Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
Our Lady of Victories, pray for us.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Michael Hichborn: All right, so we have this book, No Greater Love, The True Meaning of Martyrdom, available at Tan Books. This is a fascinating book. I have to say, it is a short book. It is not long, but it is rich. It is full of really great explanations about the nature of martyrdom and the different types of martyrdom. I have to admit that I was familiar with white and red martyrdom. I had never heard of green martyrdom. So, if you could, for a moment, walk us through these three types of martyrdom and explain what they are and how they apply to Catholics.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, when we speak about martyrdom, we must go back to the source of martyrdom. This is our Lord Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This is the source of all martyrdom. To understand what martyrdom is, we must contemplate the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross. This was a sacrifice of love.
So the substance of martyrdom in the Christian meaning is this. It is a sacrifice of love, a complete self-giving, even to the extent of giving your life, to shed your blood, as our Lord did on the cross. This is martyrdom. And so as a witness. Our Lord said, I came on this earth to give witness. This was one of His last words before Pilate. Witness for what? For the truth. Therefore, truth and love are inseparable in the sacrifice of our Lord, and therefore also for martyrdom.
Every martyr gives his life first out of love for our Lord Jesus Christ and out of love for the truth. Why were they killed? Because they refused to renounce the truth, the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every Christian martyr gives his life ultimately for our Lord Jesus Christ to witness the truth about Jesus Christ, true God and true man, and the only Savior of humankind and His commandments, including the commandment. There are even martyrs of chastity for the commandment of our Lord.
So this is the origin of martyrdom. And what is the soul of martyrdom? This is the sacrifice of love and truth. Therefore, the first meaning of martyrdom is the martyrdom of blood, really not only in a spiritual way but in truth and in fact, truly giving your soul, the love of your soul, your heart, and your body, as our Lord did on the cross, imitating our Lord, shedding your blood. This is called the martyrdom of blood.
Then, when the Church passed this time of martyrdom in the first three centuries, the existence of the Church was marked since the beginning with martyrdom, and it lasted more or less 300 years until Constantine gave freedom to the Christians and to the Church. It was a time of really bloody martyrdom. Then these persecutions stopped. Thanks be to God, the Catholic Church was recognized by the Roman Empire and even became the state religion in the Roman Empire until the French Revolution.
Then there were no martyrs, usually, or very rarely. The essence of martyrdom, to give your life and all that you can out of love for Christ, passed to a special form of life which was called the monastic life, the life of the hermits in the desert, and then usually the monastic religious life. Because in these three vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, the religious person gives all that he has completely to God and lives such a life continuously in love for Christ. The Church called it a kind of spiritual or white martyrdom.
Then, later in the Middle Ages, especially in Ireland, there was a tradition of calling another form of martyrdom “green martyrdom”. The same essence remains, to give all that you can out of love for Christ and to witness with your life. In this case, it was not religious monastic life but a life in the world where Catholic faithful were uniting their sufferings, their sickness or other trials which they had to endure in life, uniting their sufferings, both spiritual or physical, uniting this with the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross.
And so this link with the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross, with your own sacrifice of your sufferings, was in some places called the green martyrdom. It was not so common, but it existed in the Middle Ages. I also mentioned it in my book.
Michael Hichborn: So the difference between green and white martyrdom, obviously, with white martyrdom comes a certain kind of indignity, that there is maybe an attack on your reputation or something along those lines. But with green martyrdom, it is a kind of asceticism. So what is the primary difference between white and green martyrdom?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, in white martyrdom, you give your entire existence as a sacrifice, including your body, in complete chastity, for example. Whereas in green martyrdom, there can also be married people who do not live a complete corporal virginity, but they participate in the sacrifice of Christ through their sufferings, whether spiritual sufferings or corporal sufferings.
Of course, a religious person, a monk or a nun, can also have spiritual sufferings and corporal sufferings. So green and white can be united in some cases in monastic life. But green martyrdom is not white martyrdom because there is a lack of the complete sacrifice of the virginal life, virginity.
Michael Hichborn: So there is a kind of hierarchy then with regard to the nature of martyrdom, that I guess the highest form of martyrdom would be the martyrdom of blood.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: The martyrdom of blood is the highest, yes.
