About two weeks ago, Fr. Samaan, a Coptic Orthodox priest, was collecting humanitarian aid in Cairo for poor and vulnerable members of his parish. While on his way back to the church in Cairo to collect his cell phone, he was attacked by a man wielding a knife. He was stabbed multiple times, perishing from his wounds. It is suspected that the attacker killed Fr. Samaan because he is a Christian.
Accounts such as these are not uncommon in our modern age, especially in the Middle East where radical Islamic terrorist groups are gaining more members and political power. For example, about two years ago, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (I.S.I.L.) released footage of the beheading of twenty-one Coptic Christians, with the spokesman stating that they behead these men because they are of, “the nation of the cross.” These martyrs have since been canonized as saints by the Coptic Orthodox Church; you can view their icon here. Their story, as tragic as it is, is not original. Christians in the Middle East are martyred for their faith every day and have been for years.
All who have shown their love for Christ to the point of giving up their lives are, in a very literal sense of the word, martyrs, which in Greek simply means witnesses. They have given witness to Christ by giving up their very lives for the coming Kingdom that He has promised for those who love Him. Christ Himself prophesized about those who would become martyrs for Him:
…yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. (John 16:2)
He also called all who suffer for His name blessed, saying:
11 “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. 12 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)
All of us, in one sense or another, are martyrs for Christ. In the United States, where we (hopefully) are allowed freedom to practice our religion, we are martyrs in a social sense, often mocked for what we believe (“How in the world could you believe that a man could rise from the dead?”) and our conviction to hold to traditional Christian morality. If we are true disciples of Christ, we will suffer for His name. There is no other way to be a Christian. Jesus Himself explicitly makes this claim in the gospels:
“Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)
When Christ said this to a first century Jewish audience under Roman authority, no one misunderstood what He said. The cross was Rome’s way of subjecting others to their authority and showing everyone that they were in charge. The cross meant shame, suffering, and, ultimately, death. They all knew He was asking them to die.
For some, like Fr. Samaan, this death will be literal and physical. For others, it will be metaphorical, dying to our own will and enjoyment of sinful passions, forsaking all earthly things in order to gain Christ. For others still, it will be both. Such was the case of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who, before his martyrdom in the second century, said:
I am the wheat of God. May I be ground up by the teeth of the wild beasts until I become the fine bread of Christ. My sinful passions are crucified, there is no burning in my flesh. A stream murmurs and flows deep down inside of me. It says: Come to the Father.
Pray for the martyrs. And ask the martyrs to pray for us so that we too may crucify our passions and become His witnesses.
