Video – Fr. Joachim – Homily: Worth Living and Dying For
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Ave Maria!
Today the Church celebrates the memorial of the martyrs of Gorkum, where in 1572, 19 martyrs - 11 of them Franciscans - were hanged by Calvinist dissenters in Holland for their two-fold belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Dying for the sake of the truth is a foreign concept to modern man, and to many modern Catholics. Today people willing sacrifice their bodies and their souls for the sake of pleasure, but how few and how blessed are those who are still willing to die for the sake of truth! It's always better in God's eyes to renounce your head and save your faith rather than renounce your faith to save your head.
(I borrow that aphorism from Fr. Rutler and his observations on the Reign of Terror in late 18th-century France, where priests and bishops were given the choice by the State to either preach Enlightenment doctrines and remain in the pulpit or to preach the doctrines of Christ and head off - literally - to the guillotine on their way to Heaven.)
Ave Maria!
