"We cannot just settle for celebrating the memory of the martyrs, admiring their examples and moving on lazily with our lives". This was said by card. Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Cause of the Saints, as he officiated, in Saint Peter’s Square yesterday morning, the ceremony for the beatification of 498 Spanish martyrs of the XX century. "We live at a time said the cardinal in which Christians are threatened in their true identity: and this means that they are either ‘martyrs’, i.e. they consistently endorse their baptismal faith, or that they go with the times". "Faith paid for with one’s life, even by just one person he added , has the effect of strengthening the faith of all the Church". Offering the example of the martyrs went on card. Martins means recalling that holiness does not consists in the reassertion of shared values, but in one’s personal endorsement of Christ the Saviour of cosmos and history. Martyrdom has been the paradigm of this truth since the Pentecost. One’s personal confession of faith makes us move one step forward: it makes us discover a strong bind between conscience and martyrdom". (continued)
