Today, we hear the concluding section to Paul’s
letter to the Romans, as he addresses his audience in very personal and
endearing terms. We have been hearing passages from Romans for 4
weeks in our daily masses, which shows how important this letter is in our
canon of Scripture. Paul wants the Romans to know about his true
motives in writing this letter. He lets them know of the goodness he sees in
them, how he sees them being full of knowledge and being able to instruct one
another. In this passage, we hear of Paul’s zeal and
enthusiasm in bringing the Gospel to others, to the Gentile who have not yet
been exposed to God’s holy word.
As I thought about Paul and his letter to the
Romans, I thought about the different missionaries and evangelizers we have had
in our faith throughout the ages. I thought about the zeal they had for the Good News of Jesus Christ and the sacrifices they made in practicing their faith. As I was looking at the list of saints for today, I came across the names the blessed martyrs of the Spanish Civil War, which took place
in Spain from 1936 to 1939. They are saints whom we celebrate today. Almost 1,000 martyrs from the Spanish Civil War
have been beatified or canonized by the last three popes. Those killed in that war include 15 bishops,
4,172 priests and seminarians, 2,364 monks and friars, and 283 nuns – a
staggering number who have died for the faith. The Spanish Civil War still inspires a lot of
conflicting emotions in Spain, but the Vatican responded that these
beatifications and canonizations do not pertain to ideology or politics, but
rather to the personal virtue and holiness of the men and women who gave their lives for their faith and
their courage in living out their faith and their vocations. This week, we recognized National Vocation
Awareness Week, encouraging vocations in particular to ordained ministry to the
priesthood and the diaconate and consecrated religious life. May we pray for vocations in our community and in
our Church.
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