By Martin Hoegger*
Rome, 27 March 2025. The second day of the Focolare Ecumenical Congress consisted of a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the first Christians who gave their lives for the Gospel: Paul, Lawrence, Zeno and his ten thousand companions.
Martyrs belong to no one Church more than to any other. They do not separate, but in communion with Christ they unite disunited Christians. Just as Christians persecuted today because of their faith are witnesses (the meaning of the word ‘martyr’) and bridges of unity.
Today, we have commemorated this ‘cloud of witnesses’ by visiting some of the sites of the martyrdom of the first Christians, starting with the Basilica of Saint Lawrence, one of the first churches built by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. Deacon Lawrence uttered these unforgettable words at the height of his martyrdom, a sign of the unshakeable faith that filled him: ‘My night knows no darkness’.
‘Martyrdom of blood’, a few years before de Council of Nicaea
Then, we go to the basilica of the ‘Three Fountains’. Next to it are two circular churches that commemorate the imprisonment and beheading of the apostle Paul, as well as the martyrdom of the tribune Zeno and his 10,203 fellow Christian soldiers. By refusing to renounce the Christian faith, they had suffered the ‘martyrdom of blood’.
Inside the circular church (the ‘Scala Caeli’, ‘ladder to heaven’), an inscription engraved on the wall reads in Latin: ‘Beneath this church, ten thousand two hundred and three soldiers of the legion of Saint Zeno rest in the peace of Christ’.
This place has a special meaning for me. These events took place between 298 and 304, during the harsh persecution of the Emperor Diocletian. About twenty to twenty-five years before the Council of Nicaea, which was held in 325 and which is commemorated this year for the 1700th anniversary!
These ten thousand martyrs paid with their lives for confessing Jesus as ‘True God’ and ‘True Man’.
The ‘True God’ confessed in the Nicene Creed is Him, not the emperor! Not for anything in the world would these courageous soldiers have denied the faith they received from the Scriptures: “He is the True God and eternal Life” (I John 5:20).
At the Council of Nicaea, several bishops bore on their faces the marks of the abuse they had suffered because of the ‘hatred of the faith’.
On leaving this place of remembrance, a South American woman and a Sudanese woman tell me how this story of persecution continues today in Nicaragua and Sudan.
We then went to the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, where the tomb of the Apostle to the Gentiles is located, and concluded our pilgrimage with a prayer. The building is in much better condition than the other two basilicas we visited this morning, even though it fell prey to flames in the 19th century.
“The white martyrdom”
In preparing for these visits, we were reminded that the ‘white martyrdom’ calls us all to be authentic Christians, moving forward together on our journey of faith.
“White martyrdom,” said the Algerian bishop Pierre Claverie, “is what we try to live every day, that is to say, the gift of one’s life drop by drop in a look, a presence, a smile, an attention, a service, a work, in all those things that make it so that a little of the life that inhabits us is shared, given, delivered. This is where availability and abandonment take the place of martyrdom, of immolation. Not holding on to one’s life.”[1]
I conclude the chronicle of this rich day with this prayer taken from the booklet given to us for this celebration, which brought together more than 200 people from some 40 countries and from all the families of the Church: “Lord Jesus Christ, you know us better than we know ourselves. We stand before you, with our thoughts, our imperfections, our prejudices.
We ask you: Just as you radically changed Paul’s life through your divine power, change our lives today, so that we do not judge or condemn others.
Surround us with your light, remove the scales from our eyes so that we may gain simple eyes and follow you, Jesus.
Make us instruments of reconciliation to bear witness to your unity in diversity in our confused world”.
Photo by the author: The Abbey of the Three Fountains and, on the right, the ‘Scala Caeli’, site of the martyrdom of the legion of Saint Zeno
*Martin Hoegger is a Swiss reformed theologian and writer
[1] P. CLAVERIE, Donner sa vie; Six jours de retraite sur l’Eucharistie; Paris, 2004
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First published in this link of The European Times.
