Martyrdom for Being a Christian - St. Josaphat and the Unity-Uniformity Struggles in Syro-Malabar Church

The last 3 years of mudslinging and washing linen in public on account of purely internal issues - geo-political (read, power related), economic and ritualistic - have made a vibrant church (vibrant as seen in church attendance, organisational cohesion and number of full-time members dedicated for church ministry) a vessel of contempt and a scandal for people of other faiths. 

When the church (Latin) celebrates the martyr St. Josaphat, I am inspired and consoled. Consoled,  because, his story reaffirms that the church, in spite of its idealistic spiritual orientation, in reality, carries with it all the limitations of human beings in time and space. This had been so before - with ups and downs in the spiritual quotient - and continues to be so. 

In the 16th century, we find Josaphat at the centre of an effort at unity through a unification process involving the Catholic church and the Orthodox church of Ukraine. In 1595 Ruthenian Church which was part of the Byzantine church, became reunited with the Catholic church. Josephat, born into the Orthodox church, became part of the Roman church.  He joined the first monastery of the order of St. Basil to be united to the Catholic Church, and was later made the bishop of Polotsk.  Some of the rulers of that region could not relish this, as it threatened their control of the ecclesiastical benefices.  And plotting with the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, who visited Ukraine in 1621, they stirred up trouble which led to Josaphat being murdered while on a pastoral visit to Vitebsk in the year 1623. 

This befits a Christian bishop, though not the Christians who executed this. Our Syro-Malabar church,  increasingly tending towards zero-Jesus church, appears to have similar situations and machinations taking place within. The Chaldean* plotters and the ecclesiastical political power-brokers fearing the loss of their benefices or striving to hide their wrongs/errors in managing such benefices are an all-out effort to murder the truth.  However, here there appears hardly any potential martyr bishop - because, the wary bishops are wielding the political protective power using the police. While there is hardly any physical threat to these ecclesiastics, they are indeed fearful of such eventualities, and would rather prefer police protection, than martyrdom. 

Inspiration - I hope the model of St. Josaphat inspires them to be pastoral, rather than politically manipulative, and welcome martyrdom, if that comes their way, in that course! 

St. Josephat, pray for us! Pray for our bishops. 

*Never born or introduced to it as a Christian, now I am condemned to be a Chaldean, a Catholic casteism! 

Picture of St Josaphat's Martyrdom: https://thecatholicheroes.com/history-biographies/st-josaphat-the-martyr-of-ecumenism-a-life-of-devotion-and-sacrifice/