Sharing in the Chalice of Christ

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Polycarp, Bishop and martyr. In the collect of the Mass we pray that, like St. Polycarp, may we be given a place in the company of holy martyrs who share in the chalice of Christ.  As I think of St. Polycarp’s martyrdom,   I cannot help but think of what led to his death. It had to be a very difficult time, a time fraught with clashes, threats, and risky situations that pointed to the possibility of a tragic end, no less real that Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, his clashes with the authorities of his day, and his ultimate face-to-face encounters with his executioners.  

Martyrdom, for most of us, involves a bloodless dying to selfishness, pride, arrogance, resentments and sin of any kind.  It involves the quiet heroism of the housewife/husband of an alcoholic/drug-addicted spouse. It involves the “bleeding,” agonizing heartaches of the parents of missing children, mentally ill children, children with terminal or chronic, debilitating illnesses, and much more. It involves the sufferings  that tear at the heart strings of so many in the world of today where we encounter human traffickers, slave laborers, and corrupt persons preying on the young and old in so many ways.

Our bloodless martyrdom also includes resisting Satan’s deceptive schemes and being driven out into the desert to face our inner demons and saying “no” to sin. The desert for millions is the prison cells that they occupy as the result of a crime against humanity.  In our “deserts,” wherever those may be, may we be converted to the ways of the Lord and experience what the psalmist says to us in today’s responsorial psalm:  the “law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple” (Psalm 19).

The Indwelling God

In today's first reading, Acts 17: 15, 22-18:1, Paul admires the Greek's exquisite marble statues of the human body and other man-made monuments. He even notices the inscription on an altar that reads: To an Unknown God."  Paul then proceeds to proclaim to them that the "God who made the world and all that  is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made my human hands,  nor is he served by human hands  because he needs anything" from us.  God dwells in the sanctuary that each of us is, a sanctuary of life made holy by Christ Jesus.  We live and move and have our being in God and God in us. 

This God--the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit--dwells within each one of us, making us one with the Trinity and transforming us in such ways that we become one with one another, relating to each other as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to one another.  In the Trinity all are one. No one dominates the other. No one is deprived of the fullness of life that is the Trinity. All share equally in the Godhead. All give equally to one another. All render complete service to one another in order to accomplish one mission: the salvation of all humankind.

The perfection to which we are called is not of human origin. It is divine. We  are in the process of realizing that perfection from birth until death, a perfection being accomplished by the work of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus, in returning to the Father, sent to us to "guide us to all truth" (today's Gospel, John 16" 12-15). What a gift! What a  hope that make all things worth giving one's life to the point of dying. It's the essence of martyrdom. It's the essence of giving one's life in marriage to another. It's the essence of religious life and of priesthood. It's the essence of the single life lived for God!