Thursday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 3, 2021

The Feast of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions

Mark 12:28-34

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied, “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no other commandment greater than these.” The scribe said to him, “Well said, teacher. You are right in saying,He is One and there is no other than he. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  Charles Lwanga, whose feast is celebrated today, was born in 1860 and was martyred in 1886.  He lived and died in an African kingdom located approximately where Uganda is today.  As a young man, he was made the chief of the boys who served as pages to the king of their country, Mwanga II.  This king was a wicked man, given to pedophilia, often involving his pages.  He was also quite insecure as a man, which is typical of the wicked, and this showed in his rule.  Fearing the spread of the Faith in his land and also resenting Lwanga’s attempts to protect the pages from him, he initiated a savage persecution of the Christians there.  Catholics and Anglicans alike suffered as a result.  Charles Lwanga and twenty others, including the pages, were brought before the king and told to renounce the Faith but they would not, and on that day, June 3, 1886, they were taken out of the city and burned to death.  For them, “The Lord our God is Lord alone!” meant everything, and loving him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength meant giving their lives up for him.  They also practiced the second commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” inasmuch as they refused to take any part in the king’s pedophiliac actions, preventing him from committing grave sins.  

These and all the Christians who have lived out the two great commandments to the point of martyrdom look out at us from heaven and offer us their example of steadfastness and of their hope for heaven.  They show us what love and faith really mean.  They also offer us their prayers.  In Revelation 5, 8, we read: “The four living creatures and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of fragrances, which are the prayers of saints.”  The “creatures” and “ancients” here are signs of the Church of God to which these souls belong.  We may not be called upon to suffer as the African martyrs did, but we are called to love as they did, and spurred on by their examples and prayers, we may do so.