May I die only for you, Jesus, who willingly died for me

For two days now I have experienced a great desire to be a martyr and to endure all the torments the martyrs suffered.

Jesus, my Lord and Saviour, what can I give you in return for all the favours you have first conferred on me? I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name. I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles and martyrs, before my blessed fathers Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier – in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Saviour, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day you in your infinite mercy should offer it to me, your most unworthy servant.

I bind myself in this way so that for the rest of my life I will have neither permission nor freedom to refuse opportunities of dying and shedding my blood for you, unless at a particular juncture I should consider it more suitable for your glory to act otherwise at that time. Further, I bind myself to this so that, on receiving the blow of death, I shall accept it from your hands with the fullest delight and joy of spirit. For this reason, my beloved Jesus, and because of the surging joy which moves me, here and now I offer my blood and body and life. May I die only for you, if you will grant me this grace, since you willingly died for me. Let me so live that you may grant me the gift of such a happy death. In this way, my God and Saviour, I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!

My God, it grieves me greatly that you are not known, that in this savage wilderness all have not been converted to you, that sin has not been driven from it. My God, even if all the brutal tortures which prisoners in this region must endure should fall on me, I offer myself most willingly to them and I alone shall suffer them all.

In Jesus, we contemplate a God who is not afraid of history but comes instead to dwell within it. His Kingdom does not abolish human roles and responsibilities. It does, however, call us to live without compromise, free from selfish ambitions and unjust motives, seeking above all the Kingdom of God and his righteousness (cf. Mt 6:33). In this regard, it is striking that those same people praise Jesus, even though their intentions are far from good: “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality” (v. 16).

Dear friends, this is precisely what it means to “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s”: to be truthful, free from servile fear or hypocrisy, free to do good. Let us pray to the Lord to help us live in this way.

Perhaps not in Rome.

Perhaps not at a synod.

Perhaps not at a bishops’ conference.

Perhaps it begins tomorrow morning.

When a priest spends another half hour in prayer before breakfast.

When a father prays the Rosary with his children.

When a young person goes to confession again after ten years.

When a bishop decides calmly to explain an unpopular truth.

When a seminarian chooses holiness over career.

When a parish begins Eucharistic adoration again.

When a Catholic teacher refuses to reduce the faith to vague humanism.

When a married couple truly lives marriage as a vocation.

That is how the Church has always been renewed.

Not primarily by programmes, but by saints.

So: no panic.

We may take the crisis seriously without making it more dramatic than it is.

Because the future of the Church does not ultimately depend upon the competence of her bureaucracy.

Thank God.

That may be the most consoling doctrine in this entire paper.

Christ did not say:

“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My five-year strategic plan.”

He said:

“I will build My Church.”

That does not remove our responsibility.

It puts it in its proper place.

We do not have to reinvent the Church.

Nor do we have to save her as though, after His Ascension, Christ somehow forgot how His own Church works.

We have to do something simpler.

Preserve the faith.

Speak the truth.

Receive the sacraments.

Raise our children.

Serve the poor.

Form priests.

Foster vocations.

Celebrate the liturgy with dignity.

Love our enemies.

And love Christ more than our own ecclesiastical faction.

That last one may be the most difficult of all.

Because in the end there are no traditional saints and progressive saints.

There are only saints.

And perhaps that is precisely the reform the Church needs now.

Not yet another new Catholic programme.

But Catholics once again taking the Gospel so seriously that other people begin to wonder:

“What have they found that we are missing?”

When that question is asked again, the new evangelisation will truly have begun.

And perhaps the Church will then rediscover something she has always known in her best moments:

The world is not converted because we increasingly resemble it.

It is converted because it sees something of Christ in us.