A SPIRITUALITY OF MARTYRDOM
That belief continued even after the persecutions stopped and the Roman powers stopped killing Christians. The only thing that changed was how that martyrdom was now conceived.
A rich spirituality developed within which martyrdom began to be conceived more metaphorically, as giving out one’s blood, drop-by-drop, through selflessness, through sacrificing one’s hopes and dreams for others, through giving away one’s life through duty, through letting oneself be constantly called out of one’s personal agenda to respond to the needs of others.
When we try to live as if our lives are about ourselves, we either end up too full of ourselves or too empty of everything else, inflated or depressed. Put simply, we either end up dying in selflessness on one hill or we end up full of ourselves and self-hatred on some other hill! There’s no neutral space between. Only one thing can save us from infantile grandiosity, dangerous self-righteousness, bitterness about life, and aging badly, and that is some form of martyrdom.
We are made in God’s image and likeness and, because of this, carry inside of ourselves an immense fire; a fire for love, creativity, glory, greatness, and transcendence.
It is a fire to carry others, feed others, create delight for them, even as it is an energy to die for them. It is a fire to act as Jesus did and therefore it is a fire for crucifixion, for martyrdom. We are born to live for others and we are born to die for them, with one and the same energy, and we are only happy when we are about the business of doing both.
This longing for martyrdom has various disguises, some lofty and others less so. The desire for martyrdom manifests itself in the desire for heroism, the desire for greatness, the desire to be a great lover, the desire to leave a mark, to be immortal. Underpinning all of these is the desire to take love and meaning to their ultimate, altruistic end: death in sacrifice for others.
This is the deep instinctual pattern written into the soul itself and it posits that real maturity lies in being stretched truly tall, on some cross, in crucifixion.
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