July 17--The Sixteen Blessed Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne, Religious and Martyrs

*

When does might make right? Is it when we force others to do something because we know it is right? Is it when we punish others for not doing what we know to be right? Is it when we rule as a mob and persecute those who don’t have a right belief? Oh, this isn’t about the current civil unrest. No, this is about the Committee of Public Safety in Revolutionary France. This was the ad hoc government which oversaw the Reign of Terror in France with Maximilien Robespierre as their leader. From 1793 to 1794 16,594 men, women, and children were executed. Of those were sixteen women who were evicted from their convent in 1792. They were arrested in 1794 for refusing to recognize Reason as France’s official religion.

When brought before a prosecutor to answer to the charge of “persistent fanaticism,” one of the nuns asked what that meant. The prosecutor responded, “By fanaticism, I mean your attachment to childish practices and your stupid beliefs.” He then sentenced the sixteen women to death on the guillotine. They were executed that night, starting with a nineteen-year-old novice, who started chanting Psalm 117: “Praise the Lord, all you nations! Extol him, all you peoples! His mercy for us is strong; the faithfulness of the Lord is forever. Hallelujah!” The sisters took up the chant. The last to be executed was a seventy-nine-year-old nun who shouted, “I forgive you as heartily as I wish God to forgive me.” They offered their lives in martyrdom and love on July 17, 1794.

Might does not make right. It didn’t during the Reign of Terror. It doesn’t today. It won’t tomorrow. God’s love makes right because Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6). May we follow in their footsteps!

* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carm%C3%A9litesComp02.jpg