The word “martyr” means “witness.” The first centuries of the Church were spattered red with the blood of the heroic martyrs, but when peace came to the Church there was still a need for heroic witness. Very soon the concept of “white martyrdom” developed: a martyrdom without blood, but still facing off against violent hatred of the faith. This white martyrdom consisted in a total offering to God, dying to self, the world, and its allurements. 

I read a story about young Catholics in China who belonged to the Legion of Mary. They were forbidden by their government to practice the faith. But that didn’t stop them. They eventually were arrested and their rosaries confiscated. While in jail they continued to pray using their fingers to count the decades. The government swiftly chopped off their fingers.

Hopefully none of us will ever have to endure such a trial for our faith, but many ordinary Catholics do suffer persecution, especially if we are committed to following Jesus for more than an hour on Sunday. Do you know anyone who is suffering a quiet white martyrdom for the faith?

A very close friend of mine recently announced, through heart-wrenching tears, that her husband wanted a divorce and was moving out. After six kids and 19 years of marriage you can bet they had their ups and downs. But none of the downs constituted “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” It turns out the straw was… contraceptives! They had all throughout their marriage practiced Natural Family Planning. But now with age and unpredictable cycles and her husband not wanting any more children, his solution was contraceptives. Her solution was NFP and faith in the wisdom of God. After seeking spiritual direction with several priests, family therapy, and prayer, he moved out.

When you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in times of adversity. Cling to Him, forsake Him not; thus will your future be great. Accept what befalls you; in crushing misfortune be patient. For, in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation. Trust God and He will help you. Make straight your ways and hope in Him. You who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy. Turn not away, lest you fall. (Sirach 2:1-7)

Last week I answered the phone and heard a whispering friend agonize, “Every day, I have to contend with snide remarks: ‘This is how your God treats us! If your God existed we wouldn’t be in this situation. You’re wasting your time praying! Go to church yourself.’”

She called me for a sympathetic ear, a friend to share her burden. She confided how she didn’t know how long she could endure the attacks on her faith and her God. Those attacks were coming from her husband, who lost his job over two years ago. After spending down their savings, retirement accounts and everything else in between, to pay the mortgage and keep their son in Catholic school, she continues to practice her faith, choosing to turn to God and prayer – while her rapidly deteriorating husband chooses alcohol and derision.

We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful; as unrecognized and yet acknowledge; as dying and behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing and yet possessing all things! (2 Cor 6:8:-10)

I know an older woman with eight grown children. Although she is a tireless and effective evangelizer, she is often shunned and ostracized in her own community. She is a victim of racial prejudice! She is also targeted because she is poor. The snubs and disregard hurt her deeply, but she goes on praying for those who hate her.

“…do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Mt 5:44-45)

A single woman I know, perhaps the holiest and most devout person I ever met, has been under constant and relentless attack by the adversary. After years of patient trying, she finally succeeded in adopting a handicapped girl, who lives in a sterile environment in the hospital. She fell in love with this child while performing her weekly charitable assignments for the Legion of Mary.

My friend has had to endure many biting remarks about her adoptive motherhood from the nursing staff: “At least I was able to give birth to my children, you had to adopt yours.” (This is clearly retribution for her relentless advocacy on behalf of her daughter.)

On the nagging of a well-intentioned acquaintance she yielded to the rare temptation to indulge in a pedicure, and contracted a virulent infection. Now she is forbidden to see her daughter, the one true happiness of her life.

…in everything we commend ourselves as ministers of God, through much endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in a holy spirit, in unfeigned love. (2 Cor 6: 4:7)

Another friend is a Jewish convert to Catholicism, whose family abandoned him upon his conversion. He took refuge in his new-found faith. He even turned away from a lucrative business career in order to shoulder the wheel of evangelization. The people in his church-related workplace proved more secular and profane than those on the outside. He struggles with disillusionment as he tries his best to bring Catholicism back to cradle Catholics.

