If our ultimate goal is to get to Heaven, and Heaven is better than this life, why shouldn’t we go to confession, then allow ourselves to be martyred at the hands of those who hate us?
To purposely put ourselves in a situation to be killed for no greater purpose other than to be killed is considered suicide and thus a grave sin.
To be a martyr is to give witness to the faith through our life and choices even to the point of death. It is a choosing of a greater good, it is not a desire to die. Christians seek to love God and neighbor and if those goods lead to death then so be it, but Christians are not to seek to die.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus sums up in a sentence the rule to be followed in such cases: it is mere rashness to seek death, but it is cowardly to refuse it (Orat. xlii, 5, 6).
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