Rojava: Tribute to the Internationalist Martyrs of May Day

On May Day, a new poster pays tribute to the internationalist fighters who died in Rojava fighting against ISIS and other reactionary forces. Hailing from numerous countries, they belonged to the YPG/YPJ, the PKK, various communist organizations in Turkey and Kurdistan (MLKP, MLSPB, DKP, BÖG, TKEP/L, TKP-ML, Devrimci Karargâh), anarchist groups (Tekoşîna Anarşîst, Revolutionary Union for Internationalist Solidarity), and the Syriac Military Council. This tribute emphasizes that continuing their struggle means defending the political and emancipatory project championed in Rojava.

Download the poster

Source: https://secoursrouge.org/rojava-hommage-aux-internationalistes-tombes-martyrs-a-loccasion-du-1er-mai/

4 May: Blesseds Angel Maria Prat Hostench, Lucas of St. Joseph Tristany Pujol, Priests, and Companions

May 4
BLESSEDS ANGELUS MARY PRAT HOSTENCH,
LUKE OF ST. JOSEPH TRISTANY PUJOL, 
PRIESTS, AND COMPANIONS
Martyrs

Optional Memorial

In the houses in Spain:  Memorial

In a single celebration, both Orders of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel commemorate their martyrs who, in different places in Spain, bore witness to the faith before and during the long and bloody religious persecution for hatred of the faith (1936-1939). Father Angelus Mary Prat Hostench, O. Carm., was murdered with his confreres in Tárrega in 1936; Father Luke of St. Joseph Tristany Pujol, O.C.D., was slain with his confreres in Barcelona the same year. This memorial also includes the groups from Lleida, Tarragona, Toledo, Terrassa, Olot, and others. This multitude of bishops, diocesan priests, religious of various orders and lay people were beatified, in part by Pope Benedict XVI on October 28, 2007 (498 martyrs), and in part by Pope Francis on October 13, 2013 (522 martyrs).

From the Common of Several Martyrs

OFFICE OF READINGS

The Second Reading
From the writings of Blessed José María Mateos Carballido, priest and martyr
(The Holy Scapular 33 [1936], 135-137)

The history of the Church is written with the blood of its martyrs

It is an undeniable truth that the athlete is formed through exercise, that through it he strengthens his limbs and becomes strong and invincible for the fight; that gold is purified in the crucible and that the more it is purified, the better it is to make precious objects with it.

Something like this happens to the human heart, a precious gold that increases in dignity when melted in the crucible of tribulation and in which are formed holy men and heroes. And something like this also happens in the mystical body of the Church; in her, persecution brings forth unsuspected flowers, unseen virtues, unprecedented heroism. That is why her divine founder announced to her that she would be persecuted at all times: “You will be hated by everyone because of me. They will hand you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues. They will make you appear before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans” (Luke 21:12).

And under the blows of the battering ram of persecution, the Church was forged with its martyrs and its virgins, its saints and its doctors, until it became the prodigy that, after nineteen centuries, appears to the eyes of friends and enemies as the admirably divine work of its Divine founder.

From its beginning, the Church has been chiseled by that engraving tool of persecution, by which each blow that has been dealt has placed a precious stone in the always immovable walls of that beautiful building.

The pages of its history have been written with the blood of its martyrs and from its appearance until today, there has not been a century in which it has not flourished.

Thus, the Church was born; and, watered by the blood of so many innocents, this rich and generous sap flowed through her mystical body to make her produce the most beautiful flowers of science, virtue, heroism and holiness.

Thus, it was born, and over the centuries, it could be seen that those thorns of persecution never left her. But those blows did nothing other than give new vigor to that blessed tree, which, after each persecution, appeared more luxuriant, just as when spring emerges, the tree that has received the attentions of the successful hand of the pruner shows its lushness.

