“The Lord is just in all his ways. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness.” This is what the psalmist declares today about the Lord. That is true about God, but we know that throughout history, governments have lashed out at Christians at different times. We can think of the Roman Empire until the proclamation made by the Emperor Constantine that legalized Christianity or England during the time of Henry VIII or the Communist regimes in Europe during the 20th century until the fall of the Iron Curtain. There is a group of martyrs from the French Revolution who were massacred in 1792. This group included priests, bishops, seminarians, deacon, a brother, and an acolyte. In particular, on September 2 of that year, 1792, an angry mob stormed a Carmelite church that held a group of 150 priests and bishops that were scheduled for deportation. All of them were killed by the mob. We human beings can be the opposite of kind, merciful, and slow to anger. The examples of faith that we have in the community of saints show us the courage that we Christians can have to live out our faith in the midst of oppression and persecution. The French martyrs that I mentioned were beatified in 1926. May their example of courage and faith be an inspiration to us on our journey.
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