The Getaway

2 Timothy 4:6-8

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• I am already being poured out like a libation
• I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith
• not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance

Applying the Word to My Life:
Lorenzo Ruiz was a husband and father in Manila when his life suddenly fell apart.

Someone had been killed, Lorenzo was blamed, and the authorities were looking for him. The Dominicans who knew him believed he was innocent and helped him get aboard a ship leaving the Philippines. Lorenzo thought he was escaping toward safety.

Instead, the ship was headed for Japan, which was fiercely persecuting Christians. By the time Lorenzo understood where he was going, turning back was no longer simple. Manila still meant the murder accusation. Japan meant danger of another kind.

They made it to Japan, where he was arrested with the missionaries and eventually taken to Nagasaki. The authorities tortured them and demanded that they renounce Christ. Lorenzo was frightened enough to ask whether apostasy would save his life.

He wasn't a man who wanted to die. The whole story had begun because he was trying to stay alive and get back to his family. He knew exactly what he was being asked to give up.

And then something in him settled.

Lorenzo refused to renounce Christ. Tradition remembers his words: "I am a Catholic and wholeheartedly do accept death for God. Had I a thousand lives, all these to Him I shall offer."

Paul says today, "I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith."

Lorenzo could have said the same thing.

A few reflections ago, we talked about the danger of turning life into a ledger, constantly measuring what we give against what comes back to us. Yesterday we saw where that mentality can go when it hardens enough: Cain looked at his brother and decided the cost was too high.

Lorenzo shows us the other direction.

He didn't begin by wanting to lose his life. He tried to save it. But when the final choice came, he stopped calculating. His life, his fear, his suffering, even the family he desperately wanted to return to all mattered. Christ simply mattered more.

The ledger asks, "What will this cost me?" Love eventually asks, "What is worth giving everything for?"

Most of us will never be asked to make Lorenzo's choice. But we all reach smaller moments when faithfulness becomes expensive. Telling the truth costs something. Keeping a promise costs something. Staying faithful when compromise would be easier costs something.

The goal isn't to seek suffering. Lorenzo never did.

The goal is to finish the race still holding onto Christ.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll stay faithful in one place where compromise would be easier.

ABOUT ST. LAWRENCE RUIZ

• Name: St. Lawrence (Lorenzo) Ruiz
• Lived: c. 1600 – September 1637, Manila, Philippines and Nagasaki, Japan
• Feast Day: September 28
• Patron of: overseas Filipino workers, the Philippines
• Title: Martyr, first canonized Filipino saint
• Read more: Franciscan Media