Sitting in the splendour that is St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, waiting for the Easter Vigil to begin, my thoughts turned to the Notre-Dame de Paris fire at the start of Holy Week. I recalled my own devastation as I watched helplessly the flames licking that ancient house of worship, that heart – however faintly beating – of Christianity in the West.
Then morning came and with it, hope: the sun’s rays streamed through the gaping hole created by the vault’s collapse; heaven opened, and the fingers of God touched the gleaming gold cross that stood behind the high altar, unreached by the devastation.
At this Easter Vigil I felt that hope as I witnessed eight adult catechumens receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist from the hands of Archbishop Charles Scicluna. It made me reflect on my own Baptism and all the rights and duties that come with it.
These eight people made a conscious decision to join the Catholic Church, to follow Jesus Christ and all his hard sayings. It was a joyful experience for me to see them go up one by one first to be baptised, then to be confirmed and lastly to receive Holy Communion. Their joy was plain to see on their faces, on the faces of the godparents, their sponsors and their relatives. How faithful am I to my baptismal calling?
How joyful am I in my life of faith? How grafted I am to Christ and his Church? What witness am I giving to these ‘younger’ brothers and sisters in faith? How much of what it means to be a Christian can I really convey to these new brothers and sisters? How prepared am I to give – with gentleness and respect – a convincing answer to everyone who asks me the reason for the hope that I have?
How far am I willing to go to defend what I have received from those who came before me? How willing I am not to conform to the world?
On Easter Sunday, these questions were distilled into a single one: Am I willing to die for my faith? My brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka had been at Easter Mass, just as I was. They had been rejoicing together in church – in the risen Christ – just like we were as the thought occurred to me. Many of the slain in Sri Lanka were Christian worshippers gathered on the most holy day of the Christian calendar, to celebrate the event that is the linchpin of our faith.
The dead in Sri Lanka are victims slain in hatred of the faith they joyfully professed
Christians in too many parts of the world have targets on their backs, brighter when they sit in pews. In this regard, they are not different from Muslims in mosques and Jews in synagogues, who are targeted around the world. The point is not that terrorist attacks are perpetrated solely against Christians. We know that is not true. Nevertheless, Christians are persecuted – hundreds of millions of them, according to some statistics.
Open Doors, an organisation that gauges Christian persecution in high risk places, calculates that 345 Christians are killed every month in hatred of the faith. Western media will cover incidents like those in Sri Lanka, where there was great loss of life, but they are mysteriously reluctant to call the thing what it is when it happens.
Are Christians in the West being persecuted, too? To equate our minor inconvenience with bodily persecution is at least disrespectful. The equation happens, though. When it does, it is often hysterical and absurd. Pope Francis, however, has spoken of two types of persecution against Christians: the first is violent, brutal; then there is the “polite” persecution. In the West we find the “polite one, under the guise of culture, modernity and progress” that targets conscience. It is the type of attitude that makes it easy to gloss over the fact the victims in Sri Lanka were slaughtered because of their faith.
Masked as culture, the attitude is also creeping in the Church. Both lay people and leading prelates increasingly espouse a diluted – supposedly more palatable – version of Christianity. This leaves many believers exposed to opprobrium and derision not only from cultural elites but from their own brothers and sisters in faith.
The situation of the Christian is always precarious: We cannot conform to the world, nor can we retreat from it. In an opinion piece for the Financial Times in 2012, Benedict XVI exhorted Christians to engage with the world without bending the knee before the false gods proposed today – not because they are shackled by an antiquated worldview but because they are free from “the constraints of ideology and inspired by such a noble vision of human destiny that they cannot collude with anything that undermines it”.
The conflagration of Notre-Dame at the start of Holy Week and the extermination of Christians on Easter Day have one unifying symbol, the Cross, the same cross that was anointed on the foreheads of the catechumens by Archbishop Scicluna at the Easter Vigil. For Christians, the ancient Paris cathedral is no mere monument, but a living place of worship. The dead in Sri Lanka are victims slain in hatred of the faith they joyfully professed: that is the dictionary definition of a martyr.
The Cross reminds us that Christ has redeemed the world and with his resurrection death has lost its sting.
Alessandra Dee Crespo is Chancellor of the Church’s Regional Tribunal of Second Instance serving Malta, Gozo, Gibraltar and Libya.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece