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Testimony until the end in a radical donation of life and blood can be communitarian and not only individual. That is the case for the two communities of Trappists and Jesuits, so different in their form and so close in their radicality. One is contemplative, the other active; one is in Africa, the other in Latin America. Both are religious Catholic orders. Nevertheless, the cause of their violent death is secular. For one, there is love and dialogue with otherness: other cultures, other religions, other beliefs. For the other, there is justice for those who are the victims of iniquitous economic and political systems: the poor. Assuming secular causes into their religious consecration and commitment, those communities teach today to the plural society we live in how to be open to otherness, to difference, and to the various vulnerabilities that clamor for justice. They also teach to the churches a new radical way to live the gospel--not with a unique institutional point of view but with an unlimited openness to all hungers and thirsts of the world. Their martyrdom is a liturgy celebrated publicly, instigating reflection and action.
About the author
Maria Clara Bingemer is Full Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the author of A Face for God (2014), among other books. She has written many books and articles on Simone Weil's thought, including the essay "Affliction and Option for the Poor: Simone Weil and Latin American Liberation Theology" (in R. Rozelle and L. Stone, eds., The Relevance of the Radical).
