The Flame That Cannot Be Extinguished: Living in the Light of the Resurrection

2Tim 1:1-3.6-12; Psalm: 122; Mk 12:18-27

Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, martyrs

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

On this Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and his twenty-one companions, martyrs of Uganda, the Church presents us with a Gospel about the resurrection and a letter about stirring into flame the gift of God. These young men, many of them pages in the court of King Mwanga, were burned alive or beheaded between 1885 and 1887 because they refused to renounce their faith. They knew that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a God of the dead, but of the living. And they chose to die rather than betray the One who had conquered death.

In the Gospel of Mark, the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, pose a clever but absurd hypothetical. A woman marries seven brothers, one after another, each dying childless. “At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” Jesus cuts through their legalism. He does not answer the question on their terms. Instead, He declares, “You are greatly misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” The resurrection is not a continuation of earthly marriage; it is a transformation into a new mode of existence, like the angels. Then He quotes Exodus: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Not “I was.” God is not the God of corpses, but of living persons. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive to Him.

This is the foundation of martyrdom. If death is the end, then dying for faith is foolish. But if death is a door, then dying for Christ is the ultimate witness. The Ugandan martyrs did not die for a political cause or a tribal loyalty. They died because they believed that the God who raised Jesus from the dead would also raise them. They believed that to lose one’s life for His sake is to find it.

Saint Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, urges his young disciple to “stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.” Timothy was timid, perhaps even fearful. Paul reminds him that “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power and love and self-control.” And then Paul, himself facing imprisonment and death, declares, “I know him in whom I have believed and am confident that he can guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.” That day is the day of resurrection, the day when every tear is wiped away, when every injustice is righted, when every martyr is vindicated.

Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on the Ugandan martyrs, said, “They show us that the power of God is greater than any human power, and that the love of Christ is stronger than death.” Saint John Paul II, who canonized them, called them “the first fruits of a great harvest of holiness” in Africa.

What does this mean for us? We may not be called to face a king’s fire or a martyr’s sword. But we are called to stir into flame the gift of God. That flame is our baptism, our confirmation, our faith. We keep it burning by prayer, by the sacraments, by acts of charity, by choosing truth over comfort, by forgiving when we would rather hold a grudge. The martyrs did not suddenly become brave on the day of their death. They had been kindling the flame for years, in the small choices of daily fidelity.

This week, let us ask Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions to intercede for us. May they teach us to live without fear of what the world can do to us. May they remind us that our God is the God of the living. And may we, like them, stir into flame the gift of God, until that day when we see Him face to face, and all death is swallowed up in victory. Amen.

May God bless you all!