What does it mean to be a witness of Christ?

Our guest writer is Leonard Mah S.J.

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Many of us who are familiar with the Easter story and resurrection of Christ will generally identify the first witnesses to the Easter miracle as the holy women (Mary Magdalene being the most prominent) who came to visit the tomb of Jesus.  However, if we were to read the gospel account of Matthew, we would see that there were other human witnesses present too with the women. These would be the Roman soldiers who were assigned to guard the tomb of Jesus.  They were present when the violent earthquake struck and the angel of the Lord came and rolled away the stone (Matthew 28:2).

We can only imagine how these Roman soldiers would have felt when they saw the angel descending from heaven. It might have been the equivalent of watching a scene right out of a horror film for them (with the cast consisting of other-worldly beings), except that it was for real (there wasn’t a movie industry in those ancient times anyway).  St Matthew even notes that “the guards were so shaken, so frightened of him, that they were like dead men” (Matthew 28:4).

It is surprising then, that these “first witnesses” (technically even more so than the male apostles themselves) of Christ’s resurrection did not go around proclaiming the resurrection of Christ to the people around them. Despite being right at the same scene witnessed by the women, the Roman soldiers did not straight-away become Christian believers.

Instead, the Roman soldiers went to inform the Jewish chief priests who promised to protect their well-being from the Roman governor. In addition, the chief priests also bribed the Roman soldiers with money to lie about the disciples taking the body of Jesus while they were asleep. Therefore, the Roman soldiers were not converted to the truth of Jesus’ identity, despite having discovered the empty tomb and seen the divine messengers. The Roman soldiers were probably more fearful and worried about their well-being as they could have been punished severely for neglecting their duties and even executed for dereliction of duty.

Similarly, we ourselves could sometimes, be like these Roman soldiers too! Sometimes we don’t always live our lives as witnesses for Christ, even as Christians! Like the Roman soldiers, we may be too attached to money or to perhaps, our comfortable lifestyle and well-being. There are even those of us who might be afraid of getting laughed by our friends for embracing Christianity! As such, sometimes we put our other interests and needs in our lives before Christ.

However, we can to look at the ‘real’ early witnesses, the holy women and the apostles, as inspiration and as an example for us to follow. These witnesses went out to proclaim freely the resurrection of Christ, even till the point of being martyred for their faith. They were able to believe in the resurrection because they were familiar with the person of Jesus and with his teachings (although they didn’t always believe it fully or acted on them perfectly). Moreover, many of them had developed a personal relationship with him. As such, these witnesses had the chance to know and encounter our Lord Jesus in a deep and profound way, even before he suffered and died on the Christ.

Likewise, for us to be a witness of Christ, we too need to be able to be familiar with Jesus himself. We need our quiet time for prayer, reflection and meditation, in order to be able to develop a personal encounter with the Jesus. We need to be able to read and reflect on the life of Christ, and in turn also ask ourselves how we can imitate his life more fully. However, this will not always be so easy in reality. There will be times, or perhaps we have experienced times, when we find so much difficulty in being Christ-like. Or perhaps, we could have experienced the other way round. We are tired of being Christ-like for we let people take advantage of us or maybe others around us would discourage us by saying our Christ-like behaviour is just a false pretence that we are putting up, implying our lack of genuineness (even if we really have them!).

As such, we also have to develop fortitude in order to continue to be a witness of Christ. We must not give up so easily and instead imitate the apostles and disciples of our Lord who were not fearful and utterly convicted of their faith in the Risen Lord. We cannot let the discouragements of others lead us to weakness our witness. We should not let our comfort and material well-being, and thus our pursuit of material things, hinder us from being a witness to Christ.

Let us then ask the Lord to give us the grace to be able to hold steadfast in our faith and in becoming true witnesses of him. For us to be able to have the strength to live out our Christian lives meaningfully and be good Christian witnesses.

Food for thought:

• What are the things in our lives that hinder us from being a good witness of Christ? Our inordinate attachments (both material and even immaterial)? Our fears, worries and anxieties?
• What should we do to develop a deeper relationship with Jesus? Do we keep a regular prayer time? Perhaps find a more creative and comfortable way to facilitate our time with the Lord?