26 August Optional Memorial
Excerpts from the Homily of St. John Paul II at the Beatification of 110 Victims including Carmelite Jacques Retouret
Martyrdom is a special gift of the Holy Spirit: a gift for the entire Church. It finds its culmination in today’s liturgy of Beatification, in which we give special glory to God: “Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus.” God, who through a solemn act of the Church—Beatification—crowns their merits, at the same time reveals the gift of grace bestowed upon them, as the liturgy proclaims: “Eorum coronando merita, tua dona coronas” (Missale Romanum, Praefatio de Sanctis I).
The new Blesseds, faced with the choice of abandoning the demands of the faith or dying for it, strengthened by God’s grace, placed their own fate in His hands. The martyrs renounced defending themselves not because they held life in low esteem, but because of their total love for Jesus Christ.
9. This morning, dear Brothers and Sisters, our thoughts turn to the sixty-four French priests who died along with hundreds of others on the “pontoons of Rochefort.” As Saint Paul exhorted Timothy, they “fought the good fight of the faith.” They even endured a long ordeal for having remained faithful to their faith and to the Church. They died because they remained steadfast to the very end in affirming their close communion with Pope Pius VI.
In profound moral solitude, they were committed to maintaining a spirit of prayer. “Tormented” by hunger and thirst, they uttered not a single word of hatred toward their tormentors. Slowly, they allowed themselves to be identified with the sacrifice of Christ, which they celebrated by virtue of their ordination. Here they are, then, presented to our gaze as a living sign of the power of Christ at work in human weakness.
In the depths of their distress, they retained a sense of forgiveness. The unity of the faith and the unity of their homeland appeared to them as more important than anything else. We can therefore joyfully echo the words of Sacred Scripture: the souls of these righteous ones are in God’s hands. “They seemed to perish. Their departure was regarded as a misfortune, but they themselves are at peace.”
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