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Ecumenical
Witness of Christian Martyrs
in Our Present Age
“We live in the greatest
period of persecution in the history of
Christianity. In the twentieth century,
noble martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and
Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko gave their lives
for Christ amid a cloud of witnesses greater
in number than those martyred for the Name
in the previous nineteen centuries of
Christian history. That witness continues
today in the self-sacrifice of men like
Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian cabinet officer
murdered because of his defense of the
religious freedom of all of his fellow
Pakistanis.
As Evangelicals and
Catholics who seek to honor the witness of
these and other martyrs, we pledge to work
together for the renewal of religious
freedom in our countries and around the
world.”
quote from Evangelicals and
Catholics Together: In
Defense
of Religious Freedom
.
A New Ecumenism of Blood
“Today there is an ecumenism of blood. In some
countries they kill Christians for wearing a cross
or having a Bible and before they kill them they
do not ask them whether they are Anglican,
Lutheran, Catholic or Orthodox...They are
witnesses to Jesus Christ, and they are persecuted
and killed because they are Christians. Those who
persecute them make no distinction between the
religious communities to which they belong. They
are Christians and for that they are persecuted.
This, brothers and sisters, is the ecumenism of
blood.”
- Pope Francis
“The ecumenism of suffering
and of the martyrdom of blood are a powerful
summons to walk the long path of
reconciliation between the Churches, by
courageously and decisively abandoning
ourselves to the working of the Holy Spirit.”
- Pope Francis' address to
the Armenian Orthodox Patriarch
“The blood of martyrs is in the church a force for
renewal and of unity.”
- Pope John Paul II
“The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving
him” (quote from The Cost of Discipleship
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer). When the German Lutheran
pastor
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led from his cell to
be executed by the Nazis, he told his prison
companion: “This is the end – but for me, the
beginning of life” (April, 1945).
“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to
gain that which he cannot lose...God, I
pray Thee, light these sticks of my life and may
I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it
is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full
one, like you, Lord Jesus.”
– Jim
Elliot, Baptist missionary in Ecuador who
was martyred with four companions in 1956
“I ask of you this day the grace to become a
servant and to give my life here as a ransom for
peace as a ransom for life. Jesus draw me into
your joy of crucified love.”
- Journal entry by Father
Christophe Lebreton who was martyred in 1996
along
with his six companion monks from the Trappist
monastery in Algiers
Articles on Modern
Christian Martyrs in previous issues of Living
Bulwark
• Witnesses
in
the Jungle: Jim Elliot and Fellow
Missionaries, by Jeanne Kun
• Heroes
of
Faith: The Witness of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, by Donald Bloesch
• Stations
on
the Road to Freedom, by Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
• A
Soldier’s Higher Allegiance – Ivan
Vasilievich Moiseyev, Russian
martyr
• United
in
Love, the Trappist martyrs of Algeria,
by Jeanne Kun
• Courage
Forged
Under Fire:The heroic witness and
martyrdom of Sophie Scholl, by Don Schwager
• Witnesses
in
the Jungle: Jim Elliot, Nate Saint,
and Fellow Missionaries
• Blessed
by
the Cross: The Heroic Life of Edith
Stein, by Jeanne Kun
• Joy
in
the Face of Death: The Witness of
Alfred Delp, by Jeanne Kun
• True
Happiness: A Selection of Prison
Meditations for Advent, by Alfred Delp
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