The Martyrs of China

One of the most famous Christian martyrs of the twentieth century was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A German Lutheran theologian and leader of the Christian Resistance movement against the Nazi regime of Hitler, he was arrested, imprisoned and hanged in 1945. Bonhoeffer's writings are packed with power, and I would like to take a line from one of them for our meditation. He wrote: "When the Lord calls, he bids us come and die."

It means, when the word goes out from the mouth of the Lord carrying his call, anyone who is attentive enough to hear it, and daring enough to say yes, will find that this call and that yes combined will strike a fire within him. It will be a turbulence and restlessness, that cannot be quenched till the ultimate point of self-giving has been reached, namely death. And this death is not something imposed and suffered, it is something offered and welcomed. The Lord does not bid us... "go and die," but "come and die." That is, "Come, I am here, hanging on the cross, dying my death; come, mingle your death with mine and die with me, in glory. Death is not what you think it is. It is not an end. It is a beginning. A beginning of something so glorious, that all the dreams of all the dreamers of this world put together would be only a shadow of its shadow." The Lord never calls us to something that is small or cheap. When he calls, "he bids us come and die." And this was written by a man who experienced this fire within him. He wrote it when he was awaiting death in a Nazi prison.

Seven centuries before Bonhoeffer, there was another man who experienced this same fire and turbulence within, Francis of Assisi. His biographer Thomas of Celano says he was only thirty years old when he began craving for martyrdom. Thirty years. That is when a man is in the fulness of his vitality and vigour. He was the founder of an Order that was growing and flourishing, and he wanted to give all up and seek death. Why? Because he has heard the call, "Whom shall I send?" And answered, "Here I am, send me." He knew the end of that road. It could only be the grave. "When the Lord calls, he bids us come and die!" So he got into a boat going east to Syria, where the Saracens ruled. He knew they would kill him. But when the boat was out in the open sea, the winds changed. Instead of blowing east, it blew the ship towards Slavonia. And there he was told there would be no eastwind again till next year. So he went home. Then he said "If the wind will not blow where I want to go, I will go where the wind is blowing." He got into a boat that sailed west, to Morocco, where there were Saracens too. But this time when he had gone as far as Spain, he got sick... a prolonged illness, says Celano. So he had no choice but to come back. The Lord had other things for him to do.

But the fire kept simmering within. Six years later, he felt he could bear it no more. "...his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot..." (Jerem 20:9). He found a ship going east with winds in its sail, in the summer. He was determined to achieve one of two objectives, either convert the Sultan and put an end to the crusades, or give his own life in the process. He reached the court of the Sultan. But there was a problem here. The Sultan, Malek-el-Khamel, was a cultured man, and had a taste for mystical poetry and a good sense of humour, a man much like Francis himself in his natural endowments. When two men of this kind meet, something clicks, and they became friends. You could not expect Malek-el-Khamel to kill a man like Francis. As Chesterton said, 'the messenger was received instead of the message.' As for conversion, the Sultan was willing to become a Christian for Francis' sake, but he was afraid his people might kill him. For that he was not prepared, because... he had not heard the call.

Francis had to come back disappointed. Three times he had tried and three times he had failed. Celano looks for a reason. "The Lord did not fulfil Francis' desire for martyrdom, reserving for him the prerogative of a singular grace."

By 'singular grace' what he means is obviously the Stigmata, a painful experience both in body and in spirit. But we certainly can try to see more into it. It would seem that the highest point of self-giving to God in answer to his call is death by martyrdom. But it is not. There is one further point, and that is death to self in the acceptance of God's will, something that can be far more difficult, and is certainly far more important.

Almost fifty years before Francis' disappointed return from Syria, the great English martyr Archbishop Thomas Becket had embraced martyrdom, and four days earlier had in his Christmas sermon reflected on this point. In the words of the modern poet T.S. Eliot (in his play Murder in the Cathedral), Becket had said, "A Christian Martyrdom is never an accident. Still less a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will... A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warm them and lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of men; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God."