Michael Hichborn: Ah, okay.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Because it is the complete imitation of our Lord, both in your interior acts of love, which is the essence, I repeat, of any martyrdom, and even shedding your blood as our Lord shed His blood. So this is the most perfect imitation of our Lord. In white martyrdom, there is also an imitation, but not in this perfect and full corporal form, to shed your blood for the Lord.
Michael Hichborn: And then finally, the third, green martyrdom, would be the third form and the lowest of the three.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: The lowest, because there is a lack of the complete sacrifice in the aspect of virginity, that your entire existence is completely for the Lord. Since the Church Fathers and the Council of Trent, the Church taught even dogmatically that, objectively, the state of virginity, of consecrated virginity, is higher than the marriage state, matrimony. Objectively. This is not saying that a married person cannot achieve greater holiness than a religious, a monk, or a nun. Subjectively, this is possible.
But objectively, the Church defined that the religious state, the virginal state, for the sake of being consecrated to the Lord, is higher. Our Lord said in the Gospel that when the Pharisees asked about the woman who had seven husbands and then asked whose wife she would be in the resurrection of the body, our Lord said they were mistaken. After the resurrection, they will no longer marry but will be like the angels.
This is the last destination and finality for all of us after our resurrection in heaven. Therefore, the virginal state, consecrated virginity, already anticipates this last and most perfect state, which all of us, even married people now on earth, will live in heaven for all eternity, a perpetual virginity.
Of course, we need the marriage state very much because this is the domestic church, and from these families will come future citizens of heaven. This is a sacrament. Even though religious life is not a sacrament, marriage is a sacrament. But I repeat, the Church says that objectively in the hierarchy, this state is higher.
Michael Hichborn: Yes, as our Lord said of Mary when He spoke to Martha, she has chosen the better part. In fact, I think the translation is that she has chosen the best part. So certainly the contemplative life, to sit at the feet of our Lord as opposed to working in the world, is a higher calling.
As we think about what you were mentioning, that we can see these different types of martyrdom in our Lord Himself, you look at the crucifixion, and obviously, you see the red martyrdom, the blood martyrdom that takes place. But also the indignity that He suffered, the insults, the destruction of His reputation, the fact that He was stripped and put on the cross almost naked, which is a horrible indignity.
We see that in a lot of people, especially priests, who are falsely accused. We see this in people who have had their reputations absolutely destroyed, but instead of turning to the world for solutions or lashing out, they turn to our Lord and say, Lord, I am suffering greatly, and I hand this all over to You. So you can see that form of suffering in our Lord Himself, and so the martyrdom makes a lot of sense.
Of course, our Lord was not living a life of luxury. He could have, He is God. He could have lived a life of luxury, and He chose not to. He chose to enter the world in poverty, taking the form of a slave, which is what Scripture tells us. So He enters the world in a very lowly position, casting off the things of the world, and even spending forty days in the desert without eating or drinking. He really does cast off the world.
Therein we can see the reflection of green martyrdom, the asceticism, the giving of Himself entirely. Obviously He was virginal His entire life, so that would correspond to white martyrdom. But you can definitely see all of these reflected in Him throughout the course of His life.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, exactly. This is the summary of what our Lord gave in His life. Every Christian has the chance in his life to participate in some way in martyrdom. Common people in the world, lay people, I think everyone has sometimes in their life some sufferings, even spiritual sufferings, trials, and sometimes even corporal sufferings, sicknesses or diseases, which they can offer with much love and unite with the sacrifice of our Lord.
When you do this, you will participate in some way in martyrdom. This is also possible.
Michael Hichborn: When I read the lives of the saints, one of the things that comes out is that personality is very much a factor in their wrestling with themselves to overcome their own character flaws. You think of St Alphonsus Liguori, who was a choleric. He did not suffer fools well. He had a fire within him.
I remember going into Rome, and they showed us his desk. They said that under his desk, there are fingernail marks because he would sit there and claw underneath the desk when people would come in and talk to him about things that were testing his patience, really putting him to the test.
I think that ability to overcome those flaws is obviously the path toward sainthood. But could it be said that the suffering they endure during those periods when they have to overcome their own character flaws, he had a reputation, St Alphonsus did, of being one of the most gentle and approachable people that others knew, and yet within himself he suffered horribly to overcome this impatience and anger that he wrestled with.
