By Father Scott Archer
Pope St. Gregory the Great said, “The death of the martyrs
blossoms in the faith of the living.” A martyr is one who is put to death for
the faith; not just any faith, but the true and Catholic faith. Martyrs are
witnesses to the truth, and powerful reminders that the passion of Christ
continues in the faithful who are members of His Mystical Body, and who unite
their suffering and death with Christ. Martyrdom is seldom anticipated; martyrs
are chosen by God. T.S. Eliot captures this in his play Murder in the Cathedral when his Thomas Becket says,
“A
martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to
warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is
never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the
instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but
found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires
anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.”
Sacrifice and the priesthood are one, inasmuch as the life
of the priest is perfected when he submits himself to the will of God. As the
priest stands in the place of Christ at the altar, and is reminded daily of His
sacrifice, the necessity of abandoning himself, like Christ, to the will of the
Father is ever-present in his mind. “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice
from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.” We will never know the
thoughts of Father Jacques Hamel as he
began to offer Mass on the morning of Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in a small town
in the Diocese of Rouen, France, the capital of Normandy. It was then, however,
that he was called upon to give one last submission to the will of God. While
offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, something he had done every day of his
long priestly life, Islamists came into the church, forced him to his knees
next to the altar, and slit his throat. The assailants offered prayers in
Arabic as the horrified witnesses looked on. Father Hamel had offered a
different sacrifice to God that day as he breathed his last.
We would be mistaken if we were to look upon
this event with the eyes of the world; a world which has largely turned its
back on Christ and His Church. God wishes us to see with the eyes of faith the
joy of submission to His will, even to the offering of our very lives. As with
most persecutions of the Church, the priests are the first to be put to death. The
reason is clear and simple, as the prophet Zacharias wrote, “Strike the
shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” It is a method, however, doomed to
failure because God uses the blood of martyrs to strengthen the faith of His
people. For those priests called to give their lives, it is a consequence of
them already dying to self in order to answer the call of Christ to share in
His priesthood. Priests offer sacrifice to God on behalf of mankind in the Mass
for the living and the dead, and when they are also called to share intimately
in the death of Christ by offering themselves in witness to the true faith,
they find great joy. Offering the Sacrifice of the Mass is the reason for his
being, while sacrificing himself means he has been found worthy to die for
Christ to whom he was configured at his ordination.
Like Father
Jacques Hamel, Blessed Noel Pinot offered his life for Christ in a manner
illustrating how closely linked is the Mass with the sacrificial ideals of a priest.
Blessed Noel lived during the French Revolution, and like so many persecutions
before, the shepherds were struck down by the enemies of Christ. A priest and
eyewitness said of Blessed Noel’s death, “The martyr prayed in a state of
profound recollection. His countenance was calm and his brow radiated the joy
of the elect. On his lips, so to say, one could follow the canticles of
thanksgiving bursting forth from his heart.” On February 21, 1794, dressed in
his priestly vestments at the foot of the scaffold, as he looked up at the
guillotine he began the prayers he said every day at the foot of the altar; Introibo ad altare Dei (I will go in
unto the altar of God).
I
have little doubt that Father Hamel looked upon his final sacrifice with the
eyes of faith; a faith he had nurtured during his entire priesthood. Let us not
weep so much for him, as a priest sacrifices his whole life to carry out the
will of God for his own salvation and that of the people; his martyrdom is a
reminder that the priest is not here for himself. Let us rather be resolved to
be more faithful to Christ and the Catholic Church—more resolved to pray for
the virtue of fortitude against the rise of radical Islamic terrorism spreading
across the world. His example must arouse our sleeping spirits to a rebirth of
our commitment to Christ. Pray especially for all priests of the Church, that
our zeal for souls ever increase, and our zeal for Christ and His Church never
fail.
