www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Martyrs?

I was just thinking, wondering, look in this last week what has happened in such large numbers. Are they martyrs?

There was the train in Spain, the people on it for the most part were going to a shrine.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...TE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-07-29-03-33-47

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...harged-with-negligent-homicide-1.1478324

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/2...rash-that-killed-3-injured-dozens/print.

Here was the info on that trains travel.
CELEBRATIONS CANCELED
The city of Santiago was meant to be celebrating the yearly festival of St. James on July 25, with thousands of Christian pilgrims arriving after walking the famous Camino de Santiago ancient pilgrimage trail.
A week of concerts and other cultural events were canceled after the train crash on the eve of the festival. On Sunday, black ribbons of mourning hung on the empty stages that had been set up.
Pilgrims, many of them fresh off the trail and carrying backpacks, crammed into a standing-room-only Mass in Santiago's centuries-old cathedral where they were asked to remember the victims of the accident.
At the cathedral gates, along with flowers and candles commemorating the dead, some people left walking sticks from their journeys and others placed shells, the symbol of St. James and badge of honor for the pilgrims who complete the journey.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who visited the crash site after the tragedy, is due to return on Monday to Santiago, the city where he was born, for an official funeral ceremony for the victims.
Dolores Mato, 57, a shopkeeper who works close to the ancient cathedral, expressed sympathy and grief for the victims and their families, but also for Garzon, who she said had been "crucified" in the media. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrai_Homily

From the article:

St. Jerome had used the term "white martyrdom" for those such as desert hermits who aspired to the condition of martyrdom through strict asceticism. The Cambrai homilist elaborates also on a distinction made by Gregory between inward and outward martyrdom. White martyrdom (bánmartre), he says, is separation from all that one loves, perhaps on a peregrinatio pro Christo or "pilgrimage on behalf of Christ" that might be extended permanently; blue (or green) martyrdom (glasmartre) involves the denial of desires, as through fasting and penitent labors, without necessarily implying a journey or complete withdrawal from life; red martyrdom (dercmartre) requires torture or death.

These Christian certainly were, quite literally, on a pilgrimage on behalf of Christ, and meet the definition of White Martyrs. Though their deaths were violent, sudden, and unexpected, they were not at the hands of persecutors and do not rise to the level of Red Martyrdom.

Thank you! Very interesting.

I just, I mean in one week, with WYD going on to have that mank killed in accidents. It is definitely not as in Egypt where they are killed for their faith of course.

I guess the last thing folks thing of when going on a trip like that, is they will not return to life as they know it.

When I go on a pilgrimage--and to me, the annual General Retreat of the Society of the Holy Trinity IS a pilgimage--I hope that life as I have known it will be changed...for the better.

Or, more precisely, that I will have been changed for the better so as to confront life as I have known it....theosis.