Could that be something we could take to ourselves and think that if we suffer these things as well, as the saints did, it fits in line with a certain kind of martyrdom? Could we think of it that way?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, because this self-abnegation, as our Lord said, whoever will be My disciple must take up his cross, renounce himself and follow Me. This is what our Lord said to all Christians. To be a disciple of the Lord is to renounce yourself, your bad manners, your bad character, and so on, with God’s grace, of course. It is not so easy, but with grace, time, and patience, we can make progress in overcoming our bad habits or bad character.
This is also a chance to purify our wounded nature, which is wounded by sin. These concupiscences, as St. John the Apostle says, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and pride, are the main obstacles in our lives. With God’s grace, we are called to fight against them and to overcome them. By suffering in this struggle, we can unite it with our Lord’s sufferings.
In this way, it is not direct martyrdom, because martyrdom is when you are suffering something innocently in some way, or giving to the Lord a sacrifice directly. But it is part of our Christian life, this fight against our bad inclinations and bad habits.
Michael Hichborn: You mentioned that, and I was hoping maybe you could explain just a little bit what it means to unite our sufferings with our Lord. Obviously, if you stub your toe, one of your initial reactions is to shout something out. Or your car breaks down on the road, you pull over, and you’re upset or frustrated. These are minor forms of suffering, but the little sufferings of the day are things we can unite with our Lord. They also help us unite our greater sufferings with Him.
How do we practice this? How do we get into the habit of uniting our sufferings with our Lord? What does that mean? Is it just a little prayer, saying, Lord, I give this up to You? Or is there something more, an attitude or disposition that allows us to truly unite our sufferings with Him? And how do we do this in a greater sense, for example, when suffering from cancer or facing a horrible ailment, a suffering we know will be intense? How do we unite our sufferings with our Lord to make it efficacious?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, first, it is a question of our will. We must make an act of our will, saying, O my Lord, I wish, I want to offer You what I am now suffering, or some smaller sufferings during the day, some displeasures or obstacles in our life. I consciously offer these to You and ask You to take them into Your immense sacrifice of love, like a small drop of water during Holy Mass. When the priest puts a small drop of water in the chalice, it will be consecrated in the sacrifice of the Lord. In the same way, the Lord wishes that we unite our small sufferings spiritually, like a small drop of water, with His sacrifice, so that they become one with Him.
This uniting must be done willingly and consciously. A good custom is to say every morning in a short prayer, O my Lord, I accept and offer to You, uniting it with Your immense sacrifice of love, which You offered on the cross and now offer in every Mass celebrated on earth, all the sufferings, obstacles, and displeasures I will meet today.
When we do this every day consciously, and during Holy Mass, we can repeat it, saying, Now I am uniting with this small part of water which the priest puts in the chalice. I put all my sufferings into it. You can even say, Oh Lord, receive all the sufferings of my past life, even those I did not consciously offer to You, even when I forgot or sinned. The Lord is so great that He can take them.
Then you can say, Now I am consciously offering to You, with my will and desire, all the sufferings of my future life. The greatest sacrifice in our lives is the moment of our death. This is also a sacrifice, a suffering. Some die peacefully in sleep, but some die consciously in agony. We can offer this, saying, Oh my Lord, I accept the last sacrifice of my life, the moment of death, because it comes from You. This is your disposition, and so I offer and accept it. If you do this every day and every Sunday during Holy Mass, you will grow in this interior attitude.
Michael Hichborn: So it seems that one of the key elements here is that you have to not only make the act of your will to unite your suffering with our Lord in His suffering, but also to embrace it, to say, I accept this suffering in the same way that Dismas on the cross did. He said, We suffer justly. But this man is innocent.
I think in a very real respect, we have to embrace that cross, that suffering, as our own, as a just punishment for our own sins, but also as reparation and an act of penance. By uniting our suffering with Christ, He takes it, as you said, and unites it to Himself.
What a beautiful analogy you used of the drop of water in the chalice. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that really brings it home and shows us in a tangible way what it means to unite our suffering with His, like a drop of water with His blood in the chalice. Our suffering really is just, as you said, a drop of water.
