Memory of Jesus crucified

Memorial of Martin Luther King, killed in 1968 in Memphis in the United States. With him we remember all those who hunger and thirst for justice.

Reading of the Word of God

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

Wisdom 2,1.12-22

And this is the false argument they use, 'Our life is short and dreary, there is no remedy when our end comes, no one is known to have come back from Hades. Let us lay traps for the upright man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life, reproaches us for our sins against the Law, and accuses us of sins against our upbringing. He claims to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. We see him as a reproof to our way of thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down; for his kind of life is not like other people's, and his ways are quite different. In his opinion we are counterfeit; he avoids our ways as he would filth; he proclaims the final end of the upright as blessed and boasts of having God for his father. Let us see if what he says is true, and test him to see what sort of end he will have. For if the upright man is God's son, God will help him and rescue him from the clutches of his enemies. Let us test him with cruelty and with torture, and thus explore this gentleness of his and put his patience to the test. Let us condemn him to a shameful death since God will rescue him -- or so he claims.' This is the way they reason, but they are misled, since their malice makes them blind. They do not know the hidden things of God, they do not hope for the reward of holiness, they do not believe in a reward for blameless souls.

 

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.

Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory

The sacred author puts into the mouths of the "wicked" words of accusation against the "righteous ones," thus manifesting the nastiness that often descends upon believers and makes their lives difficult. The testimony and martyrdom of Martin Luther King are an emblem of the persecutions that still fall over Christians for they are of "scandal" to the culture of violence that seems imposing more and more among nations. Anything that stands in the way of the profit of the rich and the strong against the poor and the weak should be eliminated, even with violence. The testimony of the "righteous ones," - the new martyrs who are like sheep in a world of wolves - is a living contradiction against the spreading of the violence of evil. Their mere presence annoys and even becomes unbearable. The Biblical passage describes the growing hatred against the righteous: from plotting to insults, till the condemnation to death, in a blasphemous challenge against God himself. It is easy to see in this passage the face of Jesus, the righteous one who suffers and dies because of the wickedness of men overpowered by the evil spirit. Next to Jesus appear the faces of all those believers who still today are "persecuted for the sake of righteousness" (Mt 5:10). The author of the Letter to Diognetus-a very ancient Christian text dating from the times of persecution--writes that Christians "are in the world that which is the soul in the body ... The soul loves the flesh which hates it and the members; also Christians love those who hate them. The soul is enveloped by the body and yet it sustains the body; also Christians are in the world like in a prison but they sustain the world." Being "the soul of the world" means that only such love is breath of life.