Artigo do dia · 3 de June
Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions
At Namugongo, in the land of Uganda, the passion of Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions, martyrs. Head of the pages at the court of King Mwanga II and baptized as a grown man, he refused to abandon the faith or to surrender to the corruption of the palace the young men entrusted to his care; for this he was burned alive on June 3, 1886, together with a group of companions. With him the Church venerates twenty-two martyrs of Uganda, the glorious first fruits of the holiness of Christian Africa.
Roman Martyrology
About the saint
Saint Charles Lwanga is one of the most burning examples of courage in the faith the Church has ever known — the courage of a man who would rather be burned alive than deny a single word of the Gospel. In an age when we tend to shrink back before a joke, a bit of criticism, or the simple embarrassment of being Catholic, the life of this young African shakes us awake. He had no centuries of Christian heritage behind him: he had been baptized only a few months earlier, and already he was ready to give up everything. Let us get to know the story of this extraordinary saint and see how he lived out his faithfulness to God to the very end.
Life
Charles Lwanga was born around 1860 in the kingdom of Buganda, in the heart of Africa, in the region of Singo, and he belonged to the Baganda people. When the Missionaries of Africa — the so-called “White Fathers” — reached those lands proclaiming the Gospel, the young Charles was touched by the newness of the Christian faith and asked for Baptism. He was baptized on November 15, 1885, by the hands of Father Giraud, already a grown young man, and he embraced the faith with the wholeheartedness of someone who has found a treasure.
Charles served at the court of Mwanga II, king of Buganda, where he held the office of head of the pages — the young men who attended the monarch in the palace. He took up this responsibility after Saint Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, his predecessor and also a Christian, was beheaded by order of the king for having rebuked the sovereign’s conduct. Charles did not merely oversee the boys’ work: he shielded them from Mwanga’s impure advances, placing his own body between the young men and the corruption of the court. In secret, he instructed the pages in the faith and prepared the catechumens for Baptism.
The king, stirred up against the Christians and enraged to find in the baptized a steadfastness he could not bend, unleashed the persecution. On May 25, 1886, at Munyonyo, Mwanga began to condemn the pages to death. The next morning, sensing what was coming, Charles Lwanga secretly baptized five catechumens who had not yet received the sacrament — among them the young Kizito, the youngest of the group. Before the king, the Christian pages openly confessed that they would not abandon the faith, and all of them were condemned.
Then began the forced march to Namugongo, where the execution would take place. Along the way, some of the young men were already put to death. At Namugongo, on June 3, 1886, a group was burned alive, and Charles Lwanga was set apart from the rest and killed first, burned slowly, with calculated cruelty. Tradition preserves the words he is said to have spoken to his executioner, without hatred: that it was as if water were being poured over him, and that this man ought to repent and become a Christian. In that persecution, which dragged on for several months, twenty-two Catholic martyrs fell in all — and brothers of the Anglican communion also shed their blood for Christ.
The blood of those martyrs became the seed of new Christians in Africa, as so often happens in the Church. In 1920, Pope Benedict XV raised them to the honor of the altars as blesseds. In 1934, Pope Pius XI proclaimed Saint Charles Lwanga patron of African Catholic youth. And on October 18, 1964, during the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI — today himself venerated as Saint Paul VI — canonized Charles Lwanga and his companions, inscribing the martyrs of Uganda forever in the catalogue of the saints.
Why we celebrate today
The Church celebrates Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions on June 3 because it was on that day, in 1886, that he gave his life at Namugongo, burned for the sake of Christ. In the liturgical calendar this is his dies natalis — his “birthday” into heaven, as Christian tradition calls the day of martyrdom. The memorial gathers into a single day Charles Lwanga and the whole company of the Uganda martyrs, even though some of his companions died on nearby dates, over the course of the same persecution.
For our life
I believe we have much to learn from Saint Charles Lwanga, who became a light for our own lives precisely where we tend to falter the most: when the moment comes to own our faith in front of others. He had been baptized only a few months, and he was willing to die in the flames rather than betray Christ — and we, who have carried the faith for so many years, how often do we hide it for fear of a joke, of criticism, of losing a job? His courage did not spring from some supernatural strength reserved for a chosen few: it sprang from taking seriously the very same Baptism that we, too, have received. We can ask for that same firmness in the small battles of our everyday life — at work where we keep silent out of cowardice, at home where we ought to defend what is right, in the face of temptations that beg us to give in “just this once.” And just as Charles protected the young men entrusted to him, so too are we called to protect the most vulnerable around us. May God be praised for letting us come to know the story of these martyrs, so that, gazing on their courage, we may find strength to grow along the path of our own faith.
And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Mt 10:28 (Douay-Rheims)
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