Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we celebrate these 13 Ugandan martyrs whose reward is great in heaven.
Their entry in the Roman Martyrology reads, June 3rd, the memorial of Saints Charles Lwanga and his 12 companions, who were between 14 and 30 years old, either from the royal court of noble boys or under the care of King Mwanga himself.
They were neophytes and vigorous adherents to the Catholic faith, and since they had refused to indulge in the king's impure desires, some were killed by the sword, and others were burned alive.
So we're talking about the 1880s in Uganda, and there is a king who used to abuse the boys who used to serve at court, and Saint Charles had seen what had happened to the man who preceded him, Joseph, who we can read here in greater detail.
The men we celebrate today in the church's sacred liturgy paid the ultimate price with their lives for refusing to go with the abhorrent abuse and immoral acts that were widely practiced and accepted in Ugandan culture in the late 1800s.
In the court of King Mwanga, boys and young men were kept who were expected to give in to the king's demands.
When the king's chief page, whose name was Joseph, became a Christian and protested the king's behavior, he was beheaded.
And Charles Lwanga, another convert to Catholicism, was chosen to take his place.
So, in other words, Charles knew what was at stake.
Charles continued in the footsteps of Joseph, trying to protect the younger pages from King Mwanga.
Many of these young boys and men, inspired by the example of Charles, were eager to be baptized and instructed in the faith.
Upon learning that some of the pages were converting to Catholicism and refusing to give in to his demands, King Mwanga threatened their lives.
Charles urged the boys to remain chaste and faithful, and those who took that stand were bound together and forced to walk to a nearby town, a two-day journey, where they were burned at the stake.
St. Charles Lwanga was among them.
So here we have what we could say martyrs of chastity, martyrs of purity, martyrs of the natural moral law.
This is really what we need loud and clear in our times today.
So they suffered for the faith, again, they knew what was at stake, and they chose rather to suffer temporal fires, that is a fire that will come and will go, it will pass, rather than eternal fires, right?
Rather than deny the faith, rather than give in and commit sin.
And so this is a good reminder of the virtue of chastity, of purity, of the need to guard that virtue with all of one's strength, including at the risk of one's life.
And it's also a reminder that homosexual acts are acts of grave depravity, and that same-sex attraction is disordered.
This was the difficulty, the problem of King Mwanga, right?
He was living according to this disordered passion, and he was not embracing, well, he wasn't a Christian, but he wasn't embracing the natural moral law, nor Christian virtue.
Under no circumstances can any of this be approved.
But what the Christian faith teaches, and even what human reason teaches, is that homosexual persons are called to chastity by the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom instead of being slaves to your passions, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
You see that?
Everybody's called to holiness, to sanctity, to the perfection of Christian charity.
Nobody is accepted, and this is possible for everyone.
Nobody is excluded.
Some will have some trials and difficulties, others will have other trials and difficulties and crosses.
All of us have what's called a predominant fault, that is, that one weakness which we tend to fall in more than the others.
These aren't obstacles to sanctity, but rather can be stepping stones to holiness, including a disordered inclination.
Okay, that's your cross.
Bear it as the saints have all done, and that we can do too, bear it with patience and out of love for God and out of love for neighbor, and this will bring inner freedom and the peace of heart that you really seek and strive after.
It reminds us today in today's culture that the Church must continue to proclaim the truth in love with regard to gender and human sexuality.
Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.
Everything I'm telling you today is straight from the Catechism, right?
This is Christian doctrine.
Marriage is a lifelong, indissoluble bond between one man and one woman, and cannot be redefined.
St. Charles Lange and Companion Martyrs show us how to preserve and defend the beautiful and sublime virtue of chastity, even under the most difficult situations.
All you holy Ugandan martyrs, pray for us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

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