Today is the feast of Charles Lwanga and his companions; today we remember the Uganda Martyrs.
As Pope Paul VI mentioned at his homily in the canonization, "The African Martyrs add another page to the Church's roll of honor, they herald the dawn of a new age."
Yes, we have new members of the honor roll. How did they get there? It wasn't because they died but rather how they died.
The King of Uganda was not a man of great virtue and moral standard. He busied himself with trying to get the young men of Uganda to participate in perverse sexual acts. Charles and his companions went around teaching the young men to resist and not to give in to such depravity. He invited the young men to embrace their catholic faith fully.
The King wasn't to happy about this, so he had Charles and 21 of his companions arrested. He then convicted them of crimes against the throne and punished them to death by burning. Before they were to be executed by fire, the king invited Charles and his companions to save their life. The King put it in their hands whether or not they were to be burned; all they had to do was to renounce their faith.
Charles and his companions refused to take matters in to their own hands. Rather they trusted the Hands of God, from whom all things matter. They chose to wait for God.
This is what it means to wait as Christians, to be true martyrs, isn't to simply die but it means to refuse to take matters into our own hands.
Sin is just this. When we sin, we actually take matters into our own hands. We retaliate against the patience of God, we retaliate against the the patience God demands of us. This is what temptation is all about.
The art of waiting as a Christian means to always refuse to take matters into our own hands, trusting in the hands of God by living His will and seeking to follow his ways regardless of the pressure to do otherwise.
This is how we enter onto the honor roll of Heaven.
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