Today’s Readings:
Acts 5:29b
First off I suck at this. I try to get better. But I suck at it.
This is my brief meditation today: The Martyrs of England are a better model for us today than any other category of martyr, saint, or blessed. Why? Because their killers thought they were being Christian. I don’t think we have to worry about the Gov’t ending all Churches. I’m not worried about the army showing up (yet, anyway) at the door of my Church and saying “we’re here to shoot your priest.”
But, in England, a group of people bought into the Political Fads of the day and also bought into new moralities, new cultural forms, and new religions. Then they killed off all the ones that disagreed. The nominalists did, that is, killing off the Catholics. Killing may be out of the question for the time being. But, face it, a long, slow, painful defeat is much harder to withstand. Anyone can be a martyr if they will but kill you fast enough.
The Martyrs of England followed the law of the land until they could not follow it any more. Most of them died praying for their Queen and her salvation. And she was still their Queen. But they also had a higher calling, one that couldn’t cave into current fads or moralities even though thos fads had the political upper hand. They said their Mass in secret, but they didn’t hide away, going about their daily lives, keeping the faith alive in a land and time full of hate. And they obeyed the law of God rather than of men (or of a woman, in this case).
That’s it. My #PaschaOption for today: a devotion to the Martyrs of England.
Doxos 