Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today is the remembrance of the Martyrs of Lyon, a group of Christians in Gaul who suffered death at the hands of the Roman overlords near the end of the second century.
It does seem to be a jarring and helpfully countercultural activity to read the lives of the martyrs from various centuries. These martyrological accounts seem to zoom in on the single-mindedness of ordinary yet singularly resolved individuals who could not be shaken from the desire to follow Jesus, and to serve as witnesses to Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, made on their behalf. I am struck by the way this certain purpose often signaled a great sea-change in the individual’s course, a turning from one way of life to its opposite. Surely there is hope for all of us if many ordinary, imperfect people were able to follow Jesus with enough clarity of purpose that they could, like a candle, offer themselves ultimately as a response to God’s love!
But all of us are already called to this end, insofar as we identify with Christ’s death in baptism. This idea forms a dense bit of argumentation and an equally rich symbolism in St. Paul’s writing: we see our entry into the church through the washing of water ultimately as the death of ourselves, as well as a rising to new life, an ‘ecstatic’ existence in which we are transformed beyond the concerns of our own bodies and in which we may live entirely for the other (John Behr). This truth sounds as transformative, as ‘counter-cultural’, as radical to us as the a story of an ordinary second-century Christian suffering death by red hot irons or by the claws of a lion!
We all have the privilege to live our lives as martyrs, simply because we belong to Christ. I confess that I do not live up to this extraordinary identity, and that I forget the transcendent weight of glory that is offered to me in this calling. That is why I need to read the lives of the saints and martyrs who show me what my life could be like. This is also the heady possibility that liturgy evokes to our senses and imaginations: that we can all become saints, that we are all given the chance to be martyrs, daily in our love for each other, and perhaps ultimately, for Christ.
Yours in Christ,
Justin