Persecution Ancient and Modern: The Witness of St Marcellus and the Call to Steadfast Fidelity
MASS Státuit ei Dóminus
LESSON James 1:12-18
GOSPEL St Luke 14:26-33
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
Beloved in Christ,
Beloved in Christ, welcome to this broadcast Mass on this, as we said, the Feast of St Marcellus, who was a bishop of Rome and died in the year 309.
Now, for those of you who are viewing yesterday’s Mass and homily, that means that St Paul of Thebes, the first hermit, was already in his seventies. Remember, yesterday Saint Paul lived to be 113, was born in 227 AD and died in 341, so literally he was, as it were, the midway point—halfway through his long life—and a contemporary of this Pope Marcellus throughout his life and reign and martyrdom.
Marcellus was himself a Roman, was born a Roman and a Christian, was known for his learning, for his wisdom, and particularly for his charity. He became Bishop of Rome during the great persecution that had begun under Diocletian in 284, was continuing then under Maxentius or Maximian and Maximian II, and it was after this last, Maxentius, that he would die effectively a martyr for the faith.
He is one of the earlier Bishops of Rome who instituted twenty-five parishes and places for the faithful to gather and for alms to be distributed. But under Maximian II he was arrested for being a Christian and was commanded to burn incense before the pagan idols. This he would not do, and thus he was initially condemned to corporal punishment and to be a stable hand in the imperial stables—literally mucking out the horses and other animals.
This he endured for nine months until the clergy were able to rescue him. He was then put in the house of one Lucina, a widow and matron of the Church in Rome, and from there he offered Mass and the sacraments and again arranged the movements and distribution of alms for the Church. But eventually he came to the attention once again of the Emperor, who ordered that this house—this villa that had been made a church—now be made a stable, and poor Marcellus was again condemned to be its stable hand.
This humiliation again he endured, but eventually expired, and so it is that we refer to his passion as martyrdom.
What Marcellus exemplifies to us, and our lections for this Mass remind us, is that nothing is to be preferred in this life to our ultimate goal and prize and treasure. Remember our Lord said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also,” and our hearts, our treasure, should be in heaven.
Marcellus, and like so many other martyrs for the faith, kept their goal fixed, their gaze on heaven, and especially of course during times of testing and trial, like the times of persecution. They held on to their salvation, they held on to the prospect of heaven, they held on to their Christian hope, which is of course that we may be united with God for eternity.
And always, my brothers and sisters, the question we must ask ourselves on the feast of martyrs is not necessarily, “Would I be prepared to die for my faith in Christ?” but rather, “How steadfast will I be, or am I?”
I have said many times before that those who decry the notion that we are enduring a persecution are foolish. We currently are enduring a time of persecution that is particularly pernicious as well as insidious. It is insidious in those places where it is manifest in violence and in death. There are, my brothers and sisters, considerable numbers of our brothers and sisters in the faith enduring violence and the prospect of death simply for being Christian.
We are already statistically fast approaching, if it continues, a similar level of persecution to that which the Church endured in the twentieth century. Again, let me remind you that in the twentieth century more Christians were martyred for the faith than in all the preceding centuries put together.
We tend to think of persecution and martyrdom as something from ancient times because we commemorate martyrs from the earlier centuries of the Church. The truth of the matter is that it is a very modern phenomenon and experience for the Church. More Christians were martyred in the twentieth century than in all preceding centuries put together—more Christian martyrs than of any other faith in the last century and in this century so far, with hundreds of thousands martyred in the first two decades of this century alone.
It is well worth looking at charities like the Barnabas Fund, Open Doors, Church Aid to the Church in Need, and you will find and discover the testimonies of contemporary martyrs.
So there is, as I say, an insidious persecution manifesting itself in the age-old way of violence and death, but there is also another form of persecution which is pernicious—that is, the persecution being endured within the Church, largely by virtue of the crisis the Church is enduring. It is pernicious because it is sneaky, because often it is not easily recognisable as persecution.
