10.7: Service and Sacrifice

Greater love has no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends
John 15:13

People who are willing to die for their beliefs are usually called martyrs. They believe that some force or ideal far greater than their own lives calls them to make a sacrifice of themselves.

The Christian Church has always recognized that certain people are especially holy, because they have lived a life that is very close to the Christian ideal. The Church has traditionally called these people ‘saints’. A saint is someone who has lived a holy or completely unselfish life and is officially recognized after death as being worthy of special honour. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches officially recognize that a person has lived the life of a saint by a process called ‘canonization’. The Church authorities study every aspect of the dead person’s life in great detail before deciding whether to make that person a saint. However not everyone who has lived such a good life is known to the authorities, and so on 1 November all these people are honoured in the Feast of All Saints.

In this section you can look at profiles of four twentieth-century Christians whose faith has inspired them to live lives of self-sacrifice and service to others.

Mother Teresa   Martin Luther King   Maximilian Kolbe   Oscar Romero

Prayer

0, Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will
but also those of evil will.
But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us;
remember the fruits we have borne thanks to this suffering
- our comradeship, our loyally, our humility, our courage, our generosity,
the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this;
and when they come to the judgement,
let all the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.
Amen.