Given the events of recent months, what is our duty? To pray and to love. These are the two most powerful means that can revive peace among men. Pray much, because prayer will give us strength to confess Christ and not to turn our backs on Him like cowards. And love, for so much hatred, can only be drowned by a great outpouring of charity. For her enemies, the Church only has those words that came from the dying lips of Christ in agony on Calvary and were his most beautiful testament: “Father, forgive them”. The Church opens her arms as a loving Mother to all her children, even to those who persecute her, and she says to them all, “Father, forgive them.”

Faced with the danger of new persecution, let us not lose heart. Christ will always be with us, and no matter how rough the combat may be, we will emerge from it purified and the Church will gather new flowers between the folds of her tunic once again dyed with the blood of her children.

Responsory
2 Tim 4, 7-8a; cfr. Phil 3, 8. 10

℟. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. * Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, (alleluia).
℣. Indeed, I count everything as loss that I may know Christ, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. * Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, (alleluia).

Or:

From the writings of Blessed Luke of Saint Joseph, priest and martyr
(The Words of the Crucifix. Tarragona-Barcelona 1928, pp. 65-69)

The law of forgiveness shines in the martyrs

The great law of forgiveness, already promulgated from the beginning of the gospel teaching on the Mount of the Beatitudes, and so solemnly confirmed on the cross, points out to all of us the straight and sure path of eternal blessedness, and creates a wellspring of happiness and harmony, so that men can already taste it here on earth. It descends to the most intimate part of human consciousness, and stirs it all up, attacking to its deepest roots the poison of selfishness, destroyer of all happiness and harmony between souls.

This sublime doctrine of the Redeemer imposes on all of us, as a formal and necessary precept for our salvation, the sincere forgiveness of all serious injuries that have been inflicted on us. And, as an indispensable condition for inner peace and for achieving some degree of evangelical perfection, it also imposes on all of us a benevolent, total and sincere indulgence for each and every one of the many and varied deficiencies of our neighbors.

And, consequently, the great law of evangelical forgiveness is imposed not only on those who have to deal with specific enemies from whom they have received serious injuries, or from whom they know that truly bear them ill; but it reaches to all of us, whatever our state or condition, since there is no one who has not at some time felt offended or bothered, whether little or much.

This law can be applied every day and every hour of our daily life, both in the intimacy of domestic life and in social relationships; it is the same in the most secret and secluded part of the cloisters as in the whirlwind of worldly business.

For the holy Gospel, ideally beautiful as it is in everything, is always very simple and practical, because it can be adapted to all the modalities of each person’s real life. But, among all the evangelical precepts, this one of the forgiveness of enemies is one of the most eminently practical, because, as it penetrates to the most hidden depths of the human conscience, it reaches even to the most secret recesses of the heart, where the subtlest selfishness is also well hidden and concealed. This precept uncovers it; it reveals it to the conscience of every man who wants to know himself. And so this admirable law intends to intervene and inform all our actions, both the religious and the social: the religious, because we know that God does not accept them if we offer them to Him while nursing bitterness or fraternal resentments in our soul; and the social ones, because this precept reminds us that we will be treated by God just as we ourselves treat our brothers.

In this great school of the Cross, all the saints and martyrs learned its admirable wisdom and received its strength, knowing how to live without cursing anyone and how to die content, praying for those who made them shed their generous blood.

This sublime word of Jesus Christ was very fertile and creative, for it awakened, and still awakens today, in many souls, marvelous sentiments that the world had not known before. It taught so many millions of martyrs of all conditions to die with a smile on their face and a prayer on their lips, praying for the very executioners who were tormenting them.

Responsory
Mt 5, 43-45; Jn 13, 15

℟. You have heard that it was said: “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, * so that you may be children of
your Father who is in heaven, (alleluia).
℣. I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. * so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, (alleluia).

Prayer

Almighty and merciful God,
who granted the priests Blesseds Angelus Mary, Luke of Saint Joseph,
and their companions
the grace of reaching the summit of Mount Carmel through martyrdom,
grant, we pray, through their intercession,
that we may always live with wisdom and zeal,
by bearing witness to the kingly majesty of Christ.

