It's probably best to say this now--most of the traditional feast days celebrated by the Church commemorate martyrdoms, and there will consequently be a lot of reflection on martyrs on this site. This seems a bit like a trick at first: "Sure, get us to celebrate Christmas with a nice cover image of a new baby and a bunch of astrologers and animals--only to fill the inside of the book with images of people dying in grotesque ways. Then we can all feel guilty for being happy and having fun during this season, which forces us to ask God to forgive us for our laughter. Well, the jig is up! Do you really expect us to party one minute and soberly listen to stories of martyrs (ancient and modern) the next?"
Well, I don't. I don't, anyway, expect anyone (myself included) to do it perfectly. But I think it's probably worth attempting, because traditionally these are Feast Days, not Fast Days. The day of a saint's death is his "dies natalis," his "birthday," when (originally) even the close relatives and friends of this or that martyr would commemorate him or her by having little picnics around his or her grave. We should not allow the fact of suffering in the world--past or present--to guilt us into joylessness and ingratitude for the gifts we have been given in the here-and-now. But we should allow the memory of the martyrs, from Stephen to those currently losing their lives daily, to anchor our joy and prevent it from drifting into flippancy. There is, of course, a point at which laughter and gaiety become may become joyless and drab, having everything to do with cynicism and nothing whatever to do with a full and happy life. Remembrance of death--Christ's, those of the martyrs, our own--does not rob us of the joy of Christmas any more than it robs us of the joy of life. Instead, such remembrance redeems games, gift-giving, food, drink--and I truly do not think that the saints, in their current bliss, envy us these things. Rather they died, in part, to give others eternal joy that cannot help but spill over into temporal happiness. Even those currently persecuted, who have not yet lost their lives, cannot begrudge others the comforts they may no longer share. But they do ask that we remember them, to each other and to the Lord. Too often, we take the opposite tack, believing that our frequent tight-fistedness is somehow ameliorated by the fact that we don't enjoy our riches!
It's a fictional carol, but we probably wouldn't be wrong to take a page out of the book of "Good King Wenceslas," who honored the memory of St. Stephen not by stoicism and grim fasting but by sharing his food and wine with the poorest in his kingdom:
“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,
You and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither.”
It is an appropriate song to sing at Christmastide because Wenceslas' act echoes the extravagant generosity of God, who in an overflow of joy gave us his very self in birth and death, that we might all share his human-yet-eternal life. This feast in the martyr's memory is not a refusal of joy, but a deepening of it, as darkness makes Christmas lights brighter and the cold enriches fire. But I don't say this to end with some sort of cliche, like, "It's only because of death that life is beautiful in the first place," or some nonsense of that sort. There are real, horrible tragedies going on all the time, and we have yet to understand how they will be redeemed. But we should not use this as an excuse to refuse God's gifts to us. We must, further, acknowledge that in some way, Christ's birth into the world, his death, and his resurrection was the beginning of a great miracle in which our constant and bewildering defeats may become victories, and in which our deaths, too, open the way to greater life, both in this world and the next. Death will be swallowed up in victory, and the day of our birth will dawn. Until then, we mourn and celebrate in hope and joy.
Well, I don't. I don't, anyway, expect anyone (myself included) to do it perfectly. But I think it's probably worth attempting, because traditionally these are Feast Days, not Fast Days. The day of a saint's death is his "dies natalis," his "birthday," when (originally) even the close relatives and friends of this or that martyr would commemorate him or her by having little picnics around his or her grave. We should not allow the fact of suffering in the world--past or present--to guilt us into joylessness and ingratitude for the gifts we have been given in the here-and-now. But we should allow the memory of the martyrs, from Stephen to those currently losing their lives daily, to anchor our joy and prevent it from drifting into flippancy. There is, of course, a point at which laughter and gaiety become may become joyless and drab, having everything to do with cynicism and nothing whatever to do with a full and happy life. Remembrance of death--Christ's, those of the martyrs, our own--does not rob us of the joy of Christmas any more than it robs us of the joy of life. Instead, such remembrance redeems games, gift-giving, food, drink--and I truly do not think that the saints, in their current bliss, envy us these things. Rather they died, in part, to give others eternal joy that cannot help but spill over into temporal happiness. Even those currently persecuted, who have not yet lost their lives, cannot begrudge others the comforts they may no longer share. But they do ask that we remember them, to each other and to the Lord. Too often, we take the opposite tack, believing that our frequent tight-fistedness is somehow ameliorated by the fact that we don't enjoy our riches!
It's a fictional carol, but we probably wouldn't be wrong to take a page out of the book of "Good King Wenceslas," who honored the memory of St. Stephen not by stoicism and grim fasting but by sharing his food and wine with the poorest in his kingdom:
“Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,
You and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither.”
It is an appropriate song to sing at Christmastide because Wenceslas' act echoes the extravagant generosity of God, who in an overflow of joy gave us his very self in birth and death, that we might all share his human-yet-eternal life. This feast in the martyr's memory is not a refusal of joy, but a deepening of it, as darkness makes Christmas lights brighter and the cold enriches fire. But I don't say this to end with some sort of cliche, like, "It's only because of death that life is beautiful in the first place," or some nonsense of that sort. There are real, horrible tragedies going on all the time, and we have yet to understand how they will be redeemed. But we should not use this as an excuse to refuse God's gifts to us. We must, further, acknowledge that in some way, Christ's birth into the world, his death, and his resurrection was the beginning of a great miracle in which our constant and bewildering defeats may become victories, and in which our deaths, too, open the way to greater life, both in this world and the next. Death will be swallowed up in victory, and the day of our birth will dawn. Until then, we mourn and celebrate in hope and joy.
