One of 22 Ugandan martyrs, Charles Lwanga is the patron of youth and Catholic action in most of tropical Africa. He and his companions were pages in the court of Mwanga, the Bagandan ruler. He protected his fellow pages, aged 13 to 30, from the immoral demands of Mwanga, and encouraged and instructed them in the Catholic faith during their imprisonment for refusing the ruler’s demands.
For his own unwillingness to submit Mwanga’s demands and his efforts to safeguard the faith of his friends, Charles was burned to death on June 3, 1886, by Mwanga’s order. Charles felt the same kind of pressure to abandon what was right as did Tobit in today’s first reading. Tobit knew it was just and right and honorable to bury the dead, although he was persecuted for doing so. Yet he did what was right anyway, as did Charles Lwanga. Both knew that faith wasn’t only to be lived when it was convenient.
How are we called upon to stand up for others and protect each other from the immoral onslaughts of our own time and place? Witnessing to what is right and good is often inconvenient, and for those like St. Charles, sometimes dangerous. But that is what disciples do. That is our ministry, the work to which we have all been called.