ENTERING THE KING'S SERVICE


SAINTS ANDREW DUNG-LAC AND COMPANIONS, MARTYRS

Dan 1:1-6,8-20; Dan 3:52-56; Lk 21:1-4

Our Gift to the King of Kings

The faith we profess in God has implications for our lives here on earth. The first thing our expression of faith in God offers us is the awareness of divine intention for us and his creation at large. The scriptures are replete with the intention of God for us in this life. The fact that everything in the visible creation has a span is evident to our senses and in our daily experience. To this daily fact, revelation adds to our faith the understanding that we will appear before the creator after our temporary life on earth, to give an account of our lives. Each of us is supposed to live with the intention of making ourselves as good as we can to appear before our creator and God. If we understand this temporal life as a time to live and prepare to present ourselves to our God, who is infinitely powerful and all-knowing, then we would live more cautiously. A profession of faith in God that lacks this basic foundation for a Christian life would surely miss the target. Christianity is a spiritual movement before being a social gathering. If we lack the Christian spirit, we cannot be Christians even when we attend church or a Christian gathering every Sunday. The Christian spirit is the Holy Spirit who creates a strong attachment in each Christian to Jesus Christ, the Saviour. The attachment characterises the Christian life.

The spiritual attachment arises at the moment of conversion when we learn that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sins and damnation. The fact that Jesus died to save us implies we have to live to please him. The four Hebrews brought into the service of the king of Babylon understood they needed to be their best to enter the king’s service. “The king assigned them a daily allowance of food and wine from his own royal table. They were to receive an education lasting for three years, after which they were expected to be fit for the king’s society.” Something similar is true of our Christian vocation; we have been saved and chosen by the King of kings, who has assigned us to the Holy Spirit to train and get us ready for his divine society; He feeds us from his divine table daily with his own body and blood, providing for everything we need to appear before him at the end of our lives. Are we as cautious as the four Hebrew boys were to keep ourselves pure and worthy of the society of God? “Daniel, who was most anxious not to defile himself with the food and wine from the royal table, begged the chief eunuch to spare him this defilement.” In our case, we should be prudent in eating what comes from the divine table daily to grow into the likeness of our King and God. Daniel and the three were being trained for a worldly society, but they looked beyond that to train themselves for the divine society to which God has called them.

They were able to overcome the temptation of eating from the profane table of the worldly king because they had their gaze on the table of the King of kings and desired to join the divine society after this life. To make it to the divine society and appear before the God of all, we must live daily as if we are already there. The poverty-stricken widow praised by the Lord had this outlook: to please God alone. “As Jesus looked up, he saw rich people putting their offerings into the treasury; then he happened to notice a poverty-stricken widow putting in two small coins, and he said, ‘I tell you truly, this poor widow has put in more than any of them.” She gave from her awareness of God’s presence and providence. The same is true of Saints Andrew Dung-Lac and his companion martyrs, who lived and sacrificed their lives with the desire of being fit for divine society. Their lives were seeds for the growth of the Christian faith in Vietnam. They are composed of missionary clergy, local clergy, and the ordinary Christian people. They shared the labour of apostolic work and together faced death to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel. Over the whole territory of Vietnam, about 30,000 Christians were killed in the savage persecution decreed by the lords and emperors of the country from 1625 to 1886. May their prayers help us to live in constant awareness of God’s presence and providence.

Let us pray: O God, source and origin of all fatherhood, who kept the Martyrs Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and his companions faithful to the Cross of your Son, even to the shedding of their blood, grant, through their intercession, that, spreading your love among our brothers and sisters, we may be your children both in name and in truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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