“Rejoice in the Lord, you just.” We hear this proclaimed in the psalm today. Yet, sometimes we may find it a challenge to rejoice in the reality of our lives, in the sufferings and trials that we endure in life.
When I was looking at the list of saints for today, I saw the name St Richard Martin. He was a devout Catholic layperson who was arrested and martyred in the year 1588 for giving shelter to priests during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in England when the Catholic Church was outlawed in that country. Can we imagine having to give up out lives for wanting to live out our faith? Perhaps with what we see going on in the secular world today, making sacrifices for the faith even up to the point of giving up our lives does not seem so far-fetched.
There was a time when one had to be a martyr in order to be named a saint. However, there is a lot to learn from all the saints proclaimed by our faith and how they lived their lives. The saints are just not a part of history or from an old-fashioned faith that doesn’t exist anymore. Richard Martin and the other Catholics who died while trying to live out their faith in the years after Henry VIII tried to outlaw the Catholic Church in England show us the courage and sacrifices people have made through out history in order to live out their faith and to pass along that faith to others. We live in a society where sacrifice is often looked down upon or mocked. How are we called to courageously live out our faith and to rejoice in the Lord no matter what our circumstances are in life?
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