Who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

We are grateful to our Discalced Carmelite Friars for providing the English texts of liturgical offices published after the 1993 edition of the Carmelite Proper—Liturgy of the Hours.

Leo XIV Recognises Another 49 Catholic Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/leo-xiv-recognises-another-49-catholic-martyrs-of-the-spanish-civil-war/

Celebrate July 5: Especially this year.

"A New Initiative Aims To Honor America’s Martyrs ~ The choice of July 5th intentionally aligns with the anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ 1852 landmark speech, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

#5July #America #Martyrs #Heroes #Freedom #CivilRights #CivilLiberty #History #USA #News

https://www.blackenterprise.com/a-new-initiative-aims-to-honor-americas-martyrs/

Léon XIV reconnaît 50 martyrs de la guerre d’Espagne, tués par des milices républicaines en haine de la foi

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://tribunechretienne.com/leon-xiv-reconnait-50-martyrs-de-la-guerre-despagne-tues-par-des-milices-republicaines-en-haine-de-la-foi/

#Change

To meet the need, the names, father's names, provinces, and the names of the registering individuals of the martyrs who are registered as awaiting confirmation will be disclosed before publication. This section has been added.

Second: For some individuals who were registering martyrs and could not correct mistakes, we now allow them to make changes before approval.

https://shaheedan.com

#Martyrs

#بدلون

د اړتیا له مخې، هغه شهیدان چې د انتظار په حالت کې ثبت شوي وي، نوم، د پلار نوم، ولایت او د ثبتوونکي نوم به یې له نشر څخه مخکې ښکاره کېږي، دا برخه اضافه شوه.

دوهم: ځینو خلکو چې شهیدان ثبتول، د تېروتنې په صورت کې یې بیا بدلون نه شوای راوستلای، اوس مو اجازه ورکړه چې تر تصویب مخکې بېرته تغیرات پکې راولي.

https://shaheedan.com

#شهیدان

Source: الهدایة خپرندویه اداره (@Alhedayat111)
[ https://x.com/Alhedayat111/status/2047349867354182125 ]

#Afghanistan

Made a Mural of Me

I have walked streets where the walls remember
better than the governments do.

I have stood beneath the painted faces
of the disappeared, the assassinated,
the catechists, the campesinos,
the students, the mothers,
the ones whose names were spoken once with terror
and now are spoken with flowers.

I have seen their eyes in plaster and pigment,
their halos done in cheap color,
their mouths half open as if the wall itself
were still trying to tell the story
of what was done to them.

In Central America,
I learned that a wall can become a gospel
when the newspapers lie.
A wall can become an archive
when the official files are burned,
when the generals call murder peace,
when the empire calls bloodshed stability,
when the poor are told to forget
for the sake of moving on.

But the wall does not move on.

The wall says: here.
The wall says: this happened.
The wall says: this child had a name.
This priest had hands.
This woman had laughter.
This union worker had a mother.
This martyr did not die in abstraction,
did not perish as an example,
did not vanish into a sermon illustration.
They were flesh.
They were breath.
They were somebody’s beloved.

And I have seen it elsewhere too.

Not only there, where memory was brushed onto concrete
beneath the long shadow of rifles and oligarchs,
but here,
in this empire’s marble reach,
in this capital of speeches and signatures,
in neighborhoods of D.C. where color rises up
against erasure,
where the dead look down from brick walls
and ask the living what exactly we are doing
with the testimony they left us.

I have walked those streets too,
where murals bloom like wounds that refuse to close,
where every face says both remember
and why again?

That is the ache of it.

Because a mural is beautiful,
but it is also an indictment.

A mural is what happens
when grief runs out of sanctioned places to go.
When cemeteries are too quiet,
when courtrooms are too compromised,
when history books are too polite,
when churches would rather canonize the dead
than stand beside the threatened living,
someone climbs a ladder with paint
and says:
You will not make us forget.

