SAINT CHARLES LWANGA AND HIS COMPANIONS (martyred 1886-87)

June 3

“Master of Pages,” reputedly the handsomest man in all Uganda, Charles Lwanga, lay catechist, courageously led about forty teenaged boys, Catholics and Anglicans, on a forty-mile forced march to martyrdom for their common Christian faith. Teaching each other the hymns of their different churches, they strengthened one another for the ordeal ahead. King Mwanga, himself barely twenty, had ordered them executed for being “those who pray.” But these royal pages were the king’s male harem, who, now Christians, refused what pious accounts demurely describe as his “unreasonable demands.” Some were clubbed to death, most burned alive; the youngest, thirteen-year old Saint Kizito, whom Charles had often shielded from the King’s lust; the most tragic, Saint Mbaga, whose father was his executioner! In 1964, Paul VI canonized the young Catholics and praised their Anglican companions, recalling the heroism of early Christianity’s African martyrs, which we modern Christians of far less faith never expected to see repeated. Forty years after the pope’s words, what does our faith cost us? Heroism aside, how generous is our response?

 —Peter Scagnelli, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.