Don’t Look Back

Saint Martin of Tours; Friday, November 11th

Friday of the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time

• 2 John 4-9
• Psalm 119: 1, 2, 10, 11, 17, 18
• Luke 17: 26-37

Jesus in the Gospel today tells us that when the Son of Man is revealed, the man on a housetop or out in the field should not go back for what was left behind. And this is how Saint Martin lived his life; following Christ’s lead and never looking back.

Saint Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier. The most famous story about him is that one night he saw a beggar, freezing in the cold, so he cut his cloak in half and gave part of it to the beggar.

The story goes that he later had a dream in which Christ appeared to him, wearing that half-piece of cloak and said to the angels in attendance to him, “this unbaptized soldier has clothed me.” After his vision, Martin had himself baptized and left behind the soldier’s life.

The Gospel today also tells us that “whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will save it.” As a soldier, turned pacifist, turned conscientious objector, Martin lived this as well. As one of his biographers said, “death could not defeat him nor toil dismay him … he neither feared to die nor refused to live.”

Though he did refuse to kill.

When the newly baptized soldier said he would no longer take arms in combat and was accused of cowardice, Martin offered to go into battle unarmed. To put his life entirely in Christ’s hands. And as it happened, the opposing army agreed to a truce before any battle took place. So he was spared a martyr’s death, and is one of the Church’s first non-martyred saints.

Martin was then released from his military service, and turned to a life of prayer, contemplation, and service to the poor.

When the bishop of Tours, France, died, Martin was persuaded – reluctantly – to take that office. It’s said that he was lured to the church on the pretense of looking after the needs of a sick person, then pressed to accept the bishop’s chair.

Our responsorial psalm today exemplifies the life that Martin strove to lead; blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they who observe his decrees, who seek him with all their heart.

By putting himself, his life, entirely in God’s hands, and by not looking back to the life left behind, Saint Martin of Tours made his humble and unassuming way to sainthood.