30 June 2021 - Wednesday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time - the first Martyrs of the Church of Rome - Psalm 34

    In Arlington national cemetery in Washington, DC, there is a tomb of an unknown soldier.  Three bodies are entombed there from WWI, WWII, and the Korean war. The names of the soldiers are unknown.  They honor all the men and women, known and unknown, who died in war in service to their country.  There was a body from a solider from the Vietnam war, but from a DNA test, the identity of that solider was made, so that tomb remains empty, still dedicated to the men and women who died in the Vietnam war. 

       We have many saints we honor in our liturgical calendar.  Often, many details are known about these saints. This past Monday, we honored St Irenaeus of Lyon, a well-known bishop and martyr from the early Church who died in the year 202.  Yesterday, we honored St Peter and St Paul.  Today’s feast day commemorates the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome; this feast day did not exist prior to the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  There is not a lot of detail that is known about the names and identities of these martyrs.  This feast day commemorates those unknown and unnamed men and women who were tortured and executed in the city of Rome in the year 64 CE.  In that year, a terrible fire of suspicious origins destroyed large parts of the city of Rome.  The emperor Nero blamed Christians for the fire, torturing and executing them in retribution for their supposed crimes.  The Roman historian Tactius left a vivid description of the brutality inflicted on them.  

      We finished our commemoration of Religious Freedom Week yesterday, but these martyrs from the Early Church that we commemorate today continue to remind us of the importance of being able to practice our faith without being persecuted or hindered from doing so in society.  Just this past year, one of the oldest historic mission church in California, San Gabriel, was destroyed by arson, yet we hear nothing about that in the news, do we?  Here in the US and in many countries in Europe, many churches and religious statues were desecrated or vandalized during this past year.  And we even had a member of Congress falsely call one of the saints a symbol of white supremacy and privilege, saying that his statue did not deserved to represent the state of Hawaii in the Capitol building, when the people of Hawaii had chosen him.  The truth tells us a different story, as that saint was Father Damien, who died a leper himself serving the lepers of Hawaii.  Those details were left out of the Congresswoman's description of him in order for her to put forth a false narrative.  These examples show how in a lot of ways, our faith and the freedom to practice our faith is under attack.  

      Our psalm today asserts that the Lord hears the cry of the poor.  The Lord will also hear our cries as we call out to help to help us practice our faith and evangelize the world in the midst of our reality today.