ST. MARTIN OF TOURS HOMILY 11TH NOVEMBER 2021
Remembering is required of Christians. One of the perennial failings of the Israelites was how quickly they forgot all that God had done for them, or how they didn’t want to be indebted to God for all He had done for them. Remembering brings responsibilities. If you remember something important, you have to do something. At a certain point you realise your Mum was right about writing all those thank you cards. Remembrance makes us grateful, remembrance makes us sorrow, and a true Christian memory includes sorrow for our sins, gratitude for all God has sone for us, and a remembrance of all he has taught us. What we remember changes the way we live now.
Our Christian faith, our Church, is founded upon remembering. We gather to remember. In our Mass, we hear in the words of consecration, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We remember to give thanks together. Remembering is our duty. It is impossible to be Christian and choose to forget. Part of becoming a better Christian is to begin to remember more.
Today we remember St. Martin of Tours.
St. Martin died a little over 1,600 years ago, in 397. He was a bishop in the fourth century. However, there were dozens of good bishops in that age, so why remember Martin? We have nothing that he wrote, so he is not remembered as an author or doctor of the Church. He was not martyred.
As a young man, Martin was a soldier in the Roman army, conscripted and following in his father’s footsteps. He was a catechumen preparing to become a Christian. One winter day he met at the gate of the city a poor man, almost naked, shaking with cold, begging alms. Martin, taking his sword split his cloak in two pieces and gave half his cloak to the naked beggar. The accounts we have say that Martin had a dream that night and in his sleep saw Jesus Christ, dressed in that half of the garment which he had given away, and he heard Jesus say, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with this garment.” His biographer says that Martin “flew to be baptized.”
It’s worth noting that it was an act of charity that was the catalyst for a profound conversion in this young man’s life. He gave, half of what he had, and he received God’s graces in abundance; the person who received most on that day was not the beggar, but the giver.
Martin had participated courageously in the defense of Roman Gaul against a barbarian invasion. He appeared before the emperor Julian who offered him a bounty for his war efforts. Martin refused, telling the emperor, “I have served you as a soldier; let me now serve Christ.”
The emperor accused Martin of cowardice, but Martin offered to go into battle the next day against the enemy unarmed, and to advance against the enemy in the name of Christ. The emperor had Martin thrown into prison. However, the enemy petitioned for a truce and the war ended. Martin was released.
He was perhaps the first consciencious objector we are aware of. Sometimes it takes courage to fight, sometimes it takes courage not to, prudence and attentiveness to God’s wisdom will help us to know the difference.
Courage is not about being indifferent to death, it’s about loving something more than existence. The rebel without a cause is not courageous, but the one who loves something worthy of his love, and the one who will endure in that love in spite of fear, that one has courage. Sometimes courage will call us to attack what threatens the good that we cherish, as when a soldier takes up arms to protect the liberty of his fellow countrymen, and sometimes courage will call us to endure, as the martyr withstands threats and torture, refusing to renunciate her love of Christ.
In any event, Martin left military service and became a priest. He founded one of the earliest monasteries in France at Tours. About the year 371 the people of Tours demanded Martin for their Bishop. He served as bishop of Tours while maintaining his monastic way of life. When Martin converted, Gaul was still mostly pagan, but paganism decreased dramatically in his lifetime.
Remember that cloak? For centuries that relic of Martin was kept at the monastery he founded. His half, I presume, not the beggar’s?!
French kings would carry that cloak into battle. Our modern word “chaplain” comes from the French word, capellanus, used in the Middle Ages to identify the priest who carried St. Martin’s cloak with the armies of the King.
The monastery became a pilgrimage site and devotion to St. Martin grew over the centuries. Many miracles were attributed to him. The French army frequently attributed successes in war to the protection of St. Martin.
Perhaps the intercession of St Martin was sometimes well sought, and at other times not so. We should be wary of making the saints part of our vainglory.
In any event, the secular movement in France attempted to erase all memory of Catholic France, including the tomb and relics of Martin.
In the 19th century secularism, agnosticism and anti-clericalism caused many to desert the Church. But the memory of goodness has a way of surviving the vicissitudes of history.
St. Martin’s popularity was renewed during the First World War. Anticlericalism declined as priests were conscripted for service in the French armed forces. Despite being an anti-clerical law, it gave priests and seminarians once more a way to be amongst the people they were called to serve. And the men came to respect their clergy once more. They saw the courage of their chaplains up close.
Over the course that bloody conflict five thousand French priests, seminarians, and religious were killed while serving during that war, an astonishing number.
At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month on St. Martin’s day, that is about eight hours earlier today, the First World War ended. The French saw that moment in 1918 as another sign of the Saint’s intercession. Within a few years the Western world remembered that day as Armistice Day.
We are called to remember, as Christians, our faith, and the cost of freedom to practice it. We are called to remember those who gave their lives. Remembering is our duty. By remembering we enter into the depths of the gifts we received, and we are able to see the sacrifices of the givers more clearly.