By Kevin Burke, SJ
Fall 2004
Celebrating the martyrs is one way Christians engage Jesus in history. It is interesting to recall that the word “martyr” comes from a common Greek word which means witness. From very early in the history of Christianity, it took on the specific meaning of bearing witness unto death, of bearing witness with one’s life. Beginning with the apostolic age, the Christian church proved to be a church of martyrs. If we recall the quotation from Archbishop Romero which I read earlier, we discover that martyrdom has a sacramental character.
Martyrdom, according to Bishop Romero, is a grace. It is a sign of real hope. It mediates resurrection faith and does so in a way that nothing else can: it creates the church. It founds community. “If I am killed,” Bishop Romero added, “I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.” And martyrdom plants a seed of freedom. It generates a liberation that mediates salvation. It yields the hope that mediates the future.
Now we come to the heart of the matter. Remembrance is implicit in the very notion of martyrdom. The one who witnesses is remembered. The witnessing occurs to and through the remembering. It occurs in the memory of the martyr’s community. It responds to the words of Jesus before his martyrdom: “Do this in remembrance of me.”
But what kind of remembrance are we talking about? It is not something private. By its very nature it involves a community, a people in solidarity with the martyr. Moreover, it is not nostalgia. It is not some sentimental journey into the past, some romantic flight back to “the good old days.”
In fact, remembering martyrs is not primarily centered on the past at all. The sacramental remembrance that gives birth to the Christian movement has everything to do with fidelity in the present and hope for the future. Rightly does Johann Baptist Metz call this constitutive Christian event a “dangerous memory” that interrupts all our tidy constructs and romantic flights.
In the eucharistic language of St. Paul and the synoptic gospels, we embody our present identity and embrace our future hope precisely when we “do this” – break bread, proclaim the word, heal the sick, forgive sinners, reconcile enemies, liberate the oppressed, love the poor – “in remembrance of Jesus.”
When we remember martyrs like Oscar Romero and Ignacio Ellacuría, we remember Jesus. And when we remember Jesus we remember his commitment to God’s cause and God’s people. Thus, in remembering these martyrs we come into the proximity of hearts afire with love for God’s Reign, hearts aching for the sufferings of the poor, hearts yearning for the liberation of the oppressed. When we remember, we reawaken the martyrs’ dreams, that is, the future that they dreamed for their people. Paradoxically, therefore, when we remember in the specifically Christian, sacramental sense of remembrance, we remember the future.
So, what are we doing when we celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the UCA martyrs, or the twenty-fifth anniversaries of Archbishop Romero, the U.S. missionary women, and the crucified people of El Mozote? Above all, we make a commitment to a new future. Remembering the martyrs is an irreplaceable practice of Christian faith. When we do this in memory of Jesus, we hear once again the voices that have been silenced. When we remember the martyrs, we once again recognize that those whom the world treats as non-persons are persons.
Indeed, they are our brothers and sisters. To remember them and to hear their cry is to take up the fundamental call of the follower of Jesus. It means to serve the Reign of God. It calls us to live in such a way that God’s dream for our world can become a reality for all of God’s children, beginning with those who are poor.
The remembrance of martyrs is a dangerous practice! In a world divided by oppression, this act calls attention to the oppressors. Interpreting poverty not as tragedy but as crucifixion necessarily implies unmasking the crucifiers and struggling to undo their reign of terror. Stated bluntly, a genuine theological commitment to the realization of the Reign of God almost inevitably leads to conflict, persecution, and martyrdom.
Finally, in the life of Christian faith, the logic of martyrdom appears intrinsically linked to the gesture of Christian blessing, the sign of the cross. We who bless ourselves with that sign, persons of faith deeply affected by the negativity of historical reality, must incarnate that sign in our way of living the Gospel. Ellacuría understood this. He called it “taking the crucified peoples down from their crosses.” In his own life, the implications of living out the dangerous memory of Jesus appear with stunning clarity.
As a scholar and theologian, he articulated the connections among perceiving, shouldering, and transforming historical reality into the Reign of God. Like Oscar Romero, like the four American churchwomen, like Elba and Celina, like the martyrs of El Mozote and all of El Salvador, like all the crucified peoples in our world, Ignacio Ellacuría did more than articulate the connections. He incarnated the connections.
Kevin Burke, S.J., teaches theology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. He is the author of The Ground Beneath the Cross: The Theology of Ignacio Ellacuria.