And yet even that holy act contains a heartbreak.

Because every new mural is also a confession
that we have failed again.

We say we honor the martyrs.
We paint them large.
We ring them with light.
We write their names in careful letters.
We tell their stories to our children.
We call them seeds.
We call them saints.
We call them witnesses.

But if we must keep making more walls,
if there is always another name,
another mother,
another child,
another prophet with blood on their shirt,
another journalist, another dreamer, another body,
then our memorials are not only songs of praise.
They are laments.
They are accusations.
They are unfinished prayers.

I do not want a world
where we become very skilled
at decorating the aftermath.

I do not want justice outsourced to artists
because legislators are cowards,
because police departments close ranks,
because borders harden,
because markets consume,
because nations baptize their violence
and then ask poets to clean up the silence.

I am grateful for the murals.
God, I am grateful for them.
For the ones who paint the saints with brown hands
and tired eyes.
For the ones who make a wall preach.
For the ones who turn an alley into a liturgy.
For the ones who refuse the second death,
the death of being forgotten.

But I am tired of needing them.

Tired of standing before another radiant face
and knowing radiance came at the price of a bullet.
Tired of admiring the colors
while knowing the color had to cover over grief
too large for speech.
Tired of telling the story again
because the engines that made the story
were never dismantled,
only rebranded, relocated, repainted.

That is the terrible genius of empire.
It learns to tolerate memorials
so long as the machinery of martyr-making stays intact.

Put the face on the wall.
Name the school after the slain.
Hold the vigil.
Light the candle.
Share the quote.
Then fund the weapons.
Protect the system.
Discredit the witness.
Fortify the border.
Ignore the neighborhood.
Silence the poor.
And when the next body falls,
commission another mural.

No.

There is something obscene
about praising the courage of the dead
while refusing the cost of solidarity with the living.

There is something blasphemous
about loving Romero on the wall
but not listening to prophets now.
About cherishing painted martyrs in San Salvador
and neglecting crucified people in Washington,
in detention centers,
in poor towns,
in Black and brown neighborhoods,
in places where the state still knows how to kneel
on a neck,
how to disappear a future,
how to call a human being illegal
before making them dead in spirit.

So yes,
I have walked among the murals.
And yes,
they have taught me.

They taught me that memory is resistance.
That color can be a form of defiance.
That beauty can tell the truth
when official language becomes a mask for murder.
They taught me the communion of saints
sometimes looks less like stained glass
and more like chipped paint on cinder block.
Less like cathedral windows
and more like public walls under open sky.

They taught me that the martyrs are still speaking.
Not only from heaven.
From brick.
From alley.
From barrio.
From the side of a building everyone passes
on the way to work,
on the way to school,
on the way to forgetting.

And they taught me to shudder.

Because sometimes, standing there,
I have had the strange and terrible thought:

One day they could make a mural of me.

Not because I seek glory.
Not because I imagine myself noble.
Not because I think suffering makes a person pure.
But because in a world like this,
where truth still threatens power,
where solidarity still has a price,
where loving the crucified too closely
can still get you crucified,
any one of us who dares enough
might end up as paint.

Made a mural of me.

Put me on a wall with the others.
Give me a background of sunburst gold,
or deep blue,
or the red of blood transfigured into witness.
Paint my face calmer than I ever was in life.
Smooth out my fear.
Make me look brave.

But if you do,
let the mural say I did not want this.

Let it say I wanted fewer murals,
not more.

Let it say I wanted children to know these names
without needing to inherit their wounds.
Let it say I wanted nations to repent
before artists had to remember for them.
Let it say I wanted churches
to become sanctuaries of the endangered
instead of galleries of the already slain.
Let it say I wanted the wall
to go blank someday,
not from amnesia,
but from justice.

That is my prayer now.