As we look through martyrdom, I see in your book that you have a whole section devoted to martyrs that you personally knew in your life. Could you tell us about some of these, and what it meant for your vocation as a baptized Catholic, and then as a priest and a bishop, to have known these martyrs in your life? Who were they, and how did they influence you?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: I consider it one of the greatest gifts of the Lord in my life that I could spend my childhood in the underground Church in the Soviet Union, the persecuted Church. Especially Blessed Alexis Zaritsky. He was a martyr, a Greek Catholic Ukrainian priest, but he was bi-ritual. He also celebrated the traditional Latin Mass for Germans. My parents were Germans, and he was the confessor, the spiritual father of my parents.
My parents were a kind of activists in the underground Church and helped Blessed Martyr Alexei in the Ural Mountains to organize clandestine celebrations and hide him. He then celebrated later, when we moved to Kyrgyzstan, where I was born. He came to our house and celebrated a secret Mass. I was only one year old. I cannot remember well, but I was there at this secret Mass of the Blessed Martyr, and my mother put me on the cradle beside the table where he was celebrating. I was a kind of older boy at that age. He blessed us all, and then he returned to Kazakhstan, to Karaganda, after this secret Mass, a distance of 1,000 kilometers.
When he returned, he was suddenly arrested by the KGB, the Secret Service, and put in a gulag outside Karaganda, a very horrible prison, where he suffered for one and a half years and then died because of the consequences of his sufferings. His feast was yesterday; we celebrated it on October 30th.
My mother and father always spoke about him to us four siblings. My mother said, I never saw in my life a priest more holy than Father Alexei. He radiated holiness. He was ready to die every moment. He was persecuted continuously, traveling all over the Soviet Union to administer sacraments. People lovingly called him the Vagabond of God.
He repeatedly stressed this phrase: Keep the faith of your forefathers. A simple phrase, but so timely for our day, because today there is huge confusion in faith, in doctrine, and in liturgy. Keep fidelity to the faith of your forefathers; this is the pure Catholic faith. This includes the worship forms of our fathers. Another phrase he often repeated: Even if you are the poorest person in the world and possess nothing, if you have God in your heart, in the Catholic faith, you are the richest person in the world. But if you possess all the riches in this world and do not have God in your heart, in the Catholic faith, you are the poorest person in the world. These were some of his teachings that my parents passed on to us.
Another priest I directly knew was Father Yanis Pavlovsky, a Capuchin priest from Latvia who also suffered in the gulag in Kazakhstan, in Karaganda, during Stalin’s time. He was released and allowed to minister in a church in Estonia, where we lived. He heard my first confession and gave me my first Holy Communion. On Sundays, after Mass, we would always spend some hours in his room because our family had to travel a long distance. He invited us to come and spend time with him.
I had a close relationship with this holy confessor of the faith. He also radiated holiness and impressed me so much as a boy that later, when we came to Germany, I was almost thirteen years old. I started to serve Mass because in the Soviet Union, children were forbidden to serve Mass in the region where we lived. Before my eyes was the face of Father Yanis Pavlovsky, and after I served Holy Mass for the first time, I was convinced in my soul that I must become a priest. There was no doubt; it was so clear. It was not a vision or apparition, but the image of this priest stayed fresh in my memory.
When we left Estonia for Germany, we said farewell to this holy priest. His words were, I remember them very well: Be attentive. Pay attention when you come to West Germany, there are some churches where Holy Communion is given in the hand. We could not believe it. My mother spontaneously said, What a horror. I was almost thirteen and felt, Oh, this is so horrible, I could not explain it. He said, Please do not enter these churches. We promised him not to go where Communion is given in the hand.
In 1973, we came to a small Catholic town in southwest Germany. In the first church, almost all people took Communion in their hands. In the next church, the same, and in the last church, still in the city, the same situation. When we came home, my mother looked at us children and said, Oh, my children, I cannot understand how people can treat our Lord in such a way, and she started to weep. These tears of my mother are unforgettable for me. Later, I wrote a small booklet about the dangers of Communion in the hand titled Dominus Est.
Another witness was a virgin living in the world, a German also in Kazakhstan, in my previous diocese, where I was auxiliary. She died before I came, but she left such a beautiful, living, and fresh witness, even today. She died about fifty years ago. She was an apostle in her own way. She secretly gave catechism lessons, even though it was forbidden, for children and adults, traveling in secret to prepare children for the sacraments and young couples for marriage, because there were no priests even doing prayers for the burial.
