大象传媒

Good morning. 47 years ago today, Jan Palach, a philosophy student at Charles University in Prague, burned himself to death in Wenceslas Square in protest at the Soviet occupation of what was then Czechoslovakia.聽 His actions led to huge sympathy. 500 thousand people lined the streets for his funeral procession, whilst police and Soviet authorities stayed away. It was another 20 years before Czechoslovakia got its freedom in the so called Velvet Revolution, but the memory of Jan Palach鈥檚 terrible death remained in people鈥檚 hearts as they thought about freedom, and worked and prayed for it. Martyrdom is difficult for us to understand these days. Did he make more of a difference by deliberately and publicly burning himself to death than he could have done by the work he might have done had he lived? Was his action something that changed how people thought? Was it an act of courage or desperation, or an unholy alliance of the two? We shall never really know. But what we do know is that active resistance to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes聽 often leads to people鈥檚 deaths, and that very often those people who perish in resistance looked death in the face before taking their actions. For many of us, there are things more precious, more valuable, than life itself. We see it, horrendously, in suicide bombers. We see it, magnificently, in those who risk their lives to save others. And we see it in Jan Palach, who set himself alight as a beacon for freedom,聽 and opposition to tyranny, and his sense that freedom mattered more than life itself. As we live our lives today and every day, let us cherish the freedom we have, and know that, for many, it has been so dearly fought for. Amen.