Since
My Longing for Martyrdom was Powerful...
Since
my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned
to the epistles of Saint Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By
chance the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the first epistle to the
Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not
everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of
a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an
answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace. I
persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this
encouraging theme: “Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will not show
you the way which surpasses all others.” For the Apostle insists that the
greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely
the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.
Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed, I knew that the
Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary
and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and
that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove
the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the
apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have
shed their blood no more. I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of
all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time
and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons
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