Pray with the Pope: For those Who Risk Martyrdom

by Chris Chatteris SJ · Published March 1, 2024 · Updated February 29, 2024

Pope Francis, in a screen grab from a video, asks people to pray that those who risk their lives for the Gospel may inspire the church with their courage and missionary drive. For the month of March, the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network is is dedicated to modern martyrs as witness to Christ. (CNS photo/ThePopeVideo.org)

Every month Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on Pope Francis’ prayer intention

Intention: Let us pray that those who risk their lives for the Gospel in various parts of the world might imbue the Church with their courage and missionary drive.

For “new martyrs”? The heading, provided by the Holy See, sounds like we are recruiting volunteers to send to the front! Of course, we are being asked to pray for those who risk martyrdom today.

The Church does not recommend that we court martyrdom, as if we were poking a wild animal. Doing so runs the risk of seeking the martyr’s palm and crown for the wrong motives.

Our motives are always going to be mixed, of course. One traditional secondary motivation for martyrdom has been the desire to live up to the heroic example of those who went before us. After the age of martyrdom in the early Church, some Christians felt that life had become rather soft and comfortable under a Roman Empire which was now their protector rather than their persecutor. This sparked a movement into the desert which eventually evolved into various forms of religious life.

The idea was that if “red” martyrdom was no longer possible, a witnessing to the Lord and his Gospel by the shedding of one’s blood, of a tough, solitary life in the wilderness seeking God in prayer and fasting, would serve as a substitute. Is this competition? Inspiration? It’s not easy to tell, but God can use the less worthy motive to lead us on to better ones.

No martyrdom sought

There will always be those who happily run the risk of the classic form of martyrdom, fundamentally not for their own glory but that of God and for the sake of the Gospel. It is not something they seek; it just goes with the territory in which they feel called to minister. That territory may be more available than we think.

There are very few places on the planet today where Christianity has not reached, and therefore it is almost inevitable that some of these places will be hostile. I imagine it wouldn’t be hard to get martyred in North Korea if you started preaching openly in that state where the leader has all but been deified and where any allegiance to a power other than his is perceived as a threat. You might not get summarily executed; you would more likely disappear into a prison camp and never emerge alive.

Then there are places where, because Christians are a small minority, they serve as a handy scapegoat for politicians who wish to distract from their shortcomings. They either stir up existing interreligious tensions or they manufacture them. This illustrates the fact that a martyr rarely dies because of pure odium fidei, or hatred of the faith.

The martyrdom is often coloured with complicating political factors. St Thomas More had to navigate these murky waters and he put the matter succinctly when he said at his execution: “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” Even the Lord experienced this. The chief priests were certainly unhappy with his vision of Judaism, but Pilate probably just saw him as a politically expedient way of placating the mob.

Martyrs have to be courageous, but they must also be masters of discernment, making a way through a tangle of motivations, both their own and those of their persecutors. We pray for those facing the prospect of martyrdom, and for ourselves.