THE TESTIMONY PROVIDED BY CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH UNTO DEATH
by
Prof. Bruno Forte, Bruno
The Church, as the communion of Saints, not only embraces those sanctified by Baptism and who continuously turn to the sources of Grace to become what they have become in the water of redemption, but also those who have already fulfilled their exodus without return and now live in the joy of God’s eternal light. Among these, martyrs shine in the forefront, hence those who have born witness of their love to Christ and their loyalty to His Church to the extent of the supreme offering of their own lives. The presence of martyrs is both a model and a help to pilgrims in time; and since we are always in need of this model and this help, the Church never tires of pointing out to us the holy martyrs as the examples and intercessors we need. The martyrs are the travelling companions who render the route beautiful, because experts in humankind as we may be, they are already experts on future peace, and are better aware of how to guide us to God, giving Him absolute primacy in our hearts and in our lives.
There are various reasons for which the Church venerates martyrs and points them out as examples of an experienced Gospel. The first is the theological reason: if "the glory of God is the living man" (Saint Ireneus: gloria Dei vivens homo), hence a man totally fulfilled according to the will of eternal love, acknowledging a human being’s total fulfilment of life and love, albeit fragile and limited, means confessing the wonders of the Lord. God is glorified in His martyrs; in them the Highest’s never-ending beauty shines; in them God once again is depicted as the love to be preferred above all other love. And since the richness of eternal mercy is infinite, its possible reflexes will also be without end: the imagination and creativity of sanctity that is expressed through martyrdom is without limitations, to the extent that each martyr is a new note and accent in the Church’s symphony of praise. This is why, just as the community of believers cannot stop singing the praises of the Living God, it cannot cease to profess the grace of martyrdom and look to those whose lives and deaths have been a living praise of divine glory; doing this is a requirement of love, a need to give thanks, a need to glorify the Saint among His Saints, in particular among those who have sung His glory with the silent eloquence of offering their lives, preferring the dignity and beauty of life, in His name delivered to life itself.
The second reason for this special veneration of martyrs has anthropological characteristics: the martyr proves through the exemplary position of his death how the "vision of God is humankind’s life" (Saint Ireneus: vita hominis visio Dei), hence revealing how a life nurtured by grace opens human existence to an extraordinary potentiality, allowing the person to fully achieve the will of the Living God, inscribed in the profoundness of his being. The martyr’s sanctity manifests the infinite possibilities God calls man to; and if the Church does not tire of celebrating the glory of her martyrs, she also does so to remind humankind of its hidden and inexhaustible potentialities, the many varied and different paths along which it can come into being, denunciating in this manner the short-sightedness of all ideological prejudice wanting to oblige human beings into abstract patterns established on paper and eventually imposed by power. The martyr is a protest against standardizations, totalitarianisms, the seduction of force, in the name of the human heart’s freedom and richness and its possibilities. It is the announcement of the impossible opportunity of the love given to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and who for Him have decided to give not only part of themselves, but their whole selves with no reservation or conditions.
The third reason for the special attention the Church’s faith devotes to martyrs is that she acknowledges in them the figures of our hope: what has not yet been fulfilled for us is already fulfilled in the martyrs. They are the proof that God’s promise is without repentance and is achieved within human history: for those who are pilgrims in exile, the martyr witnesses the beauty of the homeland, its being sweet above all other things. This pure love for God, and at the furthest horizon He discloses to us and gives us the gift of reaching, is in no way an indication to escape present time, on the contrary it helps to experience it with the spirit and heart of the witnesses of hope, which also in present suffering are capable of providing the peace and freedom of the promised tomorrow. Since the temptation to give up hope and lose the meaning that gives value to the path followed is always present, the constantly renewed attention to martyrs means for the Church a constantly new reason for the hope that is within us (see 1 Pt 3,15). The light of their destination already shines in martyrs; it is from them that the stimulus comes to believe in the humanly impossible possibility that only God can fulfil.
