Summary: These daily 5 minute podcasts are intended to give you a small boost every day, a little encouragement in your own use of this holy season. Today is Saturday after Passion Sunday, Saturday in the 5th Week of Lent. Today we hear of the unbloody, but nearly parboiled and poisoned martyrdom of John the Apostle and Evangelist. Yes, martyrdom, though John didn’t die. In the Church we have had the ancient teaching and tradition of “red” or bloody martyrdom for the sake of charity whereby the martyr dies giving witness in the face of hatred for Christ, the Church, the Faith or some aspect of the Christian life that is inseparable from our Christian identity. There is also a long tradition of identifying “white” martyrdom, coined by St. Jerome, whereby a person gives witness through an ascetic life, withdrawal from the world, pilgrimages involving great sacrifice, or who suffer greatly for the Faith but who do not die in bearing witness. Coming from another tradition there is a kind of “blue” (or “green”) martyrdom, involving great penance and mortifications without necessarily the sort of withdrawal from life that a hermit or a cenobite might live. Gregory the Great in his Dialogues, writes of different kinds of martyrdom, bloody, public martyrdom in time of persecution and secret martyrdom, not in time of persecution. He wrote that secret martyrs are no less worthy of honor, because they also endured sufferings and the attacks of hidden enemies, but they persevered in charity. It seems that John was all of these, though miraculously preserved from red martyrdom. His apostolic work wasn’t yet completed, though he seems to have completed his responsibilities to his Mother and ours. I provide these especially in gratitude to benefactors who help me and this blog.
