Salesian Literature

Chapter 10  :  Those who die out of love for God, or because of their love for him

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All the martyrs died out of love for God.  Even when we say that they died for the faith, we do not mean for a dead faith (Jas. 2:26), but for a living one – in other words, faith that finds its expression in love (Gal. 5:6).  Moreover, declaring one’s faith is an activity not so much of intellect, of faith, as of will, of love for God.  that is why St. Peter, during the passion, kept the faith, but lost charity: he would not acknowledge by word of mouth the Master he recognized in his heart.

 

However, there have been martyrs who died expressly out of charity alone, like the Lord’s noble herald, who owed his martyrdom to fraternal correction[1]. Those two glorious apostolic princes Sts. Peter and Paul, but principally St. Paul, died for winning over to holiness and chastity women corrupted by the notorious Nero.  The saintly bishops Stanislaus and Thomas of Canterbury were also murdered for reasons concerned not with faith, but with charity.  Lastly, the majority of virgin martyrs were butchered on account of their zeal in preserving their chastity, which charity prompted them to consecrate to the heavenly bridegroom.

 

Some of the saints, however, gave themselves up so completely to the practice of divine love that its fire wasted and consumed their lives.

 

A tender passion can sometimes prevent the person smitten with it from eating, drinking or sleeping for days on end; so that, eventually, enfeebled and pining away, he dies.  Why then, people will say: “He died of loving grief.”  That is not so, however; he died from failing strength, from utter exhaustion.  Grief caused his debility, it is true; and we have to admit that though he did not die of loving grief, he died because of it, through it.

 

Charity too, if it is intensely fervent, storms the heart, wounds it time and again, causes it so to pine away, melts it so habitually, carries it out of itself so frequently in ecstasies, in raptures, that the soul – almost entirely engrossed in God – is unable to come to nature’s help sufficiently to provide the nourishment it needs.  So the vital animal forces begin to fail little by little, life is shortened, and death follows.

 

Most assuredly, from the moment St. Francis received the marks of his Master’s passion, that saint experienced such violent and distressing anguish, pangs, paroxysms and disorders that he was reduced to nothing but skin and bone; he was more like a skeleton, a death mask, than a man still breathing, still alive.

 

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[1]  St. John the Baptist, who rebuked Herod for taking his brother’s wife.  Cf. Mt. 14:4; Mk. 6:18.

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