Aug 26 Tue
Why are so many saints martyrs, and not insurance salesmen?
St Jane Frances de Chantal married a nobleman, by whom she had six children. When her husband died, she placed herself under the guidance of Saint Francis de Sales, founded the Order of the Visitation, and guided it wisely.
In a get-together, Saint Jane asked: ‘My dear daughters, most of our saints were not martyrs. Why was this, do you think?’
After each one of the nuns had had her say, she went on: “I think it is because there is also a martyrdom of love: God keeps us alive to work for his glory, and this makes us martyrs and saints. This is the martyrdom we must suffer.”
A sister wanted to know how it is in practice.
“Give God your unconditional consent,” she said, clearly speaking about herself, “love seeks out the most intimate place of your soul, as with a sharp sword, and cuts you off even from your own self. I know of a soul cut off in this way so that she felt it more keenly than if a tyrant had cleaved her body from her soul."
And how long does this martyrdom last?
“From the moment we give ourselves up wholeheartedly to God until the moment we die,” she answered. “But this goes for people who don’t take back their offering; our Lord doesn’t make martyrs of feeble hearts and people who have little love and not much constancy; but He never forces our free will.”
Is it as painful as the physical martyrdom?
“I do not think the martyrdom of love is less painful than the other. Martyrs of love suffer infinitely more by staying alive to do God’s will than if they had to give up their lives for their faith.”
St Josemaría applied the program to the specific circumstances of ordinary people: “From time to time I have wondered which kind of martyrdom is the greater: that of the person who receives death for the faith, at the hands of God's enemies; or the martyrdom of someone who spends his years working with no other purpose than that of serving the Church and souls, and who grows old smiling, all the while passing unnoticed…"
“For me, the unspectacular martyrdom is more heroic… That is your way."
“You want to be a martyr. I will place a martyrdom within your reach: to be an apostle and not to call yourself an apostle, to be a missionary-with a mission-and not to call yourself a missionary, to be a man of God and to seem a man of the world: to pass unnoticed!"
"If you say 'enough,' you are lost. Go on, keep going. Don't stay put, don't go back, don't go off the road."
Christ is whispering it in our ears: Embrace the cross each day. As St Jerome puts it: "Not only in time of persecution or when we have the chance of martyrdom, but in all circumstances, in everything we do and think, in everything we say, let us change what we used to be and let us be what we now are, reborn in Christ."