Scripture Readings

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Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Bill Woody, SJ

After eight years in Jesuit schools (and growing up with several family members working in Jesuit institutions), I felt pretty familiar with the catch phrases and Jesuit lingo. Phrases like “cura personalis,” striving for “the magis,” or becoming “men and women for and with others” were regular fixtures in school marketing materials, printed on school t-shirts, and occasionally even in the classroom. And while they sometimes may have felt overused, they spoke to a vision and values in Jesuit education that shaped the school’s history, heritage, and ideals.

 But it was not until years later, while an undergraduate at Scranton, that I came to appreciate more deeply some of the significance of these values and their role in living out the Christian vocation. No, it was not through creatively designed t-shirts and well-crafted mission statements, either. It was through the study of the Jesuit missionaries and martyrs, in their stories and histories, in their witness.

 The beginning of my junior year I found myself taking a course with Fr. Ron McKinney, S.J. simply titled, “The Jesuit Magis.” It was an interdisciplinary course that incorporated the study of Jesuit educational philosophy, history, missionaries and martyrs, as well as class reflective and service-learning components. Despite having heard phrases like “the magis” or “all for the greater glory of God,” many times before, it was encountering the stories and the witness — the courage and the convictions — of so many a Jesuit martyr that gave a sense of the weight and the commitment that these terms demand.

 The martyrs commemorated today were not exactly in “mission” territory in the traditional sense of the word — indeed, Bl. James Bonnaud and his companions, as well as Joseph Imbert and Nicolas Cordier, lived and ministered in 18th-century France. Traditionally known as “the eldest daughter of the Church,” France had long been a staging ground for missionary priests, not mission territory itself. Yet with the outbreak of the French Revolution (and the political situation in France in the years leading up to it), the situation for the Church and for clergy had become quite perilous. The Society itself faced expulsion and suppression, first in France and then quickly spreading into other countries in Europe. Yet the persecutions that followed in the Reign of Terror that ultimately led to their imprisonment and martyrdom.

 In varying ways, these men gave their lives in defense of the Church, in witness to Christ, and with a zeal to love and to serve God’s people despite the growing violence levied against them. Religious orders and monasteries were suppressed. Clergy were forced to become agents of the state, swearing fealty to the Civil Constitution on the Clergy and a fraudulent national church in France. These martyrs for Christ in Europe spoke out forcefully against such developments, wrote in defense of the Church, and tended lovingly to the faithful entrusted to their care despite the dangers. Eventually hundreds of priests were arrested and sent to various prisons — some held in a former Carmelite monastery, others in prison ships awaiting deportation.

 The trials that these men faced never led them to waver in their commitment to Christ, to his Church, or to his people. Even in the face of certain persecution and likely martyrdom, they gave their lives in witness to Christ. Faithful until the end. Striving eagerly always to love and to serve — even in the most arduous of conditions.

 In this, they embody what Saint Paul declares in the readings today, striving to live “as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God,” not with concern for judgment by any human tribunal, but by the one who judges alone and rightly in the Lord (1 Cor. 4:1).

 In this, our confrères and blesseds are true witnesses for us and for the Church: as those who are willing to give their lives for something great, that “pearl of great price” which has captivated their hearts and led them to share it with others. Standing on the margins of society and standing up for the Gospel message can, and has historically, come at great personal cost. Whether it be in the geographically distant missions of new lands and cultures, or on the margins of a society and a culture that grows increasingly hostile to the Gospel message, our missionary martyrs provide a powerful reminder of what striving for that magis can truly entail.

 Blessed James Bonnaud and Companions, Joseph Imbert and John Nicolas Cordier, pray for us!

Fr. Bill Wood, S.J., is currently a doctoral student in philosophy at Boston College.

Previous Reflections

September 2, 2021 – by Fr. Patrick Nolan, SJ

When I was in discernment with the Jesuits and getting closer to the possibility of candidacy and application, I began to think more and more about building up my resume in my corporate career. My prideful idea -- looking back -- was to have robust profile next to my picture in the Jesuit magazine, so that people might read it and think, "Wow! This guy gave up a lot for the life of poverty, chastity, and obedience." I wanted to make a name for myself.

Thankfully, with the help of my spiritual director, the daily Examen, and a very consoling discernment retreat, I was able to focus more and more on the name of Jesus and my relationship with Him, instead of my name, my attachment to my resume, and what other people would think.

The individual names of the Jesuit martyrs we celebrate today are not easily remembered by most members of the Society of Jesus or the Church, but, then again, that was never the point. They did not lose their lives because of their own names, but because they identified with Christ's name, as Christians.

The Supplement to the Roman Missal for Celebrations Proper to the Society of Jesus refers to these Jesuits as "Martyrs due to the hatred of the name Christian and of the Catholic Church" and outlines their stories:

James Bonnaud and twenty-two other Jesuit priests were martyred in 1792 during the French Revolution, because they refused to sign the oath in support of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy passed by the National Constituent Assembly. Joseph Imbert and John Nicolas Cordier were victims of the violence during the Reign of Terror in 1794 when they refused to sign the oath. Thomas Sitjar and ten other Jesuits, who worked clandestinely after the Society of Jesus was exiled from Spain in 1932, were captured and martyred in Gandia and Valencia in 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War. John Fausti, from Italy and Vice Provincial of Albania, and two other Jesuits, Daniel Dajani (rector of the Pontifical Seminary in Shkodër) and Brother Gjon Pantalia, were martyred in 1946 and 1947 during the Albanian persecution.

O Lord, as we commemorate these Jesuit martyrs, may you "expand our minds and hearts that we my set aside our own interests and seek only those of Jesus Christ." (Prayer after Communion, Common of Martyrs)

Martyrs of Christ, pray for us!