3 June 2013
Memorial of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs
Every year, this feast is quaintly described as a martyrdom “because they would not accede to the king’s unreasonable demands.”
The “unreasonable demands” were for homosexual favors. In a way, though the description is perhaps excessively circumspect, it also points to a truth. Reason – the Logos – is God’s handprint in creation. In the world of nature, and in our created natures. Disorder in nature is a sign of a rebellion against the ordering and ordered will of the Creator.
Now the world as we know it is fallen, and though it bears the imprint of the ordering Creator, not all apparent disorder is really so – because the effects of the fall effect both external realities and our perceptions of them. The ultimate ordering principle that brings good order into apparent disorder is not a panicky human will to order (the essence of Fascism) but rather love, that is, the Spirit of God, revealed in His Son Jesus, the Logos, the Ordering Principle of the Universe.His order is revealed in the apparent chaos of Calvary: a heart beating with love in the face of the onslaught of murderous passions. The passions come in all sorts, and they violate reason. The passions that killed St. Charles Lwanga and companions were a direct assault on the good order of friendship. They can only be healed by that good order, revealed in the loving friendship of Jesus, ratified in the holy deaths of His friends in Uganda who loved the “unreasonable” king too much to yield to his disordered desire. May they be praised, and may he be forgiven and saved!