Not that we stop honoring the martyrs.
Never that.
Paint them.
Sing them.
Tell them.
Teach them.
Write them in the streets and on the doors
and in the marrow of the young.

But also:
stop making so many of them.

Let there come a day
when the painters have to find another subject.
When the ladders lean against walls
for festivals instead of funerals.
When color is used for delight
and not only for defiance.
When remembrance is no longer emergency labor.
When the living are protected enough
that martyrdom becomes rare,
and rare enough
that every new death shocks us again.

Until then,
the walls will keep preaching.

And I will keep listening
with gratitude and grief,
with reverence and anger,
with hope cracked open but not empty.

Because every mural is a promise
the dead make to the living:

We are still here.
We are watching what you do next.
Do not honor us
by becoming connoisseurs of tragedy.
Honor us
by ending the thing that killed us.

And until that day,
the paint will keep drying,
and the faces will keep multiplying,
and the walls will keep learning names
they should never have had to learn.

And I will stand before them,
heart broken open,
thinking:

this wall should be empty by now.

Quote from الهدایة خپرندویه اداره (@Alhedayat111):

Congratulations! 🌹

After months of persistent effort and exhaustion, praise be to God, today is the day that all citizens volunteer to record the martyrs, to collect, register, and preserve the memories of our fallen heroes.

Here's the launch video and link for the Martyrs Platform.

This platform is designed to register, preserve, collect memories of the martyrs, and establish a well-organized, collaborative management system in the spirit of unity, to keep the history of their sacrifices alive and pass it on to future generations.

This video shares a general introduction and basic information about the platform, and the practical method for registering a martyr will be presented in future videos, God willing.

Let us jointly launch this honorable series of collecting, remembering, and registering the sacrifices of the martyrs.

I hope you watch the video until the end. If you like the platform, please write your thoughts about it, share it with other citizens, and participate in this great and rewarding endeavor.

#Martyrs

https://shaheedan.com

Here's the YouTube link to watch the informational video: https://youtu.be/RfUY3njx5IQ?si=VWFti-EIn6QTmI1K

مبارک مو شه ! 🌹

له څو میاشتو پرله‌پسې هڅو، ستړیاوو، الحمدلله نن هغه ورځ راورسېده چې د شهیدانو د ثبت لپاره په رضاکارانه ډول ټول هېوادوال لاس په کار شي، څو خپل تللي اتلان راټول، ثبت او خاطرې یې خوندي کړي.

دلته د شهیدانو د پلیټفارم افتتاحیه ویډیو او لینک ږدم.

دا پلیټفارم د شهیدانو د ثبت، ساتنې، خاطراتو راټولولو او د اشر په روحیه د یوه منظم ګډ مدیریت لپاره جوړ شوی، څو د خپلو قربانیو تاریخ ژوندی وساتو او راتلونکو نسلونو ته یې وسپارو.

په دې ویډیو کې د پلیټفارم عمومي پېژندنه او اساسي معلومات شریک شوي دي او د شهید د ثبت عملي طریقه به ډیر ژر په راتلونکو ویډیوګانو کې وړاندې شي. ان شاءالله

راځئ په ګډه د شهیدانو د راټولولو، یادولو او قربانیو د ثبتولو دا مبارکه لړۍ پیل کړو.

له تاسو مې هیله ده ویډیو تر پایه وګورئ. که پلیټفارم مو خوښ شو، خپل نظر پرې ولیکئ، له نورو هېوادوالو سره یې شریک کړئ، او د دې لوی او اجر لرونکي کار برخه وګرځئ.

#شهیدان

https://shaheedan.com

د معلوماتي ویډيو د کتلو لپاره د یوټيوب لینک داده : https://youtu.be/RfUY3njx5IQ?si=VWFti-EIn6QTmI1K

Source: الهدایة خپرندویه اداره (@Alhedayat111)
[ https://x.com/Alhedayat111/status/2046832559565230141 ]

#Afghanistan