The Blood of the Martyrs...

The Blood of the Martyrs

From a eulogy for Saint Peter Chanel, priest and martyr (1803-1841)

The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians

As soon as Peter embraced religious life in the Society of Mary, he was sent at his own request to the missions of Oceania, and landed on the island of Futuna in the Pacific Ocean, where the name of Christ had never before been preached. A lay-brother who was constantly at his side gave the following account of his life in the missions.

“Because of his labors he was often burned by the heat of the sun, and famished with hunger, and he would return home wet with perspiration and completely exhausted. Yet he always remained in good spirits, courageous and energetic, as if he were returning from a pleasure jaunt, and this would happen almost every day.

“He could never refuse anything to the Futunians, even to those who persecuted him; he always made excuses for them and never rejected them, even though they were often rude and troublesome. He displayed an unparalleled mildness toward everyone on all occasions without exception. It is no wonder then that the natives used to call him the ‘good-hearted man.’ He once told a fellow religious: ‘In such a difficult mission one has to be holy.”

Quietly he preached Christ and the Gospel, but there was little response. Still with invincible perseverance he pursued his missionary tasks on both the human and religious level, relying on the example and words of Christ: There is one who sows and another who reaps. And he constantly prayed for help from the Mother of God, to whom he was especially devoted.
By his preaching of Christianity he destroyed the cult of the evil spirits, which the chieftains of the Futunians encouraged in order to keep the tribe under their rule. This was the reason they subjected Peter to a most cruel death, hoping that by killing him the seeds of the Christian religion which he had sowed would be annihilated.

On the day before his martyrdom he had said: “It does not matter if I die. Christ’s religion is so deeply rooted on this island that it cannot be destroyed by my death.”
The blood of this martyr benefited, in the first place, the natives of Futuna, for a few years later they were all converted to the faith of Christ. But it benefited as well the other islands of Oceania, where Christian churches, which claim Peter as their first martyr, are now flourishing.

Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings

Saint Peter Chanel (1803-1841) was born in the town of Cuet in France in 1803. After ordination to the priesthood in 1827, he was engaged in pastoral work until he read letters from foreign missionaries spreading the gospel in foreign lands. He joined the Society of Mary, called ‘Marists’ 1831 and was sent to Oceania and was assigned to the island of Futuna located in the South Pacific.

The savage tribes there had never seen a missionary before and Peter endured many hardships. Warfare between rival tribes and cannibalism had taken it toll on the island’s population. Peter learned the native language, attended the sick and baptized many earning him the name “the man with the kind heart” by the natives. But the tribe’s king, Niuluki, while favorable to him at first, became jealous of the new religion and carried ordered a cruel and gruesome death for the missionary.

On April 28, 1841, at day-break, the king’s warriors assembled and after wounding many of Peter’s fellow missionaries, proceeded to his hut. One shattered his arm and wounded his left temple with a war-club. Another struck him to the ground with a bayonet. A third beat him severely with a club and finally split open the martyr’s skull with an adze. He was 38. Peter Chanel’s remains, although quickly buried, were later retrieved by the commander of the French naval station at Tahti and taken to France by ship. The following year two new Marist missionaries arrived to continue his work. With great success they converted the entire island to Christianity. Peter Chanel was canonized a saint in 1954 and was the first martyr of the South Seas.
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