“White Martyrdom: the Seed of Revitalizing the Church in Our Midst”

Homily for the Solemn Profession of the Contemplatives of St. Joseph
September 21, 2024; Mater Dolorosa Church

Introduction

Picture if you will a city of great commercial and financial power, strategically located at a crossroads for trade.  A city of great wealth because of it being a banking and financial center.  A city renowned as a center of the medical arts and health care.  A city of great wealth, but also of great indifference.  A city blind to its own moral failings, so much so that not even Jesus Christ has anything good to say about it.

We may think this hits close to home, but I am actually speaking of the ancient city of Laodicea, one of the seven ancient churches to which St. John writes in the Book of Revelation.  We heard part of that letter to this church in our second reading.

He Stands Knocking

Laodicea is the only one of the seven churches to which St. John writes for which he has nothing positive to say.  In fact, one of the verses not included in this letter to the church of Laodicea is the famous “spit you out of my mouth” verse: “I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either cold or hot.  So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15f).  A rather powerful metaphor to convey the depth of the citizenry’s indifference!  In fact, he goes on: “For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17).  Ouch.  That does hit close to home.

Such is the state of Laodicea in the ancient world; such is the state of so much of what we find here in the San Francisco Bay Area; such is the state, indeed, of the Western world in general, and perhaps even within God’s Church.  And yet, God never leaves us alone, He is always there to take us back.  All we have to do is let Him in. 

Notice what the “faithful and true witness” says to the community in Laodicea, and to us, too: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.”  He does not force himself on us, but he is always ready to forgive, to take us back.  We just need to open the door to him.

Beyond Our Vision

This is the message the prophet Isaiah preaches to God’s people of old in our first reading.  This is from the section of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah known as “Deutero-Isaiah.”  The first section of the Book of Isaiah comes from the period of Israel’s history before the Babylonians invaded the southern kingdom, laid it waste, and took the people into exile.  It is a message of warning to them, an exhortation to repent of worshipping false gods and of the lives of debauchery and of injustice toward the poor they were living; to change their ways, less this impending doom take them over.  But they kept the door closed. 

This second part of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah was written after the destruction of the kingdom, while the people were in exile.  It is a message of hope, filled with tenderness and with the teaching of the mercy of God.  We even have God here referring to His people as “darling” – “the darling whom I have chosen.”  This word “darling” is related to the Hebrew word that means “upright,” and rhymes with “Israel.”  This underscores the chosen-ness of the people of God of the Old Testament, the people God chose from the very beginning.  We even hear a phrase resonant with the story of the call of the prophet Jeremiah: “the Lord … formed you from the womb.”

Yes, the Lord will fulfill the hopes of His people.  But He will go even beyond that.  “One shall say, ‘I am the Lord’s,’… and this one shall write on his hand, ‘the Lord’s,’ and Israel shall be his surname.”  That is to say, the gentiles will be joined to the people of God, they will be grafted onto the people of Israel.  This is how God acts; how often, though, we fail to trust Him, how often we allow our limited human vision to blind us.  God works something great, far beyond what Israel could have imagined.  But there is always something that has to be done on our part.  He stands at the door knocking; knocking, knocking and knocking.  He is the lover we read about in the Song of Songs: “I heard my lover knocking: ‘Open to me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one!  For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the moisture of the night’” (Ss 5:2).

He is the lover who seeks to be one with us; but He is elusive.  The beloved continues: “My lover put his hand through the opening; my heart trembled within me, and I grew faint when he spoke.  I rose to open to my lover with my hands dripping myrrh.  With my fingers dripping choice myrrh upon the fittings of the lock.  I opened to my lover – but my lover had departed, gone.  I sought him but I did not find him; I called to him but he did not answer me.”

Opening the Door

Thus it is that opening the door for the Lord to enter is not a simple, easy, insignificant thing.  What does it really take?  This is what our Lord teaches us in the gospel from St. John: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit.”  He is, of course, referring first of all to himself: he is the grain of wheat that fell from heaven in the Incarnation, taking on a human body so that in that body he could die in order for us to live, not a few more years in this world, but forever with him in the next.  This is the “much fruit” his death has produced.

Opening the door to him, then, means following the pattern he has set for us.  He goes on to specify what that means: hating our life in this world, in order to preserve it for life eternal.  That is, in all things we are to prefer life in the next world to our life in this world.  It is not worth extending our life a few more years here, or accommodating ourselves to comforts and honors and pleasures, if it will mean losing eternal life. 

As applied to believers, the first and most obvious example of this is that of the martyrs.  They are the ones who literally lose their life in this world, in order to preserve it in the next.  These are what we call the “red martyrs,” and, sadly, we have more of these in our own time than in any other period of history in the Church. 

But after the passing of the first waves of persecution in the early centuries, and especially after the Emperor Constantine gave legal sanction to the Christian religion in the Roman Empire, the Church recognized another kind of martyrdom, “white martyrdom.”  These were those Christians who, following the example of St. Anthony of the Desert, withdrew from society, especially early on in the Egyptian desert, to pursue a life of strict asceticism and perfect union with Christ.

White Martyrs in Our Midst

The ancient Church father Tertullian famously said that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.  And we know this from experience: the courage of the martyrs who endure such torture and cruelty, spilling their blood for Christ, inspires others to believe.  Such is the “much fruit” produced by the red martyrs – helping others attain eternal salvation as they pay the ultimate price for their own, in union with the sacrifice of their Lord.

However, is this not also true of white martyrs?  The witness of white martyrs is also the seed of the Church, as the heroic witness of their asceticism inspires others to walk the path of faith.  And this is what we are about today.  God in our very midst today is working something new, something great beyond our own vision.  The first solemn vows of the Contemplatives of St. Joseph provide our Archdiocese with this witness that is the seed for the growth and vibrancy of the Church here. 

It is certainly true that not all have the vocation to be a martyr, red or white.  In fact, very few do.  The point is, we need them in our midst, so that we ourselves will keep on task regarding our own vocation.  The martyrs, white as well as red, provide a sort of a check on us, a necessary corrective, the guardrails we need to keep us on the path of living our own respective vocations faithfully and well.  What a blessing God lavishes on us today, a contemplative community consecrated by the evangelical counsels for the spiritual and pastoral service of our Archdiocese – as well as the solemn promises the members of the third order of the COSJ’s will make today.

Conclusion

And yet there is more.  That is, there is yet one more sense to our Lord’s teaching on the grain of wheat falling from heaven to die and bear much fruit, and this once again is in reference to himself: this is what happens at every Mass.  Yes, here again today, as at every Mass, our Lord will make himself the grain of wheat that falls to the ground from heaven, transforming the grains of wheat that are the bread on the altar into his very Body, whose members we are. 

The Mass, the Eucharist, is the Church’s great prayer of thanksgiving to God for all the good things He as given us, above, the gift of our salvation in His Son Jesus Christ.  We have an additional great gift for which to thank God today: the Contemplatives of St. Joseph, the white martyrs in our midst for the revitalization of all of the members of the Body of Christ in our local Church.  Praised be Jesus Christ for this gift!  Amen!