On 21 October, the day after the canonization of the “Martyrs of Damascus,” the friars of the Custody of the Holy Land celebrated a Thanksgiving Mass in St Anthony’s Basilica in Rome.
The mass was presided over by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa. The Custos of the Holy Land, Fra Francesco Patton, and about seventy Franciscans, bishops and priests, were at his side. There were also many faithful, especially from Spain – where seven of the eight Franciscan martyrs came from - but also Austria (the homeland of Fra Engelbert Kolland), Lebanon and Syria, linked to the Massabki brothers, Maronite laymen. They all united ideally in prayer with those who, in Syria and Lebanon, could not be in Rome, because of the difficulties due to the war underway in the Middle East .
“Why do martyrs occupy such a venerated place in our spiritual and liturgical life? What do the “Martyrs of Damascus” and those of all times say to us today?” the Patriarch Pizzaballa wondered in his homily. “Martyrs,” he emphasized, “show us, through their life, the strength of faithfulness to God, which remains indestructible even in the face of death. “Faith for them was not a suit to put on on the right occasions, but what sustained their very lives. They would have died if they had renounced their faith, and not the contrary. Paradoxically, in being with Christ, even in the face of the danger of death they said yes to life, the one that nobody can take away from us.”
The Cardinal also underscored the particular bond between martyrdom and the Eucharist, which in the case of the “Martyrs of Damascus” is very strong. In the official image of the canonization, St Manuel Ruiz, the superior of the Damascus convent, is shown holding the pyx, containing the Eucharistic species. At the time of their martyrdom, in the night between 9 and 10 July 1860, that all eleven sought strength in the Eucharist. “Martyrdom can also be understood as a Eucharistic act,” the Patriarch observed. “Eucharist and martyrdom are not the same thing, but what we live in the Eucharist finds its expression in martyrdom, where life is offered as a gift, in union with the death and resurrection of Christ.”
The Patriarch had a special thought for the Christians in today’s Syria and “their calm tenacity in all these difficult years of war and poverty. The blood of the martyrs of Damascus,” he said, “was a seed that strengthened your Christian community, which continues to give testimony of life and fraternity.” He then invited everyone to pray “for our Lebanese brothers and sisters who in the past few days have lost their lives under the bombs” and “for the brothers and sisters in the Holy Land, from Gaza to Bethlehem, and as far as Nazareth.” At the end of the celebration, the Custos thanked all those present and invited the assembly to recite together the prayer of intercession of the saints the martyrs of Damascus.
Francesco Pistocchini