Catechesis With Pope Francis

Pope Francis: "This fidelity to the style of Jesus — which is a style of hope — all the way to death, was to be called a very beautiful name by the first Christians: “martyrdom”, which means “testimony”. There were so many other possibilities offered by the vocabulary: it could have been called heroism, abnegation, self-sacrifice. And instead the early Christians called it a name that is scented with discipleship. The martyrs do not live for themselves, they do not fight so as to assert their own ideas, and they accept to have to die solely through fidelity to the Gospel. Martyrdom is not even the supreme ideal of Christian life, because above it there is charity, that is, the love towards God and towards neighbour. The Apostle Paul says it so well in the hymn to charity: “If I give away all I have and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, it serves me nothing” (1 Cor 13, 3). The idea that suicide bombers can be called “martyrs” is repugnant to Christians: there is nothing in their end that ca