There were no priests to bury Catholics, so she guided the prayers for burials. She was truly the soul of an apostle. This is the true promotion of women in the Church. She never thought of becoming a deacon or a priestess, unlike what some try to promote today, asking for women deacons as a first step.
When a priest came, she stepped completely aside, humbly, happy that the priest had arrived, and she kind of disappeared. She prepared the ground and continued at night, visiting the sick and teaching them. She was imprisoned many times, and in prison, she created a kind of clandestine Church in the women’s prison. She organized prayers for the entire women’s dormitory. This was a miracle. They all knelt, these poor women, almost all innocently persecuted to labor camps.
During the night, the administration, the communists, knew she was guiding others, so they frequently called her for interrogations. During the day, she worked hard, forced labor that was meant for men, not women. It was horrible. She endured this work and spiritual torture during night interrogations.
Often, when called during the night, she would prevent despair by saying to the chief, “Do you know what day it is today?” The chief would say, “Oh, today is the 15th of May.” She would reply, “No, today is the Feast of the Ascension of Christ into Heaven,” and then she would explain the feast and give catechism to the chiefs. She was so full of the Spirit that they could not interrupt her. They were almost hypnotized. When she stopped, the chief would say, “Take this woman away, she will continue elsewhere,” and some even began to believe because of her. She transformed the prison into a kind of clandestine Church.
This woman is Gertrude, a truly holy soul. The process of canonization and beatification has begun in Rome. Last week, all the documents were brought there, and the process is now ongoing. I mention her in my book because she had a real relationship with my life and my past in the Soviet Union.
Michael Hichborn: It’s interesting. As I was reading through the story of Blessed Oletsky Zritsky, one of the things that stood out to me was that, in many respects, his form of martyrdom is also a reflection of the martyrdom of the Church. One of the things I recall is that Our Lady said at Fatima that if these things are not done, meaning the penance and the requests that she made, Russia would spread her errors. One of the sufferings he endured, actually one of the temptations, was that they were trying to force him to join the Orthodox Church and renounce his Catholic beliefs, his catholicity. It seems fascinating that an atheist regime, the communist regime of the Soviet Union, would be more tolerant of the Orthodox than of the true Catholic faith, and that they would allow him to leave the prison, to escape his martyrdom, as it were, by embracing Orthodoxy as opposed to Catholicism. Even now, we are seeing a lot of temptation among the faithful who were scandalized by the kinds of things happening in Rome, and they are now abandoning the Church for Orthodoxy. I think, very much, this is Russia spreading its errors even now. It’s not a communist regime now, but she is still spreading her errors through Orthodoxy. It struck me as I was reading through it that, in a real way, he embodied that suffering of the Church, the temptation to flee from the scandal taking place in Rome for Orthodoxy.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, yes, it is a very good observation. Blessed Alexei, when he was first condemned to the Gulag, they proposed that he renounce union with the Pope in Rome and join the Russian Orthodox Church. They even offered him the chance to become a bishop. He answered with a very moving and simple phrase. He said to the judges, if I renounce my union with the Holy See, I will be a traitor to the Gospel. I will betray the Gospel. This phrase was broad and very concise. Therefore, abandoning the Catholic Church was not a solution. On the contrary, when we witness all these horrible things going on, sometimes in Rome, like the Pachamama incident or the Gay Pride manifestation within the Basilica of St. Peter, and now these syncretistic meetings last week with various religions in Rome, it is very serious and sad. We must remain, pray, suffer, and offer our sufferings for divine intervention so the Lord may illuminate the Pope and show him these aberrations. He may recognize them as such and gain divine illumination to strengthen the Church and avoid ambiguous acts and words. It must be implored through sufferings, not by abandoning the Catholic Church. This is against our Catholic faith. We must remain faithful, whatever happens. One lady wrote to me from the United States during these events, saying, Whatever they do in the Vatican, I remain Catholic. I will remain Catholic. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Holy See. Of course, there were moments in Church history where it seemed the powers of hell were dominating, sometimes in the 10th century or in the Renaissance, but the Lord intervened, and He will do so in our time.
Moreover, turning to the Orthodox Church is an illusion because there are serious errors there. They approve divorce and allow up to three religious marriages, which goes against the commandment on the indissolubility of marriage. They have no teaching on contraception at all, and their positions differ completely from Catholic teaching. Even on abortion, while most Orthodox bishops condemn it, there is no unified teaching on conception. These are serious errors, especially regarding the indissolubility of marriage and moral issues like contraception.
