We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors. The Church honors today the memory of protomartyrs of sub-Saharan Africa, St. Charles Lwanga and his twenty-one companions. They are among the more than one hundred Christians who were martyred between the period 15^th November 1885-27^th January 1887 when King Mwanga of Uganda launched persecutions of Christians in response to their opposition to his homosexual tendencies and corrupt court. St. Charles Lwanga, who was the master of the King’s pages (the young men who were being groomed to serve the king), was martyred with fourteen other pages on June 3, 1886. St. Charles Lwanga is the patron saint of African Catholic Youth Action.
The story of the martyrdom of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions reads pretty much like the stories of the early Church martyrs. Most of those who were killed by king Mwanga were youngsters (the youngest was fourteen years old) who ordinarily would still have been enjoying their early teenage years while under the guidance of their parents. Secondly, the Christian faith had just been introduced to this part of the continent, and one would have assumed that it was still premature to find individuals who were zealous about giving up their lives for this novel faith. Despite St. Charles Lwanga and his companions being mere neophites, they still managed to exemplify the very courage and zeal that the seven brothers in today’s First reading demonstrated as they defended their faith. St. Charles Lwanga and his companions chose to die rather than betray the virtues upon which their Christian faith was based.
The Beatitudes, which are the subject of the Gospel reading for today, presents us with the virtues which are meant to guide a disciple in his/her quest to follow Christ. Although the virtues proposed by Jesus in the Beatitudes come to us in a Christian “outfit,” they are, as a matter of fact, values that should define any and all human societies. St. Charles Lwanga and his companions were readily won over by the Christian faith because they were already living the very Beatitudes that Christianity proposes. This is perhaps why they did not hesitate to choose death rather than violate the virtues that defined their very lives.