…you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pt 1:6-7)

Another friend who works in the stock market is also a Jewish convert. He is a lector, brings the Eucharist to the sick at hospitals and to the homebound. His fellow employees think it is hilarious to send pornographic images to his computer because of the “shock value” it evokes.

Remember the word I spoke to you. No slave is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. (Jn 15:20)

A woman college student, the eldest of seven children, is walking in the way laid out by her holy parents – the way of Truth. She suffers unaccountable maladies, and has been accosted by inexplicable satanic malevolence. Yet she continues on cheerful, faithful and unafraid. She is a hero to the Church and a good example to young people all around her; but a scourge to the nemesis, and a scandal to worldlings at her college.

In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Tim 3:12)

In today’s society Christians are held in contempt. They are the “spoilers” of deviant lifestyles, polluted entertainment and sinful pastimes. They are the moral compass in the office, in politics and in the world. They are the faithful voices that must be silenced by those who have no faith.

Should we be surprised? Jesus tells us, If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. (Jn 15:18-19)

Take courage! St. Peter exhorts us to cast all our worries upon Jesus because he cares for us. He urges us to be steadfast in faith, knowing that our fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little. (cf. 1 Pt 5:10)

My dear friends, take solace in Our Lord’s promise: Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. (Mat 5:11)

I will never forsake you or abandon you. Thus we may say with confidence: “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me? (Heb 13:5)

Among the prayers of the saints, the Anima Christi ranks as one of my favorites.  For years I had contemplated the words, “Intra tua vulnera absconde me” (within your wounds hide me).  I wondered, “What could that mean?”  Then I read Corrie ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place.  It is about her experience of the Holocaust.   The Holy Spirit immediately connected the Anima Christi and The Hiding Place for me.  In a flash my soul progressed an infinite distance along its path to union with God.

Another illuminating experience occurred recently for me.  Upon finishing the book He Leadeth Me by Father Walter Ciszek, S.J, I noticed at Barnes and Noble a youth novel, The Endless Steppe, about a young girl’s experience of deportment from Poland to the steppes of Siberia.  Since I had just finished reading Father Ciszek’s faith story about his 26 years internment in a Soviet gulag post WW II, I was intrigued by a young girl’s perspective of her imprisonment during WW II by the Soviets.

In The Endless Steppe Esther Hautzig, her parents, and grandparents are deported before the invasion of Germany from Poland to Siberia.  As Jews, their only crime was being “Capitalists”.  Esther’s mother, while gathering her belongings under the watchful eyes of the Soviet police, renounced her brother who knocked at the door so that he would not be deported along with them.  Mrs. Hautzig lived to regret that deception for the rest of her life.

Despite enduring over five years of suffering as deportees in Siberia, the Hautzig family, less the grandfather, survived and were returned to their homeland after the war.  Tragically, all of their family had been murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust precisely because they were Jewish.  Mrs. Hautzig never forgave herself for disavowing her brother as he begged recognition at her door before the war.

Exile and the life it entails was the primary theme animating The Endless Steppe.  I reflected that the suffering of exile, that the anguish of separation from loved ones, that the uncertainty of survival, that being sojourners in a strange land was precisely where God wanted the Hautzig family in order to preserve their lives.  Exile by the Soviets to the Russian steppe was their hiding place from the Nazis.

“Thus, even while they [the Jewish people] are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject or obliterate them, lest I break my covenant with them by destroying them. For I am the Lord their God; I will remember them because of the covenant I made with their original ancestors whom I brought out from the land of Egypt, in the sight of the nations, so that I might be their God” (Leviticus 26:44).

Another Son of Israel, Joseph, from Genesis is the archetypal Old Testament figure of exile providing salvation not only for himself, but also for his entire nation.  Reuben tried to save Joseph’s life by throwing him in the darkness of a pit.  From there he was sold to Ishmaelite traders.  If he hadn’t been sold into slavery in Egypt, he couldn’t have masterminded the plan to save Egypt, and by extension Israel, from famine.

