The time of Witnesses coninues without end
 The Word of God is not brought to the ends of the world in a suitcase. We carry it in ourselves. We don't set it off in a corner of ourselves, arranged in our memory as if on a cupboard shelf. We must let it go to the very core of ourselves, to the very center around which our whole being revolves. We cannot be missionaries if we have not sincerely, generously, and warmly welcomed the word of God, the Gospel within ourselves. The vital dynamic of this word is to take on flesh, to become flesh in us. And when this word comes to dwell within us, we become capable of being missionaries... Once we have heard God's Word, we no longer have the right not to accept it; once we have accepted it, we no longer have the right not to let it become flesh in us; once it has become flesh in us, we no longer have the right to keep it for ourselves alone. Henceforward, we belong to all those who are waiting for the Word.
The time of martyrs comes and goes, but the time of witnesses continues without end - and being witnesses means being martyrs. This incarnation of God's Word in us, this allowing ourselves to be molded by it, is what we call witnessing. To take the Word of God seriously, we need all the strength of the Holy Spirit. If our witness is often mediocre, it is because we have not realized that the same kind of heroism is needed to be a witness as to be a martyr.
Charles de Foucauld said, "I must live today as if tonight I were going to die as a martyr." At the beginning of each hour of the long day, we could say, "I must begin this hour as if I were going to be a martyr, and a witness" - because there is not one second that we have the right to let God's Word lie dormant in us. And this entails awakening a fervor in our very being in the presence of the grace of each moment, a wildly passionate expectation for that strength, without which we would turn traitor.
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