A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
Find today’s readings here.
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward will be great in heaven.”
Today the church remembers the sacrifice and example of St. Charles Lwanga and the Ugandan Martyrs. Although their martyrdoms took place in central Africa in the 19th century, the form of their martyrdom is reminiscent of the awful suffering visited on martyrs in the earliest days of the church.
Today’s readings for the memorial reflect the courage and deep faith required of martyrdom. In the first reading from 2 Maccabees, a mother and her seven sons seem to compete for the worst brutality as their punishment for fidelity to God is apportioned by a cruel tyrant.
“We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors,” one brother says before the family provides evidence of the veracity of his words. And in his final words to the king who is murdering his family, one brother remarks:
“It is my choice to die at the hands of men
with the God-given hope of being restored to life by him;
but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”
Today’s Gospel is the special scriptural gift of the Beatitudes, one of the most poignant and moving pieces of Scripture, both a caution and a consolation. Not perhaps as often noted is its final short reminder of sacrificial redemption for those faithful called to persecution: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
Like the earliest Christian martyrs, the Ugandan martyrs were young men, newly converted to the Christian faith, who between 1885 and 1887 suffered particularly gruesome executions—beheaded or rolled tightly in mats and tossed alive into pyres—because they defied their king and refused to renounce their faith. Like all such stories of martyrdom, contemporary believers are forced to consider whether they could show the same fortitude were they ever forced to confront a similar decision between earthly life and faith in life everlasting.
I find myself doubtful of how courageously I might conduct myself before such a trial. I am fortunate to live in a time and a place that allow me to visit that challenge merely in my imagination. No one in contemporary America is likely to demand that I spit on a cross or stomp on an image of Jesus or otherwise renounce my Christian faith in order to preserve my life.
That is a cross that I will never bear. Could I ever bear it as bravely as St. Charles and the other martyrs we memorialize today? Could I endure that persecution as bravely as my brothers and sisters in Africa continue to endure it today?
Sadly the African martyrdoms of the 19th Century show no sign of halting today in waves of violence that do not seem to rise above the fold to garner much international media attention. Perhaps after decades of the Global War on Terror and persistent conflict in Africa, we have grown hardened and indifferent to the violence, but each year scores of Christians are still martyred across the continent, in Somalia, Libya and many other African states—even in Uganda, where in June 2023 Isis-affiliated militants slaughtered 37 students at a Christian boarding school.
The worst violence may be occurring in Nigeria. The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa estimates that between 2020 and 2023 some 31,000 Nigerians were killed by Islamist terrorists, including 17,000 Christians and 6,300 moderate Muslims. (The faith of another 8,000 victims was unknown.)
I don’t doubt that at some future point these martyrs, like St. Charles and the Ugandan martyrs we pray with today, may be offered their own memorial celebration. That will be right and just, but more right and just would be paying greater attention now to the suffering of fellow Christians and others in Africa.
That way, in the future, we may be in the position of not having to memorialize so many more African martyrs.
