The chapel of the North American Martyrs (Abbey Church)
 

Father Paschal Scotti offered this homily on the feast day of Jean de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues and companions, martyrs (October 19, 2022).

“Much will be required of a person entrusted with much.”

Today we celebrate the martyrdoms of Saint Jean de Brebeuf, Saint Isaac Jogues, and their companions, all Jesuits, all eight of them. They died in French Canada in the early seventeenth century, on various dates. It is extremely rare that people become martyrs out of the blue. You don’t usually see sinful people, worldly people, or average people all of a sudden become martyrs, give their lives for the faith. It is exceptional. God can do miracles to be sure, but it is exceptional. What is far more likely is that these people have already lived their lives as a virtual martyrdom. They live a life of witness, a life of sacrifice, of self-denial, a life given to Christ. So, when death meets them, they are ready. That is certainly true of today’s martyrs. If you have ever seen that wonderful movie, a 1991 English-Canadian movie, Black Robe, you can see how powerful and how difficult this life was. You see in it a beautiful but very stark description of the life of these Jesuits in Canada. And it tells you a lot about how difficult their lives were. Their lives were perpetual struggle, physical and spiritual. And that’s why martyrdom could come to them so easily. They were ready, they were prepared, they were transformed, they were trained. And that’s for all of us.

Fr. Paschal preaching

All of us are called to be witnesses of Christ, to give our lives to spiritual training, to asceticism, to self-denial, to spiritual growth and transformation so we that give - always - witness to Christ. That is what the word martyr means: to give a witness. We give witness to Christ by our lives, by our self-denial, by our acts of sacrifice, by everything we do, everything we say. At least we try to: that’s all we ask, and that is what we ask of anybody: that we try. We try.

So, on this feast of the great martyrs, Jean de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues, and their companions – and may it be in a sense the feast of all martyrs, in this great celebration of the Mass, which makes present the very sacrifice of Christ himself, the infinite love and sacrifice of the Christ. Let us imitate the martyrs, let us live lives and self-denial, lives of training, of spiritual growth and struggle, spiritual transformation and then we will be worthy of Christ himself. Much is expected from the person to whom much has been given. God gives us many opportunities many gifts, many graces. And we should utilize them as best we can and grow in knowledge and truth and be transformed.
 

Fr. Paschal Scotti, O.S.B.

Fr. Paschal Scotti graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a degree in history and joined the monastery that summer. He also has a M.Div. from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., and a degree (J.C.L.) in canon law from the Catholic University of America. In 2006, the Catholic University of America Press published his study of the English Catholic man of letters Wilfrid Ward, Out of Due Time: Wilfrid Ward and the Dublin Review. He has also published in the Catholic Historical Review, the Downside Review, the revised New Catholic Encyclopedia (and its online version), and the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought. His book about Galileo, Galileo Revisited: The Galileo Affair in Context, was published by Ignatius Press in the fall of 2017.