the ancient Church. It is something that appears just as often in the archaeological record and in the paper trail of the early Christians. That something is martyrdom. Persecution.

Martyrdom occupied the attention of the first Christians because it was always a real possibility. Shortly after Christianity arrived in the city of Rome, the emperor Nero discovered that Christians could provide an almost unlimited supply of victims for his circus spectacles. The emperors needed to keep the city’s populace amused, and one way to do so was by providing spectacularly violent and bloody entertainment.

The Christians’ moral code made them none too popular with their neighbors, so the pagan Romans were more than willing to cheer as the Christians were doused with pitch and set on fire, or sent into the ring to battle hungry wild animals or armed gladiators. It was all in a day’s fun in ancient Rome. Over time, Nero’s perverted whims settled into laws and legal precedents, as later emperors issued further rulings on the Christian problem. Outside the law, mob violence against Christians was fairly common and rarely punished.

The Christians applied a certain term to their brothers and sisters who were persecuted and killed. They called them “martyrs”—which means, literally, “witnesses in a court of law.” And to the martyrs they accorded a reverence matched only by their reverence for the Eucharist.

Pick up a copy of Mike’s book.

Also visit Mike’s “Discerning Hearts” page for more audio downloads and information!

The Holy Roman Martyrs: Then and Now with Mike Aquilina – Could you witness to the faith? – Discerning Hearts

Join Bruce and I as we discuss with Mike Aquilina the powerful and at the same time, poignant witness of the Holy Roman Martyrs

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From Mike’s great website The Way of the Matyrs: ROMAN PROTOMARTYRS

Monday June 30th 2008, 10:23 am
Filed under: Patristics

Today’s the feast of the first Roman Martyrs. Theirs is a story you just have to hear. But first we have to backtrack a little bit.

In July of A.D. 64, during the tenth year of Nero’s reign, a great fire consumed much of the city of Rome. The fire raged out of control for seven days — and then it started again, mysteriously, a day later. Many in Rome knew that Nero had been eager to do some urban redevelopment. He had a plan that included an opulent golden palace for himself. The problem was that so many buildings were standing in his way — many of them teeming wooden tenements housing Rome’s poor and working class.

The fire seemed too convenient for Nero’s purposes — and his delight in watching the blaze didn’t relieve anybody’s suspicions. If he didn’t exactly fiddle while Rome burned, he at least recited his poems. Nero needed a scapegoat, and an upstart religious cult, Jewish in origin and with foreign associations, served his purposes well. Nero, who was a perverse expert at human torment, had some of its members tortured till they were so mad they would confess to any crime. Once they had confessed, he had others arrested.

He must have known, however, that the charges would not hold up. So he condemned them not for arson, or treason, or conspiracy, but for “hatred of humanity.”

To amuse the people, he arranged for their execution to be a spectacle, entertainment on a grand scale. The Roman historian Tacitus (who had contempt for the religion, but greater contempt for Nero) describes in gruesome detail the tortures that took place amid a party in Nero’s gardens.

Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames. These served to illuminate the night when daylight failed. Nero had thrown open the gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or drove about in a chariot. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being punished.

That is all we know about the first Roman martyrs. We know none of their names. Tacitus doesn’t tell us why they were willing to die this way rather than renounce their faith. Yet this should be an important question for us to consider. Why did the martyrs do this? What prepared them to face death so bravely? To what exactly did they bear witness with their death?

The answers to these questions (and many more) can be found in the rest of the article, at the archive of Touchstone Magazine. The article originated in a talk I gave in Rome in 2005 on the feast of the Roman Martyrs. It’s called “The Roman Martyrs and Their Mass.”

I also treat the subject in my book The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, & the Hope for Tomorrow.

St. Andrew Dung Lac and Companions (+1 very special saint in the making) – Discerning Hearts

St. Andrew Dung Lac and Companions

Nov 24th, 2010 by Omar F. A. Gutierrez (check out Regnum Novum)

Today marks the Memorial of the Martyrs of Vietnam often referred to as the Memorial of Andrew Dung Lac and Companions. This is an interesting memorial in that the number of martyrs commemorated include about 117 names of known martyrs but also the untold thousands whom we do not know. Furthermore, the memorial is for martyrs from various times in Vietnam’s history, from the 17th through the 20th centuries.The memorial was set by Pope John Paul the Great on June 19th, 1988. He canonized 117 Vietnamese but noted that there were somewhere between 130,000 to 300,000 martyrs for the Catholic faith in that nation. The suffering of these people has been astounding. In the 19th century, when persecution of Catholics was at its worst, entire villages of Vietnamese were slaughtered by the regime. The reason given was that the Catholics were involved in political revolutions, attempting to put a Catholic-friendly ruler into power. Being Catholic, then, became a crime, and, echoing the years of Christian persecution in Ancient Rome, Vietnamese were called upon to stomp on a crucifix to prove that they were not Christian. Those who refused were tortured horribly and then killed. The lucky ones were only branded on their faces with the Vietnamese words for “perverse religion.”

