September 20, 2020
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
During times of great stress, such as those our world is experiencing these days, we can become frustrated at leadership in sometimes faltering in their offering of guidance in helping us to meet the challenges that are before us. One of the challenges of the particular health crisis we are all facing today, indeed the world is facing today, is the challenge of guidance, in our situation, by the Church. Some dioceses have done very well in conducting the People of God through the present woes. Others have not done as well, perhaps even faltered or failed to be a firm hand in an often flimsy situation. As I have said in other formats, there is so much that we still do not know and for we bureaucrats, even Church bureaucrats, it can be hard to say exactly where to step when the fog rises at our feet in new intensity almost hourly.
Sometimes, however, prophecy asserts itself, giving those of us who need help the ready assurance and assistance we need. Last week, we were given a great gift in the letter of Cardinal Sarah, prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship, detailing the ideals of Christian life, in particular in this time of upheaval.
In the context of his instruction, he invokes the memory of the Martyrs of Abitinae. In the year 304, during one of the last persecutions of the Roman Empire, that of the Emperor Diocletian; a group of very varied men, women and children suffered for the Faith in the African town of Abitinae. These martyrs lived in a time when Christian numbers had swollen in many places and Christians and their leaders were increasingly seen as a threat to the status quo. The group included numerous ministers, lectors and servers in the Church, women, teenagers and two infants, Hilarion and Benignus. It is a sad yet triumphant account, one that has come down to us in brutally vivid terms, including personal testimonies of the 49 who lost their life on February 12, 304. The first among the martyrs to accept the palm of martyrdom was the parish priest Saturninus. It is fitting he should have been the first to die, always fitting that the priest should be the first to offer his life as a token of the goodness of God, a token sometimes required by the cruelty of the world in which we live, a cruelty that cannot endure the love and mercy of the Almighty. The world so often has the need to stamp out the fires of evangelical fervor. The voice of the violence of martyrdom also echoes around, careening off the walls and canyons of time. Cardinal Sarah believes it is important, today for us to hear those ancient echoes, formed from the words of the Martyrs of Abitinae.
Six testimonies were offered and here is what they had to say:
- We cannot live, be Christians, fully realize our humanity and the desires for good and happiness that dwell in the heart without the Word of the Lord, which in the celebration takes shape and becomes a living word, pronounced by God for those who today open their hearts to listen;
What the martyrs remind us of here is the importance of public proclamation of the Word. Although they could never have envisioned our times and the so-called advanced communications of the age, the ancients knew that the Word of the Lord became a living word in celebration. While we understand that illiteracy and the reproduction of texts hampered the ability of the public to engage texts personally, there is something else at work here. We need proclamation in the community, a community that prays and works together to build up the Kingdom of God. The community becomes the authentic interpreter of Scripture in a way no professional exegete could be. The community in its love and care for each other requires the continuous, un-interrupted proclamation and the preaching of their pastors. Nothing can keep true Christians from the community. Nothing can isolate us from one another. We need one another like we need food and that food is the proclaimed and public Word. We go on with the martyrs.
- We cannot live as Christians without participating in the Sacrifice of the Cross in which the Lord Jesus gives himself without reserve to save, with his death, the man who had died because of sin; the Redeemer associates humanity to himself and leads it back to the Father; in the embrace of the Crucifix every human suffering finds light and comfort;
These are sobering words for martyrs, but of course give us the key to martyrdom. There is more here, however. We must live fully into the knowledge that the shadow of the cross and the shadow of Christ crucified is not idle, it cannot be still, it drifts and careens across the landscape of the human condition ironically illuminating tragedy in its shadow. What does it reveal? It reveals abuse and pain. It reveals hypocrisy and sin. It reveals falsehood and treachery. It reveals cowardice and destruction in the wake of cowardice. But it also reveals healing, healing of all of these ills. “The Redeemer associates humanity to himself and leads it back to the Father” No truer expression of Christ could be uttered and no truer; no fuller expression of our priestly responsibilities could be uttered. We are required to be the instrument of the cross’s sojourn. We take the cross and its saving balm to a world soaked in sin and worse, ignorance. Will that cost us? It must cost us. We have to pay for that privilege with our lives as did the graced people of Abitinae. The testimony goes on:
- We cannot live without the banquet of the Eucharist, the Lord's table to which we are invited as children and brothers to receive the Risen Christ himself, present in body, blood, soul and divinity in that Bread of heaven that sustains us in joys and labors of the earthly pilgrimage;
Here is the heart of the matter. We cannot live without the Eucharist and no podcast or broadcast can imitate or replace the Table of the Lord. At the altar, we receive what cannot be found in other places, the Lord’s own Body, that Body that was born so long ago in the lowly cattle shed of Bethlehem. That Body that traversed the dusty backroads of Palestine bringing healing and Good News to a people deaf and suffering in the purgatory of sin. That Body that performed miracles in the lives of the downtrodden and broken, but itself was rejected by the powers of the day. That Body that was humiliated and scorned in the ridiculing shadows of the Via Dolorosa. That Body that was nailed to a cross and suffered and died for a people who were indifferent, who did not care. In light of this, should we fear? In light of this, can we fear? We cannot fear. We must not fear unless we wish in our desire for preservation at all costs to spit in the face of Christ as did those taunters on that ugly day in Jerusalem.
