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Martyrs Voice
Rev Nick Donnelly
As a young man of 21, I went to Bavaria for a holiday, during which I visited Dachau Concentration Camp. I walked through the camp gate with its infamous words ‘Arbeit macht frei’ [Work brings freedom], I stood by the mass graves of 150,000 people murdered by the Nazis’, and prayed before the furnace doors of the crematoria. What I saw that day changed me in ways I find hard to express in words.
Just before my visit I had attended the Oberammergau Passion play, but it wasn’t there that I experienced the passion of Jesus, it was among the barbed wire and the watchtowers of the Concentration Camp. That day I knew with certainty that wherever people are brutalised, tortured and murdered, there also is God incarnate, present among the suffering, and present in our protest against such evil.
It has been estimated that over 26 million Christians were martyred during the 20th century, the greatest number in the whole history of the Church. It is, as Pope John Paul II describes it, a time when ‘the Church has once again become a Church of martyrs’. It is both a time of sorrow that man can do such things, but also a time of joy, that man can remain true to Christ. The ‘Light shines in darkness, and darkness could not overpower it’ (John 1:5).
Since that day, I have been drawn to the martyrs of the 20th century, out of a sense of responsibility that their sacrifice and witness to love and truth in the face of hate and lies is not forgotten. Also, through these heroic women and men, I catch glimpses of Jesus. In their personalities and actions we see a reflection of Christ Himself. In their words, we hear His voice speaking to us, and in their deeds, He reaches out to heal us.
Now, 25 years later, the Catholic Truth Society has published my work ‘Praying the Rosary with the Martyrs’ which draws on the wisdom and example of Catholics, as well as Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant martyrs. Inspired by the example of Paul VI and John Paul the Great, it is my hope that the blood of the 20th century martyrs will be the precious seed that re-unites Christians. May their witness to Christ be the common inheritance of all Christians.
John Paul wrote that the martyrs and confessors are proof of the power of grace among all Christians. Their communion with Christ in glory helps us understand the unity that already exists among those who share one baptism in Christ.
The communion of saints and martyrs unites us more closely than the things that divide us. Now, more than ever, the world needs the re-union of the churches in the face of the evils besetting humanity.
Using the form of a scriptural rosary, my booklet provides meditations on the mysteries of Jesus and Mary’s lives, including the new ‘Mysteries of Light’. Praying the Sorrowful Mysteries with those who have witnessed to the faith to the point of giving their lives, situates the Passion of Christ at the heart our modern world.
Pope John Paul encourages us to pray the rosary, knowing it will give us the certainty of God’s help, and that it will also nurture the firm intention of bearing witness, like the martyrs and confessors of the 20th century, to the power of love. Through praying the rosary we join Jesus and Mary in transforming the culture of death into a communion of love.
‘Praying the Rosary with the Martyrs’ is available from CTS, price £1.95. Phone: 020 7640 0042.
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