During the fall of Vietnam to Communist rule in the 20th century and of course due to the war, many Vietnamese fled their homeland and came to the United States. Interestingly, since about 1977, the American Vietnamese community has had a four-day celebration in little Carthage, Missouri dedicated to Our Lady and in celebration of their heritage and faith. The Marian Days Festival happens every year in the summer and the small Missouri town is inundated with upwards of 50,000 Vietnamese who celebrate Mass together, sing to Our Lady of Fatima, and eat really good Vietnamese food.

Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan (1928-2002)

This memorial to the Vietnamese Martyrs ought to remind us of one of the greatest of Vietnamese Catholics, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan. Cardinal Francis Xavier, as he liked to introduce himself, had a meteoric rise in Vietnam as a young man. The son of very devout Catholic parents, he was extremely bright. He earned advanced degrees in theology, philosophy, and canon law all by the time he was in his early twenties.

He eventually became the coadjutor bishop of Saigon in 1975. Six days later, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, and the Cardinal was thrown into prison. He spent thirteen years there, nine of them in solitary confinement. While in confinement a village boy would bring him paper, and Cardinal Van Thuan would write down some encouraging word or phrase. These messages from the Cardinal in prison helped bouey the people for which he was still a shepherd. They have since then been compiled into the books The Road to Hope and Prayers of Hope.

He was released from prison in 1988, the same year as the canonization of the Vietnamese Martyrs. He was allowed to leave for Rome in 1991, but was then never allowed back by the government…that is until 2001.

While in Rome, he made many impressions on people, not the least of these being Pope John Paul the Great. It was that Holy Father who in 1994 elevated the little bishop from Vietnam to be President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace and made him a Cardinal.

In 1999, in the document to us Ecclesia in America (The Church in America), John Paul wrote:

54. Faced with the grave social problems which, with different characteristics, are present throughout America, Catholics know that they can find in the Church’s social doctrine an answer which serves as a starting-point in the search for practical solutions. Spreading this doctrine is an authentic pastoral priority. … In this regard, special care must be taken to train lay persons capable of working, on the basis of their faith in Christ, to transform earthly realities. In addition, it will help to promote and support the study of this doctrine in every area of the life of the particular Churches in America, especially in the universities, so that it may be more deeply known and applied to American society. The complex social reality of the continent is a fruitful field for the analysis and application of the universal principles contained in this doctrine.

To this end, it would be very useful to have a compendium or approved synthesis of Catholic social doctrine, including a “Catechism”, which would show the connection between it and the new evangelization.

It was then up to Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan to try to make heads or tails out of the vast array of social documents and social commentary, to try to bring together people from vastly different political and social backgrounds, to try to – in Herculean manner – build an edifice for the Social Doctrine of the Church that would at once stand the test of time but also be relevant to our lives here and now. This was no small task, but it was his.

Two Saints Embrace

The Compendium we have now is a splendid work which accomplishes everything that the good Cardinal desired. Unfortunately, he died before its completion in 2002. Still the preliminary work and guidance which he provided proved decisive for the construction of one of the most useful tools for the social doctrine that exists. Cardinal Van Thuan’s process for canonization was opened in 2007, having met the minimum 5 years. Pope Benedict XVI actually mentions Cardinal Van Thuan in his second encyclical Spe Salvi as a “witness to hope.”

So on this day of remembrance for the Vietnamese Martyrs, remember them, remember Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, and remember to be thankful for the great peace and tranquility that our culture affords us in being able to pray freely.

I’ll leave you with the ten rules of life by which the Cardinal lived. Go here to learn more.

1. I will live the present moment to the fullest.
2. I will discern between God and God’s works.
3. I will hold firmly to one secret: prayer.
4. I will see in the Holy Eucharist my only power.
5. I will have only one wisdom: the science of the Cross.
6. I will remain faithful to my mission in the Church and for the Church as a witness of Jesus Christ.
7. I will seek the peace the world cannot give.
8. I will carry out a revolution by renewal in the Holy Spirit.
9. I will speak one language and wear one uniform: Charity.
10. I will have one very special love: The Blessed Virgin Mary.

Oh and this:

I am happy here, in this cell, where white mushrooms are growing on my sleeping mat, because You are here with me, because You want me to live here with You. I have spoken much in my lifetime: now I speak no more. It’s Your turn to speak to me, Jesus; I am listening to You.

Recorded on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7, 1976, in Phu-Khanh prison during his solitary confinement. Regnum Novum

Thanks one again Omar G. for an outstanding contribution to our on going formation!