November 27, 2005

The four Sundays of Advent lead us more deeply into the four ultimate considerations of human existence: death, judg­ment, heaven, and hell. Any tendency to ignore these or to evaporate Advent by social anticipations of Christ­mas is a cold commentary on the superficiality which al­ways tempts the soul. Our Lord has clothed us with a dig­nity so great that he will not let us be satisfied with any­thing less than true knowledge of these four great mysteries.

In contemplating the meaning of death and how to understand it as a gate to a larger and more glorious life, it is well to bear in mind how great Christians die well. Last Sunday thirteen more martyrs were beatified in Mexico. These “Cristeros,” including three priests and eight lay­men, the youngest being fourteen, were among the many who died for Christ at the hands of the anti-Catholic Mexican government, each one declaring as he gave his life: Long live Christ the King.

On his recent state visit to China, President Bush spoke out for the civil rights of persecuted religions. Some ten to twenty million Christians suffer there. In August, one of countless martyrs, Bishop Xie Shiguang died after spending twenty-eight years in prison. Last November, as part of widespread oppression in Indonesia, three Catholic schoolgirls were beheaded by Muslim terrorists. The situation is even worse in North Korea under the brutal regime of Kim Jong Il. President Bush said in his human rights speech in Japan: “Satellite maps of North Korea show prison camps the size of whole cities.” The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reports horrifying accounts of mind control, prison labor, and executions of Christians. Possession of a Bible war­rants a death sentence. One father and daughter caught with a Bible were shot before an assembly of school­children. A crowd of parishioners “cried, screamed out, or fainted” as they were forced to watch five of their lay Christian leaders being tied down and run over by a steamroller. Upwards of 100,000 exiles have fled the Kim Jong Il regime, but most remain under the harshest conditions.

These events get little publicity in the mainstream Western media. They are not mentioned by Western Christians busy with their Christmas shopping, some of whom have no time for Advent. We are beneficiaries of the merits of so many martyrs and should remember their holy dying in celebrating the advent of the Redeemer of the World. By happy providence, some of our holy icons to be installed in time for Christmas are of martyrs from some of the lands I have mentioned. May their intercessions make us truly thankful for the blessings we enjoy. And with joyful hope in the Resurrection, we should ponder ever more reverently the meaning of our words when we pray in the Miraculous Medal novena each Monday for “the grace of a happy death.”

Fr. George W. Rutler