I will share a personal experience: my father was posted in Jammu & Kashmir during the Kargil war. I remember my mom sitting in front of television throughout the day reading tickers which had name of the martyrs.
They're not put on earth to be martyrs; they have to want to come out. It depends on your culture, where you work, where you live. Each person's circumstances are unique.
Martyrs - those killed because of their Catholic faith - can be beatified even if they don't perform a miracle. However, all beatified individuals must stage a certifiable miracle before being made a saint.
The author of the Gospel of Judas wasn't against martyrdom, and he didn't ever insult the martyrs. He said it's one thing to die for God if you have to do that. But it's another thing to say that's what God wants, that this is a glorification of God.
Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
The heart was always seen as the noblest of the internal organs as well as the most vital. The hearts of martyrs or future candidates for sainthood would be preserved, but never their livers, say, or the entrails - at least not on their own; it was either the heart by itself or the whole lot together.
I am telling you before anything, that the blood of the martyrs and the injured will not go in vain. And I would like to affirm, I will not hesitate to punish those who are responsible fiercely. I will hold those in charge who have violated the rights of our youth with the harshest punishment stipulated in the law.
We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs.
What Richard and Mildred Loving did was, by their nature, not by any calculus, they separated themselves from the political conversation. They did not have an agenda. They did not want to be martyrs. They did not want to be symbols of a movement.
While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.