Michael Hichborn: You mentioned that we have to pray for the Pope, especially for illumination. I think this ties directly to the message of Fatima, where Our Lady consistently asked for prayers for the Pope. I keep wondering why she is asking for prayers for the Pope, and I think the answer is because he is in a state of choosing one side or the other, and he needs the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that illumination you mentioned, which can only be gained through the suffering of the faithful and through penances. Our Lord even said to Sister Lucia that the penance He now requires is that men and women live according to their vocations. I think what you talk about in your book, and again I want to remind everybody, we are talking about the book No Greater Love, The True Meaning of Martyrdom, is that martyrdom and the need for martyrdom, and the nature of martyrdom, also have to do with the penance we do. If our Lord is saying that the penance He requires is that we live according to our vocation, there is a martyrdom that comes with that. For the married, our Lord said, or rather St. Paul said, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church, which means to sacrifice yourself for your wife, and wives, love and honor your husbands and be subject to them, which is also a suffering, because it is hard. As human beings, it is natural for us to want to take charge and do what we want, so there is suffering, a martyrdom that comes with that. For priests, they are to eschew the world, giving up luxuries and pleasures of the flesh for the sake of the kingdom. That martyrdom, that suffering, comes from living according to your vocation. In a real way, that is the martyrdom you discuss in your book, and it all ties into Fatima. If we live according to our vocations and live that life of martyrdom while praying for the Pope, I think we have real hope, even if it seems the Pope might do things that are troubling, like undoing the Mass, shutting down the Traditional Latin Mass, or other possibilities. As we live our vocations, offer ourselves in sacrifice and penance, with the suffering of our Lord, which is that martyrdom you mentioned, there is real hope, that trust and belief, that illumination that could inspire him to do what our Lord is calling him to do.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, therefore we have to continue to pray for divine intervention through the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, but also Pope Leo the 14th, with special veneration to Our Lady of Good Counsel, whose image he visited the day after his election, at the shrine near Rome. Let us invoke Our Lady under this title so that she may grant him good counsel, to recognize the dangers of relativism and confusion, to strengthen his resolve, restore the Traditional Latin Liturgy, and guide the Church clearly, giving us holy apostolic men as bishops and cardinals. This is his mission, his first task. Let us also implore all the martyrs for his intercession.
Recently, an entire family was beatified in Poland as martyrs because they were killed by the Nazis for hiding Jewish people. The parents consciously exposed themselves to danger out of love to protect others, and the entire family was killed. The mother was nearly giving birth when she was killed with her child, making the unborn child a kind of martyr. The Ulma family is an example, and throughout Church history, entire families or children have been killed for faith. Young saints like Agnes, Cecilia, Lucy, and Agatha, along with soldiers and martyrs from the first centuries, also give testimony to this. Therefore, we must continue our lives, asking for courage, the virtue of fortitude, the gift of the Holy Spirit, never to be ashamed of our Catholic faith, and always ready, with God’s help, to witness it, remaining faithful to Jesus until our last breath. The message and intercession of the martyrs give us hope and consolation.
Michael Hichborn: Your Excellency, I could talk to you all day about these martyrs and the things you wrote in this book. There are questions I would have loved to ask, but I want people to read this book, No Greater Love, The True Meaning of Martyrdom, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. He discusses, for instance, the 144,000 mentioned in Scripture, explaining what it means and the nature of their martyrdom and holy innocence, which is a fascinating aspect. He provides a marvelous explanation in the book. I encourage people to get it. We are out of time, but get the book, No Greater Love, The True Meaning of Martyrdom, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, available at TAN Books. Your Excellency, thank you for joining us. This has been a marvelous conversation. Could you please close with a prayer and give your blessing?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, you’re welcome.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Dominus vobiscum
Michael Hichborn: et cum spiritu tuo
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Et benedictio de omnipotentis Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen.
Praised be Jesus Christ
Michael Hichborn: Now and forever!Thank you so much, Your Excellency. This has been a marvelous conversation. One last time, go to TAN Books and get a copy of No Greater Love, The True Meaning of Martyrdom, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. God bless you all.