Word to the Wise
Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - Dominican Martyrs of Vietnam
[Revelation 15:1-4 and Luke 21:12-19]You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives.
I never fail to be inspired by those who take on the missionary vocation to travel to territories where the gospel is unknown and may not be considered "good news!" The Dominican Order celebrates feast days for martyrs in Vietnam, Korea and Japan among others. There were periodic wide-spread persecutions of Christians which resulted in thousands being put to death. This is not just "ancient history" as the Maryknoll sisters and Jesuits in Latin America can tell us. The members of their orders who were killed gave that ultimate witness in the late 20th century! Given this kind of witness, one might wonder what Jesus means when he says that "not a hair on your head will be destroyed!"
Only confidence that human death is not the end of the human person can lead to the kind of perseverance that Jesus urges. St. Paul says that for a really good person, someone might be willing to give their life, but he concedes the difficulty. He would make that ultimate sacrifice in Rome. For the rest of us, it is enough of a challenge to maintain our faith in the face of the relentlessly corrosive secularism that has a way of seeping into everything everyday. Perhaps a consideration of the ultimate sacrifice of missionary martyrs can help us to put a perspective on our struggles! A different kind of martyrdom takes place every day in the form of war, starvation, abortion and many other ways in which human society kills. We Dominicans know the horror our brothers and sisters in Iraq live with every day. Their perseverance is life-saving for us all. AMEN