To mark 11th Day of prayer and fasting in memory and thanksgiving for missionary martyrs, 24 March, organised by the Italian National Pontifical Mission Societies Office, Youth Section, which this year chose the theme: "They shed their blood for the Church", Fides Service gives two articles on the subject written by Rev. Giuseppe Pellegrini, assistant of the Missionary Youth Movement and Prof. Andrea Riccardi, who teaches history at the Sapienza University in Rome.
THE CHURCH NEEDS MARTYRS - Rev. Giuseppe Pellegrini, assistant of the Missionary Youth Movement
Rome (Fides Service) - Last year 2002, no less than 25 missionaries were killed while working to spread the Gospel. If martyrdom is a sign of the vitality of the Church, then we can certainly say that today the whole Church and the young Churches on the poorest continents are giving splendid witness of vitality and love for Christ.
Reading the names of the missionary martyrs and considering the stories of their life and circumstances of their death, we see they were very ordinary people committed to proclaiming the Gospel and practising Christian charity towards the world's poorest and most needy people. Martyrdom is not an exceptional phenomenon in the missionary activity of the Church. We know that every day millions of Christians suffer persecution, denied religious freedom and subjected to discrimination because of their faith. In fact behind the faces of the 25 missionary martyrs listed we catch a glimpse of many others killed because of the faith in Jesus Christ. Their faces and names are unknown to us, but we can be sure that they are known in heaven and that they are the dearest treasure the Church possesses today.
Today as never before the Church needs to remember and give thanks for the martyrs and for their faith and love for Christ and his Church. The Church identifies herself with her martyrs and there is not one local Church that is not founded on the proclamation of the Word and the giving of self of its first witnesses of the faith. It is in fact their testimony to the point of shedding their blood that gives us the strength to live the Gospel, to proclaim to the men and women of today that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour of the world and that only in him can humanity be saved. Still today it is the testimony of martyrs that inspires many young people to leave everything for the sake of the Gospel, to carry the Good News to the far corners of the earth and serve Jesus who is present in the poorest and weakest. This is why, as Pope Paul Vi said, today the world has need of witnesses! (Fides Service 24/3/2003 EM lines 37 Words: 474)
THE ECUMENICAL TESTIMONY OF THE MARTYRS OF THE 20TH CENTURY - Prof. Andrea Riccardi
Rome (Fides Service) -Pope John Paul II said, referring to his youth: "..my priesthood, from the very beginning, was inscribed within the great sacrifices of many men and women of my generation. Divine Providence spared my from the hardest witness…". The Pope feels he lived part of "this sort of apocalypse of our century". John Paul II, from his experience of the 20th century, draws the conviction that martyrdom is a reality of Christianity today. The expression "the new martyrs" coined by the Pope, refers to the century of massacres, death and terror.
I think of the first holocaust of the century: more than one million Armenians and Syrians killed during the First World War simply because of their Christian faith. I think of those killed under the communist dictatorship in the former Soviet Union and Stalin's rule of terror, the two terrible World Wars, the Shoah, here in Europe, with the death of millions of Jews (and also others Polish and Russian Catholics, gypsies). For millions of human beings it was a dark century.
Despite such profoundly tragic events, (and those mentioned are only a few examples but there are many more) believing communities, sometimes weak, never stopped celebrating the memory of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection. Christians of various denominations often suffered together to bear witness to the Lord. This is a multitude of martyrs of every nation. A prisoner in a lager in the Solovski Islands in Russia recalls an image of love in that hell of freezing cold, maltreatment, death:
Uniting forces a Catholic Bishop, still young, and an old emaciated man with a white beard, an Orthodox Bishop old in days but strong in spirit, push together the load…those of us who will return to the world must bear witness to what we see here. Here we see the birth of that pure, authentic faith of the early Christians, the unity of the Churches, in the persons of these two Catholic and Orthodox bishops, who labour side by side, united in love and humility".
There is an ecumenical value in the martyrdom of men and women who during that century refused to renounce their faith, love, justice, human behaviour, even to save their lives. The fresco of the martyrs of the 20th century reveals a humanity which is meek not violent, but which is strong.
This is the profound experience spoken of by Martin Luther King: "Despite the dangers all around me, I experienced an inward peace and felt resources of strength that only God can give. In many cases I felt the power of God transform the burden of desperation into the joy of hope." I think this is a common heritage that the Christians of the 21st Century must comprehend. The testimony of the martyrs has only just been opened: this is only the beginning. (Fides Service 24/3/2003 EM lines 33 Words: 493)