Today’s Office of Readings gave me a better picture of what drives missionary work.
Saint Jean de Brebeuf left France in the seventeenth century and spent nearly two decades among the Huron people in what is now Canada. He learned their language, lived through brutal winters, disease, and hunger, and remained when the mission put his life at risk.
In 1649, Iroquois warriors captured and tortured him. They cut his body, placed burning coals on his skin, and poured boiling water over him in mockery of baptism. Brebeuf endured it without cursing his captors.
Fear of hell is often offered as the engine of evangelism: without eternal stakes, why cross an ocean or risk death? Brebeuf’s own words give another answer. He loved Christ and wanted to share in His Passion for the good of his neighbor.
From his diary entry shared in today’s Office of Readings:
“For two days now I have experienced a great desire to be a martyr and to endure all the torments the martyrs suffered.
Jesus, my Lord and Savior, what can I give you in return for all the favors you have first conferred on me? I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name. I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles and martyrs, before my blessed fathers Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier—in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Savior, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day you in your infinite mercy would offer it to me, your most unworthy servant.
I bind myself in this way so that for the rest of my life I will have neither permission nor freedom to refuse opportunities of dying and shedding my blood for you, unless at a particular juncture I should consider it more suitable for your glory to act otherwise at that time. Further, I bind myself to this so that, on receiving the blow of death, I shall accept it from your hands with the fullest delight and joy of spirit. For this reason, my beloved Jesus, and because of the surging joy which moves me, here and now I offer my blood and body and life. May I die only for you, if you will grant me this grace, since you willingly died for me. Let me so live that you may grant me the gift of such a happy death. In this way, my God and Savior, I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!
My God, it grieves me greatly that you are not known, that in this savage wilderness all have not been converted to you, that sin has not been driven from it. My God, even if all the brutal tortures which prisoners in this region must endure should fall on me, I offer myself most willingly to them and I alone shall suffer them all.”
Here is a man moved by the Passion of Christ and a desire to bear that love to his neighbor. His urgency is unmistakable. So is its source.
Martyrs at Large
Brebeuf was not alone. Ignatius of Antioch longed to be united with Christ in martyrdom. Perpetua faced death in the arena with confidence that she would see Christ. The martyrs did not treat suffering as meaningless pain. They received it as witness, union with Christ, and hope of resurrection.
This does not make judgment unreal or conversion unnecessary. Brebeuf grieved that God was not known and that sin had not been driven from the land. But his words do show that missionary courage does not need fear as its deepest motive.
Love can carry a person across the ocean, into another people’s life, and finally to the cross. The Church’s mission is strongest when that love is plain: Christ is worth knowing, and our neighbor is worth the cost of telling.
Kern Keep 