Finally, it is from history, from its difficult becoming, from the alternation of times and needs, of sufferings and joys, that the Church receives the stimulus to venerate martyrs and depict their exemplary value: the martyr is a message written on living hearts, capable of addressing different historical situations in a particularly intense manner. Just as the rediscovery of a martyr from the past often throws new light on the very real problems of present times, it also allows renewed attention for martyrs to provide – in a real context – a word of life, stronger than many other messages for a certain historical period. The martyrs still speak, and they speak for us, the voices of the only Word of God, in them fulfilled as event, life and sharing. Listening to these new and yet so ancient messages, requires a welcoming heart, capable of having a sense of matters concerning God, and that opens to Him in an invocation of prayer; the martyr through contagion lights up in hearts a passion for the truth, without which one cannot discover the meaning of life or the reasons for generously giving one’s life for others within the concreteness of hourly choices.
It is precisely due to the richness of the meaning contained in the testimony born to Christ and to His Church unto death, that it is beautiful to conclude that listening to a martyr’s voice, is capable from its exemplary position to tell us more and better than it has been possible to express as regards to the value and topicality of martyrdom. During the night of March 26th 1996, seven monks in the Trappist Abbey in Tibhirine in Algeria were kidnapped. For two months there was no word of them. On May 21st a horrifying statement from Islamic fundamentalists announced: "we have cut the throats of the monks". On May 30th the bodies were discovered. This was a heralded death, one the monks had foreseen in their faith. Their prior, Brother Christian de Chergé’s spiritual will, bears witness to this, a splendid example of how martyrdom is the completion of a whole life of faith and of love for Christ and for His Church: "If one day – and it could be today – I should become a victim of the terrorism currently seeming to wish to involve all foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that I have given my life to God and to this country. I wish them to accept that the Only Lord of all life could not be extraneous to this brutal passing away. I wish them to pray for me; how can I be worthy of such an offering? I wish them to be capable of associating this death to many others, equally violent, abandoned to indifference and anonymity. My life is not worth more than that of others. Nor is it worth less. However, it does not have the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know myself as an accomplice for the evil, which alas seems to prevail in the world and also that which might suddenly affect me personally. When the time comes, I hope I will have that instant of lucidity allowing me to ask for God’s forgiveness and that of my brothers in humankind, also forgiving with all their hearts at that same moment those who may have attacked me. I could not wish such a death upon myself. It seems important to clarify this. I cannot in fact see how I could rejoice about the fact that these people I love might be indiscriminately blamed for my murder. This would be far to high a price to pay, to owe perhaps, for the grace of what might be called martyrdom , to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he states that he acts through loyalty to what he believes is Islam. I am aware of the contempt surrounding Algerians, globally, and I also know which caricatures of Islam encourage a certain Islamism. It is too easy to ease one’s conscience by identifying this religious path with all its extremisms. To me Algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this enough, I believe, on the basis of what I have seen and learned through experience, so often rediscovering the underlying theme of the Gospel learned at my mother’s knees, my very first Church, in Algeria itself, and then already respecting Muslim believers. My death obviously appears to prove right those who have considered me naïve or an idealist: Now tell us what you think!. But these people must know that my most piercing curiosity will at last be satisfied. There, God willing, I will be able to immerse my eyes in those of the Father to contemplate with Him His children of Islam, as He sees them, all enlightened by the glory of Christ, the fruit of His Passion, invested with the gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always consist in establishing communion and re-establishing likeness, playing with differences. This lost life, totally mine, totally theirs, I give up to God, Who seems to have wanted it entirely for this joy, through and in spite of everything. In this thank you in which all is now said about my life, I also include you, of course, friends from yesterday and today, and you, my friends here, as well as my mother and my father, my sisters and my brothers and to them a hundredfold as promised! And you to, my friend of the very last moment, you who will not know what you are doing, yes, this thank you is also addressed at you, and this ‘A-Dieu’ in whose face I see you. And God willing we will be allowed to meet again, thieves filled with joy, in paradise, Our Father, the Father of all both of us. Amen. Inch'Allah" (Father Christian M. de Chergé, Prior of the Monastery of Nôtre-Dame of the Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria: Algeria, December 1st 1993 - Tibhirine, January 1st 1994).