[00:00] Yesterday we celebrated the feast, the Solemnity of St. Peter and Paul. They were part of the early martyrs, which we celebrate today, of the Holy Roman Church. They almost, in a way, inaugurated that time period in which there was a great persecution

[00:31] of the Christians around 64 AD under the terrible Emperor Nero, who was psychopathic in the cruelty in which he would deal with people whom he didn't like. The Christians were a great scapegoat for his own evil pleasures. Some of the things that he would put the Christians to suffer was terrible.

[01:05] He would, for sport, hunt Christians by putting them in animal skins and letting them go, and he would hunt them down. He would use Christians and dip them in tar and then use them as torches, like how you have streetlights now; well, the Christians were lit on fire and used as torches in the Colosseum and also on the roadways. And it became, being Christian became synonymous with martyrdom at that time.

[01:44] So we remember the countless martyrs who have no names that died under this persecution. And we also think of St. Peter and Paul, who suffered the same fate. But we also remember Blessed Raymond Lull, a great Franciscan, who also became a martyr. Blessed Raymond Lull, like many saints who came before him, laid the foundations of the Church

[02:16] and the ones who allow us to exercise our faith in the way we do today. He was born on the island of Mallorca, and I think it was part of Spain at the time. It was in 1234, and he lived his first early years with great wealth. His parents were part of the nobility. He rose to the ranks as part of the courts of the king, and he was known to be very intelligent,

[02:53] became one of the counselors of the king. But one time he heard the sermon of a bishop who was preaching on rejecting worldly honors and goods to follow our Lord, and he immediately changed his life. He felt the call of God within him, and he decided that he was going to be a preacher and convert the Muslims. So in preparation for this, he went around helping the pope at that time to found different

[03:32] colleges and specifically Franciscan colleges in order that, and he used his wealth to help him do these things, but he wanted to have many schools, Franciscan schools, where any religious missionaries could go and be trained as missionaries, learning the different languages, and he himself learned many different languages, and especially the languages he thought that would be useful in the missions in converting the Muslims. He entered the Third Order, a Franciscan Third Order, and he continued to promote the missions,

[04:12] but he also, in preparation, knowing that he had to prepare, he went to a secluded spot and he spent nine years praying and studying in order that he would be able to be a good missionary. And after many years, he decided to, when the opportunity came, to go to Africa, where there was a great contingency of Muslims at the time.

[04:45] And his first trip there, he was immediately thrown into prison, and he spent some time in prison until there were some influential merchants who ransomed him and brought him back to Mallorca. And then he felt like his suffering, his treasure that he was seeking, martyrdom, was taken away from him. So, at the next opportunity, he got on a boat and he went back to the same place, and as

[05:19] soon as he arrived, he was beaten, persecuted, stoned, and left on the beach to die. But there were some merchants again, some seamen who brought him onto the boat and were taking him back to Mallorca, but then he passed away before he arrived. And St. or Blessed Raymond, he was, when he set out for these missionary labors, he was

[05:50] 80 years old. So this was in 1315, when he had finally set out on these missionary labors; everything else was a preparation. So you can imagine, you know, sometimes, you know, all the preparation that he did, everything that he, all the hard work he put into his life in order to prepare him to be a good missionary. And both times he went over, after all those years, nine years in seclusion, in prayer,

[06:20] and then all the trips he went to different cities in Italy and in Europe to found these colleges for missionaries. And at the age of 79, 80, he finally goes, and he's immediately put into prison. Then he goes back again, and we don't even know, like, well, we have an idea, but we don't know exactly what it was like back then to travel. It was quite the ordeal to even travel. Even pilgrims had to prepare for years before they would go to the Holy Land.

[06:52] And the missionaries, they suffered all those things as well, the travel by sea, by land, in hostile territories, just to get to where they were going. But he was 80 years old when he undertook this mission. That's how much he wanted to preach the good news to the people and convert them. It wasn't just that he was going only for martyrdom. His primary objective was to convert souls, but obviously to win the martyr's crown is

[07:25] something that every missionary, every true missionary would desire, that they, in living a martyr's life, would also desire to die a martyr's death. Blessed Raymond Lull represents for us, just as every martyr does, the foundation and the pillars of the Church. Those who were not afraid to suffer persecution, to suffer all kinds of hardships for the cause

[07:59] of the truth, to spread the truth to those who were in darkness, to become a light to the nations. It's kind of funny that he landed in Africa in a place called Bougie. Bougie in French means candle. When you're in French, when you're going to light a votive candle, you'll say bougie. He truly became a bougie, it's just a candle, but then you light it.

[08:30] He became that light to the people in that town. He was what our Lord wanted all of us to be, His witnesses, His martyrs, those who are a light to the world, and also the salt of the world. Blessed Raymond Lull represents that for us, and he also gives us an example that we don't have to, as long as we have that desire, God will give us the strength.

[09:05] We should never be afraid of the things that our Lord asks of us, whether we're called to die a martyr's death or not, or just to be true Christians and live martyrs' lives. So just as St. Paul talks about all the different hardships that he endured in his missionary travels in order to preach the gospel so that the truth of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, would be brought to all the nations, and the martyrs took to heart the

[09:39] words of our Lord, "If a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it brings forth much fruit." And the martyrs and those who are willing to put their lives on the line after the example of our Lord, in order to shepherd our Lord's sheep and even go after the lost sheep, understood that even if they die, even after years of preparation, and you go and you're stoned to death on a beach without even being able to use all the things that you had trained

[10:11] for, it's still worth it, because as one of the great doctors of the Church and many other people have repeated throughout the centuries, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christianity. So let us think to ourselves and reflect on the faith that our Lord wants us to have, the faith that carries His message as an extension of Him through all the centuries.

[10:41] And let us be the pillars of the Church for future generations to come, to be the examples to them, to be a light set up on a hill and the salt of the earth.