Today's Word
"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul."
Matthew 10:28
Today's Reflection
Between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries,
one hundred and twenty Catholics were martyred in China.
Priests and bishops.
Merchants and farmers.
Fishermen and children.
Some were Chinese. Some were foreign missionaries.
Most of them are not famous.
We do not know what they said as they died.
We do not know whether they were afraid.
What we know is what they chose.
And what they chose, again and again, under pressure that most of us will never face,
was not to deny what they believed.
The Church is not an institution of the comfortable.
It is a communion of everyone who has ever said yes to God, at whatever cost.
Today, we remember the ones who paid the highest cost.
Today's Prayer
Lord, we remember today the martyrs of China.
We do not know most of their names.
You do.
We ask for a fraction of their courage:
not the courage to die for our faith,
but the smaller courage to live it,
to be known as Catholics,
to say what we believe when it costs us something.
Amen.
Today's Call
Today, tell one person something true about your faith.
Not a lecture. Just an honest word.
Let your faith be visible in some small way.