{    Cnytr   }

contemplata aliis tradere
~St. Thomas Aquinas

I said I was going to post more on St. Maria Goretti and I very nearly forgot. This is less about St. Maria Goretti, however, and more about martyrdom.

I had a few points to ponder today from things I've been readning, and from this evening's homily. I've been reading The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton (my first encounter ever with the man, I'm usually a Lewis person myself). There were some particularly striking things about the work, some particularly interesting lines. One thing that I had dog-eared was the exchange,

"My dear Syme," she said, "do the people who talk like you and my brother often mean what they say? Do you mean what you say now?"
Syme smiled.
"Do you?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" asked the girl, with grave eyes.
"My dear Miss Gregory," said Syme gently, "there are many kinds of sincerity. When you say 'thank you' for the salt, do you mean what you say? No. When you say 'the world is round', do you mean what you say? No. It is true, but you don't mean it. Now, sometimes a man like your brother really finds a thing he does mean. It may be only a half-truth, a quarter-truth, a tenth-truth; but then he says more than he means -- from sheer force of meaning it."

In light of today's saint, it coupled well with another quote from another book I started five minutes after I finished Chesterton, Shadows of Ecstacy" by Charles Williams:

...The Archbishop said that the noble peer would remember that Christianity assumed a readiness for martyrdom as a mere preliminary to any serious work...

At first I had considered the Chesterton quote in terms of persons who say stupid things vehemently. I'm firmly convinced that people aren't as stupid as they seem. But then I considered it in the opposit vein, saying things without really meaning them.

In intrigued by the verbal dances that go on between people. When people come downstairs in the morning, they generally go through a "hello" "how are you" routine, very carefully rehearsed and entirely predictable. Only one time out of seven is it ever serious. If someone has been ill or away then one asks "how are you?" and truly means it. But when you saw the person less than 24 hours ago, one would be hard-pressed to care about the small ailments of someone you hardly know (and it seems that close friends sometimes or often don't say "how are you?", and the other is not slighted if they skip said salutation). Indeed, if someone were to complain about their every ailment everytime one greeted them, the person would get to be a bore.

But this verbal dance isn't entirely pointless -- it's a veil behind which we hide our mutual and semi-neutral well-wishings (which are, to a point, sincere, even if it only boils down to "I'm glad you're still alive since last night") and from this point one can truly begin communication. One can't drive up to Wendy's and have the person behind the crackly speaker go "Yeah, whaddaya want?" or just "What?" because that's rude and inconsiderate. We treat people we barely know as glass eggs, because we know how little it takes for them to break.

There is part of the verbal ritual in liturgy, too, of course. It's the same thing: rehearsed, predictable verbal processions. But just as a conversation can't consist entirely of small-talk if it is to be genuine, neither can liturgy and prayer consist only in said verbal prancings.

This is always a struggle to be faced, I think. It is really easy to let one's mind wander uncontrolled instead of directing it where it ought (instead of contemplating the mystery of the liturgy, one suddenly notices the person a couple pews over and goes "whoa, what is ON that guy's head??"). And it is just as easy to let the routine become tiresome -- not just in liturgy and prayer, but in anything.

How easy is it to wear one's Christianity on one's shirt-sleeve? Especially in groups with other Christians. Sometimes we air out our own, personal Christianity and trot it out for others to admire. It becomes our own chia-pet like object that we attend to every once in a while without really contemplating too much, however much we think about it.

Obviously this is not serious. But Charles Williams has his Archbishop mention that for a Christian, martyrdom is a preliminary to any serious kind of work. If one is to be at all serious, one has to be so serious as to stake one's life on it. Am I serious that I like purple? I wouldn't be willing to bet my life on it. Am I serious that I want to follow in the footsteps of St. Dominic and live as a Dominican (tertiary)? Absolutely. Would I say the same if someone were pointing a gun at my head?

I want to say yes, but this exact scenario is one I have never contemplated before. Others have given their life for faith and vocation, but I have never considered martyrdom seriously.

Before Christ went out preaching, he fasted and prayed for forty days and forty nights. Without this sort of reflection and contemplation, I believe it's difficult to take anything seriously. And if one can't be serious, so serious one is ready to literally bet one's life on it, one cannot seriously witness and be an example to others. In this way we would be lukewarm and entirely unconvincing. Christ knew that he would suffer and die, it was a prerequisite for his coming into the world (this has been hotly debated but I say Scotians etc, among other things, are asking the wrong questions). He gave us an example of martyrdom being a prerequisite for any serious kind of work. We, too, will all be born into eternal life one day, but in ord to be really serious, we should assume (and not wonder or hope) that it's something that will request of us our life -- because it will.