If anyone thinks Christianity is a stale and monolithic experience of sleepy and repetitive prayers that belong to an “Old World” mentality whose day has come and gone, or the exclusive property of European cathedrals and classrooms, I encourage him or her to look online for a video of the celebration of the Ugandan martyrs, held every June 3. This liturgical event commemorates the execution of Charles Lwanga and many other Christians under the terrible reign of Mwanga II in the 1800s. Upwards of 500,000 Africans attend, balancing both the solemnity of surplices and cassocks with leopard skins, drums and indigenous dances.
A local celebration is held in the Camden Diocese each year.
Lwanga is a fascinating figure. Catechized by visiting missionaries, he converted to Christianity. At first, the local ruler, Mwanga, was supportive of his newfound religion. But as he saw that Lwanga took the moral dimensions of the faith seriously (including the prohibition of sexual mores which were common in the tribal society), he began to insist that all of the new Christians renounce their faith.
Lwanga and his companions refused to do so, even under threat of death. Eventually Lwanga was marched past the priest who converted him toward a pile of wood, which tradition says he himself helped arrange. He was there burned alive. In emulation of Christ he remained silent throughout, “like a lamb led before the shearers,” until immediately before his death in the flames he let out a pensive and plaintive prayer of two simple words – “Oh God.”
Tertullian once famously asserted that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. By this he meant that those instances which would seem to lead to a weakening or extinguishing of the faith – gruesome persecutions, elaborate torments, countless executions – instead had a mysterious and paradoxical effect. Rather than leading others to flee from such threats and suffering, through the power of the Holy Spirit, these martyrdoms (from the Greek for “witness”) instead inspired people to investigate what could possibly be the cause of such seemingly insane commitment to an otherworldly cause.
Father Robert Barron asks if Lwanga, lying amidst those raging fires, could ever have imagined the untold throngs of people who would come to worship God ecstatically on the site of his execution. Could he have fathomed in those stoic moments that his own silent witness would make him, like Peter, a fisher of men (and women)? Or connect him forever to Stephen, the first martyr to die for his unflinching commitment to Christ? Today African Christianity is thriving in ways and numbers unparalleled in Europe or North America. A continent once so ravaged by the atrocities of European slave-traders is today inspiring the world in their vibrant faith and enduring love for God and one another. Lwanga and his companions continue to speak loudly, even in their silence, to millions of people in every nation who are in dire need of such courageous teaching.
Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., of Collingswood, is a Research Associate at Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies in Northeast England.
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