Even if, for the time being, I avoid the punishment of men, I shall never, whether alive or dead,
escape the hands of the Almighty.
We read in the book of Maccabees today, our life, our Christian life, our Catholic faith,
demands that during our life we profess that faith in many circumstances and in many ways.
We have many opportunities of doing so.
We don't all have to, like St. Agnes of Assisi, whose memorial we celebrate today,
we don't all have to escape from home, profess our faith by entering the religious life,
by having the Lord work miracles in us.
We can profess our faith, and we have to profess our faith,
in the daily circumstances of our everyday lives.
Moral theology teaches us that from the very beginning,
from the moment that we acquire use of reason,
from the moment that we can recognize with our reason, with our intellect, the existence of God,
the fact of His revelation,
we have the obligation of professing our faith, of making an act of faith in God.
And then throughout our whole life,
as Christian adults, we have to make constant acts of faith,
constant professions of faith, either explicitly or at least implicitly,
by practicing that faith which has been given to us by the Lord,
by going to Mass, to confession, by praying frequently.
We have to profess our faith also in times of temptation,
when temptations against the faith can only be won by explicitly professing that faith,
by winning that temptation by a profession of our faith,
and with the grace of God, overcoming the temptation.
And also, we have the obligation, and this is very important,
of professing our faith in all those circumstances in which our silence,
in which our omission would mean a denial,
would mean a contempt of religion,
would be an insult to God,
and would be a scandal to our brothers and sisters in the faith.
That's why, in the book of Maccabees,
we read about the 90-year-old Eleazar who says,
at our age, it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense,
that is, to make believe that he was eating pork to save his life,
but to scandalize his brothers.
Many young people would think that the 90-year-old Eleazar
has gone over to an alien religion,
should I thus pretend, for the sake of a brief moment of life,
they would be led astray by me,
while I would bring shame and dishonor on my old age.
Professing our faith in the world in which we live in,
in any world, in any society, in any circumstances,
would always cost us,
but in our world, in our day and age, it's going to cost us all the more.
Pope Benedict frequently reminded us of that,
that our faith will be in conflict with the anti-gospel of this world,
with its own anti-dogmas,
and professing our faith will cost us often ridicule, derision,
and other similar reactions of the world which does not believe.
It will cost us, it may cost us our reputation,
it may cost us our jobs in some circumstances,
and if our Lord gives us the grace, it might even cost us our lives.
We might have to be martyrs for our faith,
and we should be ready to do so.
Of course, we shouldn't have to imagine all the possible and imaginable cruel deaths
which we might have to undergo to profess our faith.
Our Lord does not want us to dwell on that.
Our Lord leads us slowly by His own providence,
and we should entrust our life and our death to His providence.
We shouldn't dwell on the possible outcomes of our lives,
and even if we have to speak by mere statistics,
we will not die as martyrs.
Most Catholics do not.
But we should be convinced,
we should be utterly convinced of the words of our Lord,
and we should remember them in all temptations against the faith,
even if they are even just small little temptations to conceal our faith,
not to be ridiculed by the world.
We should remember that our Lord says,
He who denies Me before men will be denied by Me,
will be denied by Me when I come,
will be denied by Me in front of the Father,
our Lord says in the Gospel of St. Matthew.
If we deny our Lord, He will deny us.
So we should remember that,
and ask our Lady to have that grace of a faith,
a faith of martyrs,
because in the day and age in which we live,
and many a thinker has said this,
probably the only way left of convincing the world
of the truth of our faith
is the shedding of our blood,
and the new springtime that will come in the Church
will be a springtime of martyrs.
We've lost the common denominator of human reason,
of goodwill,
and the only thing, I guess, which can convince people still
is the readiness to die for what we believe in.
Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was still a Cardinal,
said that probably the springtime of the Church
will not be a return of the masses to the faith.
Quite the contrary,
it will probably be an influence of a small minority,
of a small but a powerful minority,
influential because of its conviction,
because of its readiness to profess its faith,
even in times of persecution.
So let us pray our Lady to have that readiness
to profess our faith,
to contribute to the triumph of her Immaculate Heart
by professing our faith in all circumstances,
even when it costs us,
and with the grace of our Lord and our Lady,
overcoming all persecutions and all temptations,
and thus giving witness to all the world
for the greatest possible glory of God,
the salvation of our soul
and the souls of all our brothers and sisters.
Praised be Jesus and Mary.
Amen.