There are 2.3 billion Christians world-wide. It is estimated that 8,000 are martyred each year. What this means is that one person dies in the name of the faith each hour of every day.
When I read statistics like these I am not only grateful, but also humbled by the fact that ordinary Christians, much like me, are having the courage every day to die for their faith. What must go through their hearts, minds, and souls during those final hours or minutes?
We can gain insight into the mind, heart, and soul of a martyr, an ordinary, every-day married Christian, by looking at the outlook of St. Thomas More, lawyer and Chancellor to King Henry the VIII of England from 1529-1533. For years, More and the King were close friends. More was also a devoted and affectionate father to his four children, three daughters and a son, and stepfather to his second wife's child, as well as guardian of two more young girls. More insisted that his daughters receive the same classical education as his son, and when other nobles saw how intelligent and proficient his daughters became, they began to educate their own daughters.
What fractured the relationship between the King and his Chancellor was the King's intention to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Ann Boleyn in the hopes of finding a wife who would bear him a son. More believed that this was insufficient grounds for anyone to seek to divorce an innocent spouse. He grew even more upset when the King, incensed over his failure to obtain a Church annulment, decided to declare himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. More refused to sign the Act of Succession and resigned. More's statement on the matter was:
"When statesmen forsake their own private consciences for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos."
Thomas More was jailed for committing treason and incarcerated in the notorious Tower of London, subjected to unsanitary conditions and little food. While awaiting trial, he was visited often by his eldest daughter Margaret, and his letters to her reveal his see-sawing moods as he contemplated how his former friend, the King, would treat him. More knew that the horrendous penalty for treason was hanging, drawing, and quartering. In one of his letters, he remarks that the severe conditions in prison have done him great spiritual good, and he compares himself to St. Peter attempting, at Jesus' command, to walk on water:
"His (God's ) grace has strengthened me until now, and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the King a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this, His Majesty has done me such great good with regard to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God. Either He shall keep the King in that gracious frame of mind to continue to do me no harm, or else, if it be His pleasure that for my other sins I suffer in this case as I shall not deserve, then His grace shall give me the strength to bear it patiently, and perhaps even gladly....
"I will not mistrust Him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of becoming overcome with fear. I shall remember how St. Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning."
The King was kind enough to prevent More from being hung, drawn, and quartered. But Thomas More was tried and sentenced to death by beheading while hundreds of other noblemen and clergy stood by the King to save their own heads. He was beheaded on July 6, 1535. His last recorded words are:
"I am the King's good servant, but God's first."
Thomas More's head was stuck on a pike and displayed for a month as a warning to other possible traitors. At the end of the month, his daughter Margaret bribed the man who was about to throw the head into the River Thames, kept the head, and preserved it.
In 1935, Pope Pius XII proclaimed Thomas More a saint, and the patron saint of attorneys, statesmen, and politicians. Even though More was an avowed opponent of the Protestant Reformation, the current Church of England, undoubtedly remembering those times' heated political climate, and the deaths that Protestants and Catholics inflicted on each other, remembers More liturgically as a Reformation martyr.
In today's religiously pluralistic society, there are many difficult decisions that politicians, and voters have to make about legal decisions to be enacted for the common good. Yet, it is always necessary for us to follow our consciences, even if it means the loss of friendship or even political ruin. We who are believers hold that there are certain objective truths that hold fast in morality, the major one being that every human being is a child of God with inalienable human rights. How quickly we forget this.
How can we, for example, decide to hold a baby shower for a dear friend and yet at the same time pick and choose our realities and call another unborn baby a "fetus" whom a mother has the right to dispose of? (I am not talking here of medical conditions such as tubal pregnancies in which the baby cannot develop properly and the life of the mother is threatened.) Either all developing lives are developing human babies, with human rights, or they are pieces of tissue, nothing more. We cannot have it both ways. Either a prisoner on Death Row is a sub-human being who can be put to death at the whim of the State, or he is a human being with the right to live until he has the opportunity to reform his life and make his peace with God. Isn't that what God wishes of every human being, that he or she be reconciled with God and receive eternal life?
In any case, once we objectively state and believe that every human being is a child of God, worthy of human rights and dignity - whether this is a developing human life, a prisoner on Death Row, a Muslim, a Jew, a refugee, a Hispanic field worker, a woman arrested for prostitution, a gay or lesbian, a demented woman in a nursing home, a dying person in Hospice, an addict, a person with mental illness - once your conscience tells you that this person is a child of God, worthy of protection and tenderness, you MUST follow your conscience in your decision-making. Regardless of the consequences in this world. Because there most certainly will be consequences for your decision-making in the next world.
Legal and Political decisions are so multi-layered, so complicated, so filled with conflicting facts, that I do not intend to over-simplify the process of deciding the contents of the laws and judgements that are enacted. I only speak this simple truth: we must always begin with a recognition that we are making decisions for the lives of human beings who are equal in dignity to us and beloved of God. God knows how often, in war and peace, law and politics, we seek to make the other, or the enemy, seem sub-human in some way to untruthfully ease our consciences about decisions that we make.
Thomas More wrote a prayer which begins with these words:
"Give me the grace, Good Lord,
To set the world at naught. To set the mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the words of men's mouths."
If we are finding it difficult to speak up for Truth, to act for Truth, when we are overcome with fear, when we fear to lose friends or to make enemies, we can pray as Thomas More told his daughter Meg that he prayed, remembering St. Peter trying to walk on water, so fearful of drowning, and crying out to Christ to stretch forth his hand and save him from the stormy waters.
When we are going underwater and drowning from fears, doubts, griefs, and anxiety, we can always call upon Christ to stretch out his hand and save us! When we are disappointed from the betrayal of friends, we can call to Christ to save us from drowning in bitterness.
We can remember the Passion of Christ, and live in continual gratitude that He loved us so much that He endured fear, depression, prison, beatings, torture, and execution for our sakes, not because we loved God, but because God loved us first. Through His death, we are given the opportunity for resurrection, the grace to be re-made in Christ's Image, to bear our crosses with His hands helping to hold us up, until we literally fall into Paradise.
Sometimes God calms our storms for us. Other times, when we speak the truth and suffer earthly consequences, God will honor our faith as He honored the faith of St. Thomas More, as He honors the faith of martyrs today. He will calm us, who are His beloved children. And deep in our hearts and souls we will be at peace, realizing that nothing counts but winning Christ.