What it is, is animus against tradition—animus against those who would hold steadfast to the received perennial apostolic magisterium and doctrine of the Church through the centuries. I am talking about those, particularly now in the hierarchy, who are revealing themselves ever more brashly as those who would seek to undermine and overturn centuries of the Church’s teachings. That is a pernicious persecution.
And of course there are victims—many more victims than we might know—beyond the well-known names and personalities like Bishop Strickland, Father Pavone, the SSPX, ourselves the Old Romans, and others. So pernicious is this persecution that it is already affecting every contemporary Catholic, because it is affecting the teaching and doctrine and practice and even the worship of the Church. It is perniciously manipulating people’s minds, people’s understanding and comprehension of the faith.
You will have heard much in Catholic commentary of late regarding Fiducia Supplicans. I have not said too much about that publicly, not because I will not, but because I am forming my thoughts and thinking how best to present them, because in many ways it epitomises this pernicious persecution occurring within and because of the crisis in the Church.
There are hundreds and thousands of priests and religious enduring this persecution—those who would be faithful to tradition but are too frightened to resist this perniciousness from the hierarchy. Thus, after Traditionis Custodes, and despite the liberation of the old Mass under Summorum Pontificum under Benedict XVI, so many now do not offer the traditional Mass.
From 2007 under Pope Benedict, the number of traditional Latin Masses was growing exponentially across the Church worldwide. But with Traditionis Custodes, suddenly thousands of traditional Latin Masses disappeared from parish schedules. Remember that document—not only does it forbid the celebration of the traditional Mass in parishes, confining it to essentially private oratories, chapels without parishes, but it also forbids priests from even celebrating it privately. Whereas Summorum Pontificum allowed priests the choice to offer the old or new rite, Traditionis Custodes took that choice away, stating that there is only one Roman rite, the Novus Ordo, thereby undermining centuries of organic development of the Latin liturgy of the West.
It forbids and bans that Mass by which all the saints of old were formed, as if it were something evil. How can that which formed the vast majority of saints known to us be considered bad?
Likewise, in various other ways, the attitude and approach of the contemporary hierarchy betrays the extent to which modernism has infiltrated the Church—modernist thinking, relativism, nominalism, even gnosticism and dualism. All these old heresies now abound, and people do not realise the distinctions, do not know the definitions, cannot tell for themselves what is orthodox and what is heterodox, what is true and right and what is wrong, because it is often clouded in ambiguous language and terms and phrases.
If we would seek to honour the attitude, approach, and example of today’s saint, we should do so by persevering, even under duress, in what we know to be right and true. As Marcellus remained steadfast to the Gospel and refused to burn incense to idols, so should we remain steadfast in the apostolic tradition and perennial magisterium of the Church and refuse to give in to the perniciousness of modernism that is already affecting lives and the salvation of souls.
On this feast of a martyred pope, we should pray for the conversion of our current pope, remembering that we are all in an ongoing process of conversion. What the Church needs right now is diligent, faithful, orthodox pastors and faithful—a faithful remnant who will pass on the traditions and teachings that for centuries have formed saints and ensured the salvation of many souls.
That responsibility falls not just upon traditional bishops or clergy, but upon you, faithful traditional Catholics. It falls upon all of us, by our witness through the manner of our lives and interactions, even with other Catholics and Christians, to manifest the contrast between the narrow path that leads to heaven and the wider path that leads to perdition.
Our Lord was very clear in the Gospel: no one is truly His disciple who prefers themselves, who loves everything other than Him, who refuses to carry their cross, who refuses to be faithful in self-offering and sacrifice, who refuses to be faithful to His teaching and example.
Let us pray, my brothers and sisters, that we will not be among those, but that we will, like the apostles and the early martyrs of the Church, remain steadfast and faithful to the Cross, no matter the cost, no matter the sacrifice, no matter the suffering we might endure. Let us do so not just for ourselves, but for the sake of the souls around us and the souls yet to come, so that the true Gospel and the true faith may continue until our Lord returns, and that when He returns He will find a faithful remnant.
Holy Saint Marcellus of Rome, pray for us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.
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