Part One -- Martyrdom, Love, Social Networking, and Theology -- Part One

© Patricia Shechter
18 July 2010
Fourth Draft -- Unfinished
Please do not cite, copy, or quote

PART ONE

The original title of this article was "AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM ~~ For the Greater Glory OF G-D ~~ Martyrdom, Love, and Social Networking OR What Would Ignatius Say?" I began writing this theological meditation in the summer of 2009, just a couple of months after I’d been laid off from a job. I’d been trying to figure out what the phrase “For the Greater Glory of G-d” means – not in the grand sense, the historic sense intended by Ignatius of Loyola and lived out by generations of Jesuits (and many taught in Jesuit institutions), but rather in the ordinary-person, ordinary-day, ordinary-life sense. I’m still trying to understand it in the context of the early 21st Century, CE: The Post-11 September 2001 Era; the Digital Era; the Post-Runaway Capitalist Post-Economic Melt-down Era; the Global Instant Communication Era.

I would venture to say that many Roman Catholics in the US of North America and Western Europe associate “Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam” – For the Greater Glory of G-d – with martyrdom. For the most part, certainly in developed countries, the majority of people today, even people of deep (Christian) faith, have no desire to be engaged in or pretensions toward martyrdom. At the same time, martyrdom does seem to be embraced by many, Jesuits and others, if it comes. I’m not sure whether martyrdom is sought, i.e., gone after with intentionality – but I don’t believe it would be avoided by certain folks if circumstances aligned themselves in that direction. (I will admit here that I am a total novice when it comes to the thoughts of Ignatius of Loyola and Ignatian spirituality, and I need to research what Ignatius wrote about martyrdom, if he wrote anything at all.) Knowing his tendency toward practicality, however, I’m not sure that he wouldn’t have seen it as a waste of time, talent, and treasure. However, that is in no way intended to minimize the sacrifices of countless saints, Jesuits and others, who, following G-d, lost their lives in martyrdom.

Still, I remember a Jesuit friend, John Donohue, following the Memorial Mass at San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Catholic Cathedral for the four US women religious workers murdered by paramilitary death squads in El Salvador in early December 1980 – nearly 30 years ago now. To John, it was obvious that Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke, and Jeanne Donovan had become martyrs, and he was jubilant. He felt certain that their martyrdom assured them of heaven, and he rejoiced. I, on the other hand, by then a Feminist activist of 10 years on, was shattered. Shattered by their murders, and more, shattered by what I knew and what I could only imagine had been done to them prior to each of them being shot in the head at point-blank range. As almost always, almost inevitably occurs to women defeated and captured in war, before they were murdered, the four women were raped. I found little in their experience that glorified the Holy One and little leading me in that direction. Instead, I cried in grief and in rage, realizing once again that little had changed since Susan Brownmiller had written her ground-breaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, published in 1975. As I had learned from my first and best teacher of Theology, Rev. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, what one sees depends upon where one stands.

That’s not to deny or reject the power, meaning, and meaningfulness of martyrdom in the history of both Judaism and Christianity; thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, have accepted death rather than abjure or deny their faith. From the Macabees in pre-Rabbinical times to Stephen, the first Christian martyr; to Thomas Becket and later the dueling Catholic (including many Jesuits) and Protestant martyrs of the British and European Reformations; to the Japanese martyrs of the 16th and 17th centuries CE; to the Jewish martyrs of the ghetto uprisings, death camps, and partisan organizations during World War Two who died Kiddush HaShem, glorifying the Sacred Name; to the Latin American martyrs of the late-20th century CE – Archbishop Oscar Romero, Rev. Rutillo Grande, SJ, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jeanne Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, and, nearly nine years later, the six Jesuits priests and their two working class women staff members at the University of Latin America in El Salvador, with the thousands of lesser known martyrs in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala – the centuries have been peopled with women and men who chose death over denial of their faith and their G-d. And for the recent martyrs of Latin America, failing to engage in the praxis of justice would have been just such a denial. Tertullian knew early on that “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” In these latter days, it has been the seed of the faith that does justice.

Most of us, however, will not hear or be expected to respond to a call to martyrdom – at least that’s true for most, if not all, of us in the US of North American “middle class” white population. And I would guess that the majority of US North Americans would utter a quiet but heart-felt “Thanks be to G-d” for that, happy, or at least relieved, to leave martyrdom, for the most part, to the earlier chapters of Christian (and Jewish) history.

At the same time, living life for G-d – living a holy life – isn’t “for martyrs only.” For, as G-d reminds us in innumerable ways, “But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: You are Mine.” (Is. 43:1; emphasis added) Not only does G-d call us; made as we are, in the image and likeness of the Holy One, each of us has a special mission, a special place in the life of G-d. “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Augustine’s Confessions) Jesus missions and commissions His disciples to “heal those who are sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, cast out demons.” (Mt. 10:7) Jesus calls His disciples to minister to people dealing with the most ordinary situations and needs of everyday life: Hunger, thirst, illness, grief, fear, isolation, imprisonment, loneliness, pain, loss, death. Furthermore, Jesus tells His disciples “’The gift you have received, give as a gift.’” (Mt. 10:8) In John’s Gospel, after giving the disciples the most profound yet simple lesson of what it means to be His disciple in the loving act of washing their feet, Jesus presents His disciples with a “’new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.’” (John:15:12) Jesus then says, “’There is no greater love than this: To lay down one’s life for one’s friend.’” (John 15:13) For John the Evangelist, following Christ is epitomized in the praxis of loving service, even if such loving service results in death, as it did for Christ His Lord.

So, for those of us who have heard and responded to G-d’s call in our lives, how do we deepen our life with G-d? How do we live Ad maiorem Dei Gloriam in our everyday lives ~~ lives that, when we really think about them, are, for the most part, fairly ordinary, with mundane tasks, mundane worries, daily concerns, griefs, and occasional joys? The very ordinariness of our lives leads many of us to utter sighs of relief. What we all too seldom grasp is that the very ordinariness of our lives is itself blessed by and infused with the Presence of the Holy. All that is is G-d’s creation, pronounced in the first chapter of Genesis to be “very good.” As we are part of that creation, we, too, are part of that goodness.

We meet G-d, and G-d meets us, in the very everydayness of our lives. We meet there because G-d meets us in our experience, and most of our experience consists of the daily-life-ness of our lives. G-d is able to encounter us only where we are, at each moment, not where we once were or where we intend or hope or plan to be an hour from now, or tomorrow, or next month or next year.

That may seem obvious, and it likely is. However, I’m not sure we really live that way, or recognize that G-d is there in the midst of it all. Because often, we ourselves aren’t there in the midst of it all! And that becomes increasingly true in the context of our post-modern world, a world increasingly mediated by an ever-increasing plethora of media.

CONTINUED...