The African Christians knew this Truth and the Roman evil knew this Truth as well. Kill the priest, kill the Eucharistic celebration and you kill the faith. Brothers and sisters, our faith is built upon the Eucharist, its messy and at times repetitious reality. Our faith is built not only upon the physical presence of the Body of Christ, a real presence that can never be compromised. Our faith is also built solidly on OUR being together as the Body of Christ. Who are we? We are men and women who are sinners, who struggle with doubts, who are half-hearted and sometimes half-witted. We are boaster and braggarts. We are also beautiful in our brokenness. We need to see that reality played out as only it can be played out in the most significant, the most ambitious, the most ludicrous and illuminating of cosmic dramas. The Mass tells us who we are. That cannot be compromised even by the threat of contagion.
- We cannot live without the Christian community , the family of the Lord: we need to meet the brothers who share the sonship of God, the brotherhood of Christ, the vocation and the search for holiness and the salvation of their souls in the rich diversity of ages, personal stories, charisms and vocations;
So many in these past months have been confined to home, confined with family. For some that has been enlightening. Some have learned new ways of relating to parents and children. Some have experienced real miracles of reconnection with the ties that forged us initially. Others have also experienced an intensification of what was usual, abuse, pain, and sin. For some houseboundedness has been a curse. Our biological families are essential to our formation, for good so often, for ill sometimes. Our Catholic communities are augmentations of that biological truth. They augment and enliven real family solidarity. They sometimes heal us when real families fail. Parish communities are places of healing and wholeness. They are places where authentic vocations are discerned and realized. They are places where holiness abides. We cannot lose them. My fear in the aftermath of this contagion is that parishes will suffer. I fear that some people, cut off from the lifeline of community life and Eucharist will fall away. How well have we taken care of our people during these months of confusion? How much do we reach out to others as opposed to treating ourselves to the ever-greater intoxication of self-interest? Communities in all of their nitty-grittiness must stand and grow stronger. We are the instruments of that essential reality and we must make sure we never become obstacles.
- We cannot live without the house of the Lord, which is our home, without the holy places where we were born to the faith, where we discovered the provident presence of the Lord and we discovered the merciful embrace that raises those who have fallen, where we consecrated our vocation to religious life or to marriage, where we begged and thanked, rejoiced and wept, where we entrusted our loved ones who have completed their earthly pilgrimage to the Father;
I am both sobered and angered by the sight of empty parking lots in great parishes on Sunday. I am saddened by the sight of yellow or red ribbon that serves to vacant places in churches that need to be filled with hungry, spiritually hungry people. We need our churches and our churches need us. These buildings, and I speak even of our buildings here, these building are the arterial system, the lifeblood of the beating heart of church life. We have become adept at closing off spaces, of distancing. Distancing may save physical lives. Masks may save physical lives. I know they do, but at what cost to the soul starving for affection, a hug, a smile, a laugh. At what cost brothers and sisters? A few years ago, I had the chance to visit a church in Guatemala. It was a Sunday and an ordinary parish Mass. First, the large church was full. Second it was filled with people, singing, fretting about their children, running after babies, responding to the Mass over their shoulders. This is how the Church should be. This is how it must be. A number of years ago I was staying in the city of Athens and a large assembly of people gathered from a Sunday liturgy. The church was overflowing. There was singing, praying loudly, scolding, yelling and all spilling over into the courtyard. The priest kept going and so did the peripatetic people. Church was in the midst of life. It was filled with life. It was not distanced. The same is true of my growing up years when we would travel miles and miles to see a preacher of note in a tent erected in a field somewhere, filled with people in suits and dressed way too hot for them, they sang, they amen-ed, they fanned themselves with Jesus fans provided courtesy of the local funeral parlor. That is not safe.
We go on with the martyrs:
- We cannot live without the day of the Lord, without Sunday which gives light and meaning to the succession of days of work and family and social responsibilities.
We know the truth of this statement. We know it even as we moan and complain as priests about our over-burdened workload. Everything, literally everything is clarified by Sunday, by the day of the Lord’s resurrection. We have lost that. We have lost SABBATH. We have lost rest. We have lost all of it well before old scratch Covid came to town. Brothers, as future priests have a responsibility and it is nothing less that rebuilding our culture and our world, reestablishing the lines of meaning so often obscured by the politics and peccadillos of the times in which we live. This means many things but primarily it means that we are called to something.
My brothers and sisters, this is a time in which we are called to live prophetic lives. In point of fact, we are always called to live prophetic lives, even in the most neutral of times, as though there were such a thing as neutral times. We must be fearless and we must be bold and so, I exhort you:
Stop griping and start preaching the Word of God. The Word of God must be proclaimed and we are the agents of that proclamation, but that life-giving, that searing, that brilliant Word cannot be heard until our mealy selves shut up. Proclaim with every fiber of your being and GO.
Stop caring only about ourselves. Stop whining and bleating about this rule and that prohibition and try to find your voice of danger, your evangelizing voice. Every time you open your mouth ask yourself: Is this a prophetic Word? Is this a Word that proclaim Christ and He crucified?
Stop worrying about how we are missing restaurants and shopping and getting out. God has provided us with the opportunity, the singular opportunity to grow in this little hothouse of the Gospel.
Stop fretting and become martyrs, witnesses.
This is the time of prophecy and we can do no better that instill in ourselves the values fought for and died for by the martyrs of Abitinae
Abitinae is here. Abitinae is today. We are Abitinae. Now let us live into that promise.
