Yet again in his days in Rome, Eugene the Oblate, narrates how his faith is inspired and strengthened by the presence of the signs of so many who gave their lives as an oblation to God.
I had the devotion to go and offer Mass on the tomb of Saint Bibiana whose feast the Church celebrates today. This church is situated between Saint Mary Major and Holy Cross of Jerusalem in the middle of the fields where we can no longer find any traces of the magnificent palaces which adorned these places in Roman times…
At the lower end of the church, one sees the column to which Saint Bibiana was attached and scourged to death. The cemetery of Pope Saint Anastasius in which were buried three thousand two hundred and sixty martyrs, not counting women and children, is located below the church. What memories, what respect, what devotion these objects inspire!
Roman Diary, 2 December 1825, EO XVII
“You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things – to compete. You can be just an ordinary person, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.” Sir Edmund Hillary
On first reading I wondered about Eugene when he said “…in which were buried three thousand two hundred and sixty martyrs, not counting women and children…”. I wondered why he was separating the women and children from being martyrs – my own woundedness jumping into the fray. If allowed to run free this could take over, for it is like a small snowball that gains size and power as it rolls down hill.
Perhaps though he was simply thinking and writing of the immensity of it all. Of the sheer numbers. And I started to think of the huge numbers of peoples, who throughout our history “… gave their lives as an oblation to God”. I think of the many poor and abandoned, the very ones we are called to love and serve and how their lives are indeed filled with their own oblation to God, hidden and unnoticed. I know many of them. Perhaps it is in how I look at them, with a heart so filled with anger and righteousness that there is no room for anything else, or with a heart open and loving, able to see and greet all that it encounters, to be inspired by that into a life of it’s own.