What I'll tell Margaret about martyrs.

We always celebrate the feast days of the saints for whom our children are named. This year our youngest child will celebrate the feast of Saint Margaret on an extra-special day--Nov. 16, 1994 also marks the fifth anniversary of the murders in El Salvador of six Jesuits--Fathers Ignacio Ellacuria, Amando Lopez, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramon Moreno, Ignacio Martin-Baro, joaquin Lopez y Lopez, and their cook, Elba Ramos, and her daughter, Celina.

Our 10-year-old daughter is not too young to understand that these deaths helped galvanize opposition to U.S. support of a brutal civil war. To some degree, she can see how the 75,000 deaths in El Salvador orphaned countless children and brought tragedy to many families. She knows enough of the violence in this country to make the comparison to a whole country at war. As her family, her school, and her parish community try to stop the brutality here in the U.S., she can understand how the Jesuits worked for peace in El Salvador, their deaths the final contributions in a long process.

But there is a deeper meaning to Christian martyrdom than its effect on politics. It is that story I want to tell Margaret. As she grows up, she will need heroes and role models. This story is filled with them.

Once upon a time...

The story I shall weave for her began some 40 yers ago, when young seminarians came from Spain to El Salvador. Like any group, they had their disagreements and even a few battles. They argued vehemently over what direction their high school and college should take. The dilemma: ally with the wealthy ruling class or commit to the poor. The safe course would protect the national subsidy. The course they took lost the money and incurred the government's wrath.

This group of Jesuits forged the University of Central America (UCA) into a public forum for the voiceless. Their weekly news-letter drew attention to atrocities the military preferred to keep secret. All their scholarly disciplines, research, analysis, and publications, focused on the gravest social problems of their time.

Despite heavy teaching loads during the week, these Jesuits were devoted to their weekend ministries in the poorest barrios and most forsaken patches of countryside. According to Jon Sobrino's "small, unnecessary memoir," Companions of Jesus: The Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador (Orbis, 1990), "In this God of the lowly--God ever little--they found the God who is even greater."

When machine guns sprayed the streets of San Salvador, the Jesuits proclaimed dialogue and peace. When a crazed government wantonly tortured and murdered the poor, the Jesuits repeated the gospel truth that they were precious, unique, and important.

The source of their strength was an inner cohesion that all the rifles in the world could not intimidate. The Jesuits' bond was as simple as skipping lunch once a week to play handball together at Santa Tecia, their old novitiate, and as complex as their acdemic disciplines. In the genius of the Mystical Body, they brought unique talents to the same cause, using their gifts for the service of the powerless.

The saintly character sketch 

While we commemorate their community, we also remember the martyrs as individuals. Both together and separately, they leave us good news, and in Sobrino's words, "On this sinful and senseless earth, it is possible to live like human beings and like Christians."

The human dimension is the most humorous and most encouraging part of the story. Father Tim McMahon, S.J. knew his teachers at UCA well enough to say, "They were so ordinary. And if they could do it, I can."

"You, too, can be a saint" is the underlying theme when we tell stories of saints. And this story for Margaret is no exception. I will tell her the funny details, such as how Amando Lopez joked that he'd been fired from more jobs than most people ever get. He grew African violets in an office filled with the aroma of Captain Black tobacco. Exhausted after a long weekend of ministry in the countryside, Lopez would relax with an "outrageously stupid Kung Fu movie." Ignacio Martin-Baro had studied at the University of Chicago, so he'd joke about the White Sox and play English songs on his guitar. Joaquin Lopez y Lopez drove a VW with the floorboards rusted through.

Father Doug Marcouiller, S.J. remembers Elba Romos fondly: "I'd wake to the sound of her laughter in the morning and the smell of her roasting cashews." The first cake she ever baked was for his birthday--compensating for a cake smashed on his previous birthday in the earthquake of 1986. She fretted like any mother over her beautiful daughter; her last gesture was her leg flung to protect Celina.

From the homely details emerges a picture of daily life infused with grace. As ordinary as the martyrs might seem, they risked their lives with rare good humor. Doris Donnelly could have been describing them when she wrote in Spiritual Fitness (Harper Collins).

Threatened and frightened people will protect all kinds of things: possessions, reputations, status, achievements. But redeemed women and men will count everything as 'folly' except service of the Lord. If that doesn't require a sense of humor, nothing I know does.

From its earlthy, humorous roots, the story moves to higher branches--the inspiration of men and women living as resurrected people. The day she died, Ramos washed her best dress to give to a woman displaced by the bombing. As the violence increased, Ignacio Ellacuria declared, "We must think harder." Because Ellacuria knew people on both sides of the conflict, he encouraged dialogue and worked for a negotiated settlement. Lopez y Lopez began a network of schools that trained 8,000 Salvadorans with the practical skills to make a living.

After the murder of Father Rutillio Grande, S.J., death threats against priests became more serious. Yet Segundo Montes dismissed warnings to flee, saying: "God's grace does not leave, so neither can we."

Ignacio Martin-Baro was so well-known internationally for his publications that he insisted on foreign journalists keeping appointments for interviews. But his beloved campesinos could always enter his office without waiting. His was the only voice heard shouting during the slaughter, "This is unjust! You're rotten!"

At his funeral, a young girl said of Martin-Baro: "I never knew such goodness existed." This girl first encountered Martin-Baro after she had attempted suicide in the street outside his office, and the priest found her medical care, money, a job, and a place to stay. He and his brothers saw the face of Christ in a suffering people and worked to bring him down from the cross. McMahon says of their model: "I can't turn my back on their dream. What they stood for is what I want to stand for. I want to continue living out their hope."

To some extent, we can all find ways to infuse our lives with courage and hope like theirs. As Father Stephen Privett, S.J. points out: "We have been given the same Word, graced by the same Spirit, and nourished at the same table." At the deepest level, we are joined to these martyrs and the whole Mystical Body.

As she grows, Margaret will surely hear criticism of the church--the charge of hypocrisy that its wealth insults the homeless and starving. To such critiques, the Jesuits of El Salvador offer a healthy antidote. Those who wonder if anyone pays the price for high ideals could for an answer count the 100 bullet holes in the Jesuit residence.

These martyrs could have turned the UCA campus with its lush gardens into an academic ivory tower. They came from Spain--a society more hierarchical than ours--yet they chose to stand with people dramatically unlike themselves. The ultimate malice of their murder, Sobrino points out, was to leave the poor even more unprotected. McMahon adds with stark directness, "Their brains were kicked out of their heads because they dared to put them at the service of the gospel's truth."

Margaret will be saddened by the deaths of such brave, good people. But I will remind her of Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in the garden and discovering that he had triumphed over death. Then I will show her pictures of Mr. Ramos's rose garden, surely a modern symbol of resurrection. There, the father of Celina and husband of Elba has planted six red rose bushes for the Jesuits and two yellow ones for the women. From ground that had been wet with blood, new life now flowers. Perhaps that symbolizes the meaning of martyrdom.