Christians met with sorrow and revulsion the news—and the
accompanying video—of the beheading of US journalist James Foley, a devout
Catholic who would find calm in prison praying the rosary with his
knuckles. If we were less naïve
about the history of religions, would we still be surprised if the ISIS’
“second message” to the US were followed by a third, a fourth, and so on?
The culture of beheading among extremist
followers of Islam dates back to the days of the prophet Muhammad himself who,
according to historians, took part in caravan raids and wars in order to
finance the promotion of his new religion. Authors Peter G.
Riddell and Peter Cotterell in Islam in
Context: Past, Present, and Future write that in the massacre of the
Qurayza Jews, the prophet himself “had trenches dug, and the men were led out
in batches and beheaded.” The
incident claimed victims by the hundreds, as recorded in the Sirat Rasul Allah (Life of the Prophet of Allah) by Ibn Ishaq, a Muslim historian who
died in 768: “There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high
as 800 or 900.”
This issue of beheading reminds us of the first
woman doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), who, at about
seven years of age, persuaded her younger brother Rodrigo to run away from home
and offer themselves to be beheaded in the land of the Moors. She had heard about beheading from her
father who would tell the children stories of saints and martyrs offering their
lives to God. The young Teresa
perhaps thought nothing of the gore and the pain involved; for her, to be a
martyr meant a shortcut to heaven, and because her little heart was most
desirous (or curious) “to see God”, she thought the fastest way to get there
was to be beheaded. And she had
the temerity to talk her kid brother into joining her martyrdom! Their absence caused mild panic in the
house, and a search party was deployed.
As Providence would have it, an uncle on horseback found the missing
children, already outside the walls of Avila and, as they’d say, “the rest is
history.”
This recollection, however, is more than just a
passing fancy, for a closer look into St. Teresa’s writings would reveal that
essentially, the world hasn’t changed much in 500 years—people in the 21st
century are still being beheaded “by the Moors”—although nowadays, no mean
thanks to tv and the internet, we do not just hear or read about it in history
books, we see the atrocious deeds recorded on video, right in the comfort of
our living rooms.
If the sight of a headless doll is unsettling
to some who associate dolls with real children, how would you react to a video
clip of an extremist soldier laughing while shaking the headless body of a
little girl as though it were a trophy won at a football game? What do you think of when you see a
whole city in upheaval over the shooting of a supposedly innocent black
teenager? What questions do you
ask yourself when every so often the news explodes with the suicide of the rich
and famous? What do you feel like
doing when you hear of a male nurse sexually molesting a two-month old infant
in his care, or of children being used as informants and suicide bombers in an
Islamic State? Do you wonder why
our government proudly claims the crime rate has dropped when robberies and
riding-in-tandem murders continue to fill the nightly news? Whom do you blame
when thousands turn homeless on account of landslides, flash floods,
earthquakes, typhoons, and fires? What do you say when world records are used
to measure a perceived religious superiority? Can you feel the agony of the Christians who run for their
lives in Syria, or do you simply thank God you are not among them?
“The world is on fire,” St. Teresa would write
almost 450 years ago in Way of Perfection
of the difficult times they were in, “Men try to condemn Christ once again as
it were, for they bring a thousand false witnesses against Him. They would raze His Church to the
ground… No… this is no time to treat
with God for things of little importance.” As in the 16th century, humanity is beset with
the same evils, and the only one institution that has remained unchanged in its
mission to counteract evil with Love is the Church that Jesus Christ Himself
founded. In this Church, as shown by the life of St. Teresa of Avila, lies the
hope for the intimate friendship with Jesus that would lead to our renewal—if
only we would trust it in spite of ourselves.
Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI would say that in reforming the Carmelite Order, “St. Teresa of
Jesus sought to create a form of life which favored a personal encounter with
the Lord, finding ‘a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present
within us. Nor need we feel strange in the presence of so kind a Guest’.” St. Teresa loved the Church, trusted
it, and wanted “to protect apostolic work with prayer, proposing a form of
evangelical life that would act as a model for people seeking the path of
perfection, on the basis of the conviction that all authentic personal and
ecclesial reform involves an ever more faithful reproduction of the 'form' of
Christ in our own selves…”
It is
not true that with all the evils surrounding man today, we are left with no one
to trust. There is still the
Church our Lord founded, and I’d dare say, it is the only institution left to
trust. As Benedict XVI emphasized,
“Today, too, as in St. Teresa’s time, it is important that trusting prayer be
the heart of the apostolate, so that the redeeming message of Jesus Christ may
sound out clearly and dynamically… The example of St. Teresa is of great help to
us in this exhilarating task…there is a pressing need for the baptized to renew
their hearts through individual prayer in which, following the guidance of St.
Teresa, they also focus on contemplation of Christ’s blessed humanity as the
only way to reach the glory of God.
The power of Christ will lead to a redoubling of efforts to ensure that
the people of God recover their vigor in the only way possible: by finding
space within ourselves for the feelings of the Lord Jesus, and in all
circumstances seeking to live His Gospel to the full. This means, above all,
allowing the Holy Spirit to make us friends of the Master and to mould us to
Him. It also means accepting all His mandates and adopting in ourselves
criteria such as humility of conduct, renunciation of the superfluous, not
harming others, and acting with simplicity and humbleness of heart. Thus, those
around us will perceive the joy that arises from our adherence to the Lord;
they will see that we put nothing before His love, and that we are always ready
to give reasons for our hope.”
That is really setting the world on fire—with the love of God! And that’s the truth.
