Today, we conclude Religious Freedom Week with the commemoration of the solemnity of St Peter and St Paul. We honor these two leaders in the Early Church who spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Both of these men suffered greatly from their faith and were ultimately put to death as martyrs.
Monday, we commemorated St Irenaeus of Lyon, Bishop and Martyr for the faith who died in the year 202. St Irenaeus fought against the heresy of Gnosticism, which saw the material world as corrupted and the spiritual world as superior. He died defending the true faith of the Church.
Even though Religious Freedom Week ends today, we commemorate two other great witnesses and defenders of the faith later this week. Wednesday, we commemorate the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome, a feast day that was established with the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Not a lot is know of the names and identities of these holy martyrs. These men and women were tortured and executed in the city of Rome in the year 64, having been made scapegoats for a terrible fire of suspicious origins that destroyed large parts of the city of Rome under the Roman emperor Nero.
Thursday, we celebrate one of the great missionaries that brought the Catholic faith to the West coast of the United States in the late 18th century, Franciscan priest St Junipero Serra. Father Serra went from being an acclaimed philosophy professor in his homeland in Mallorca, Spain to hearing God call him to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ to the native people of Mexico and California. Father Serra established 9 of the missions in California, including San Francisco, San Gabriel, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, and Monterey. In recent years, the missionary work of Father Serra has been criticized by many in our secular world. However, at Father Serra’s canonization in 2015, Pope Francis lauded Father Serra’s missionary spirit and the warm embrace of God that he brought to those to whom he ministered, making them his brothers and sisters in Christ.
We conclude Religious Freedom Week today with a prayer for religious liberty:
Almighty God, Father of all the nations,
For freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus (Galatians 5:1).
We praise you and bless you for the gift of religious liberty, the foundation of human rights, justice, and the common good.
Grant to our governmental leaders the wisdom to protect and promote our liberties;
By your grace may we have the courage to defend them, for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.
We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness, and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, with whom you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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