Francis became 'the true martyr...who has lost his will in the will of God.' This made him the Patriarch whose sons and daughters by the hundred would, in the centuries to follow, go bravely and joyfully to death for the sake of Jesus. In each one of them he would die his death, because he had dared to die another death, a deeper death - to self.

With the recent canonisations the Church now celebrates the martyrdom of a group of his sons and daughters who died in China in 1900. Among these were seven young women, of an average age of thirty, the same age Francis was when he first dreamt of the martyr's death - seven women who in his place and with his spirit and enthusiasm accepted martyrdom, along with their many brother.

These seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary had been attentive enough to hear the call, and brave enough to say yes. I would like to look at them as they are saying goodbye to Europe on the boat leaving Marseilles on 12 March 1899. The boat is sailing out into a mist. They are going to a new country, to a new people, with new faces, new languages, new cultures. What is waiting for them? A mist of uncertainties - that is what they are sailing into. But there is one thing about which there is no mist in their hearts, namely, that whatever it is that is coming to them, they are ready. Ready to go to the ultimate limit.

After two months, the boat lands in Taiyuan-Fu. And they find there are smiles waiting for them. There is a community of Christians there, and Franciscans Friars, with two Franciscan Bishops. The Sisters are welcomed and placed in charge of an orphanage with two hundred children. They throw themselves into the work. They get used to the place, the language, the climate.

Then slowly disturbing rumours begin to come. About violence in the neighbouring provinces. About a new governor - a man who is determined to wipe out Christianity from the face of China. One day, soldiers come and take away all the children from the orphanage to a pagoda. A few days later, the Sisters, the Bishop, the Friars, the Seminarians and some Chinese Lay Franciscans are shifted to the mandarin's house, which serves as prison. On 9 July 1900 in the evening there is a commotion. The governor is there in person with a battalion of soldiers. The Bishop speaks his final words of encouragement and comfort to his faithful and gives general absolution, then goes up to talk to the governor. But before he can speak, the governor wields his sword and cuts off his head. He cries to the soldiers, "Kill, kill them all!" And the butchery starts.

As the blood began to flow, one of the Sisters started singing, "Te Deum laudamus..." It was the Church's great hymn of thanksgiving, composed in the fourth century. Which means, that for fifteen hundred years, throughout the Church, whenever and wherever there was a special reason for thanksgiving and praising and rejoicing, they had sung this song. And now the whole Christian community took it up.

And I think from his place in heaven Saint Francis must have joined in. How happy he must have been and how proud, that his daughters and sons were singing on their way to death, just like he had done once. And they were going to a violent death, the kind of death he had longed for and been denied. Now they were receiving it in his place. This was that 'prerogative of a singular grace', surely. How lustily he must have sung!

Many centuries earlier, in the coliseum in Rome, when the early Christians were taken to be fed to the lions for the entertainment of the people, the emperor Nero, looking at them, had said, "But why are they singing? What strange people, these Christians! They are being led to be torn and eaten by lions, and here they are, singing!" He could not understand the secret of their singing. It is a secret hidden from the wise and the learned of this world and revealed to little ones.

In Taiyuvan-Fu, the governor must have wondered too, "Why are they singing? What is the secret, the secret of this singing?"

But the Christians continued their song, bold and clear. They kept singing till the moment of their throat was cut. Then there was silence. Silence on this side. But on the other side, the song "Te Deum Laudamus" continued, and was joined by the on-going chorus of a thousand throats of martyrs and saints - and has gone on for a hundred years now.

Today in India we are living in a world where the air is once again full of sounds and rumours of bloodshed. The Christian's throat is within easy reach of the assassin's knife - as indeed it so often has been before in the history of Christianity, from its beginning. By lifting up these martyrs of China and showing them to us as Saints in glory, the Church has once again placed a smile on our faces and a song in our mouths. It is a song we can sing with confidence and pride - even with defiance - because these Saints remind us once again that deep in our hearts we still carry the secret of the singing and the secret is this: "When the Lord calls, he bids us come and die!"