In 1Samuel 19:2 we hear Jonathan tell David, “Saul my father seeks to kill you; therefore, take heed to yourself in the morning, stay in a secret place and hide yourself…”  David recalls these experiences of being driven into hiding in his psalms.  Repeatedly, he praises God as his protector while in exile from Saul, his King.  He sings, “For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble: he will conceal me under the cover of his tent, he will set me high upon a rock” and “in the Lord I take refuge”.  David connected his episodes of hiding in caves, with God’s means of protecting him.  His great gift to us is illustrating that we are cradled safely in the palm of God’s hand despite what appears to be dire circumstances.

Throughout the scriptures I have found examples of exile preparing the people for true liberation.  The Jewish Exile (597-538 BC), simply called the Exile, spawned the books of Job and Lamentations.

The deportation of prominent Jews from their homeland by the Babylonians was a defining moment in Jewish history.  Although the apparent evil of exile caused suffering among the deportees, the Hebrews who remained suffered a worse fate: famine, death, and despair.  Conversely, for the Jews in Babylon their exile became a purifying experience.   They believed their own impurity caused their downfall.  Therefore, while in Exile, their faith was actually strengthened.  Constantly the Israelites harken back to God as their refuge.

Of course, we know that the New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament and that the Old Testament illumines the New.  Given this axiom, it should come as no surprise that Jesus’ life is the ultimate example of exile being a place of safety and subsequent rebirth.  As an infant His parents escaped to Egypt in order to save His life from Herod.  Horribly, other Innocents, whose parents knew of no threat to their lives, continued living in Bethlehem and perished at the hands of a jealous Herod.

Jesus shows us throughout the Gospel how periods of exile like abandonment, emptiness, and even death work to the benefit of the plant, object, or person.  A mustard seed planted in the darkness of soil must die to become a large tree.  The wine must run out in order for the miracle at Cana.  Lazarus dies from his illness and lies alone in a cave before Jesus renews his life.  The sacrament of Jesus shows that only through His passion and death could His resurrection occur.  For Christians, the only way to new life is through plunging into the waters of death through baptism and emerging, reborn, as Children of God.

Christians experience the world and its periods of darkness as Children of God who know that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).  Throughout the world Christians suffer not only minor setbacks but the oppression of brutal governments.  In China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba, to name a few nations, Christians are persecuted for their faith.  These Christians must feel alone and lost when sometimes they have no visible church upon which to cling.  In the United States some Catholics feel abandoned by their elected leaders and clergy.  The sheep believe they have no shepherd.  However, the Good Shepherd is Jesus the Christ. We do not know God’s plan for those of us in exile.  Perhaps God is allowing such situations outlined above to persist so that the faithful cling to Him and Him alone.  No false idol can sustain a person stripped of everything that seems to matter.  The greatest calamity to afflict one is not exile, but falling into sin and losing one’s eternal soul.

After reflecting on various stories detailing experiences of separation and loss, I remembered how several years ago I applied the words of St Catherine of Sienna to my own situation.  Upon becoming a hermit, some wondered how she could renounce traversing the hills of Sienna.  She replied, “If God wants me to wander the hills of Sienna for all eternity, then I will.”  I echoed those words to encourage myself one day while sitting in our small, one window schoolroom teaching my children.  I recognized that the loss of my former way of life: socializing, Bible studies, teaching aerobics, leading groups, and napping were God’s way of giving me a new life.  In the sanctuary of my exile He protected me from vanities and increased my faith and love of Him.

My heroes in faith, Fr Ciszek and Corrie ten Boom, embraced God’s Will despite enduring inhuman experiences at the hands of their captors.  Fr Ciszek accepted his many years in the gulag by recognizing that “He leadeth me” through every situation, day after day.  Corrie ten Boom titled her book, The Hiding Place.  I am convinced that, although the book tells the story of her and her sister hiding Jews during WWII in Holland, that her true intent with her title was to express, “To Do Thy Will is My Hiding Place”.  Whenever we feel abandoned, we can pray with St Ignatius, “Intra tua vulnera absconde me”.  Rocked in pools of warm, purifying blood safe in the palm of His hand, we are always living in the holy sanctuary of His peace, which surpasses all understanding.