As a child, tales of saintly heroism could launch my imagination to the clouds. As a Jesuit novice, I continued daydreaming about the glory of martyrdom. Headlines over the past few months, however, have chastened that vanity.
At some point, a Christian will likely come across Tertullian's dictum, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Martyr, from the Greek, μαρτυρα, means, witness, and on today's stage we see two types -- the martyr who endures violence unto death, and the one who inflicts it -- unto his own, and others' deaths. Each represents wholly disparate species, and bears witness to radically different possibilities.
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