Jan 30th - David Galván-Bermúdez

Modern martyrs remind us that the cost of following Christ is never cheap, even today. In addition, it is the martyrdom of people who live in what were once "Christian" countries that remind us that everyday is a call to discipleship, whether times are good or bad.
To me, the interesting thing is that David reflects in his own life the turmoil that led to his death. He started out down the path to priesthood but doubted and left living an hedonistic lifestyle, even to drunken violence against his girlfriend. As happen to many who intensely follow God down the vocation path, he just as intensely rebelled, only to come back again.
He came back and was ordain in a particularly difficult time for the Church in Mexico but he held to his vocation risking arrest and death for just following God in his vocation. Eventually he was killed for it and the suspicion it caused for those who too had abandoned the way of Love.
It is so often that we fight God, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, only to be given the courage to act like a chosen one of God.

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Jacob was left there alone. Then a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that Jacob’s socket was dislocated as he wrestled with him. The man then said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” “What is your name?” the man asked. He answered, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be named Jacob, but Israel, because you have contended with divine and human beings and have prevailed.”

-- Genesis 32:25-29