When the Christians, upon these occasions, received martyrdom, they were ornamented, and crowned with garlands of flowers; for which they, in heaven, received eternal crowns of glory.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.
The martyrologies are catalogues in which are to be found the names of the saints with the days and places of their deaths and, generally, with the distinctive character of their sanctity and with an historic summary of their lives.
The Saints are the elect children of the spouse of Christ, the precious fruit of her body; they are her crown of glory. And when these dear children quit her to reap their eternal reward, the mother retains precious memorials of them and holds up their example to her other children to encourage them to follow their glorious traces.
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
In Christ we see a maturity of love that flowers in self-sacrifice and forgiveness; a maturity of power that never swerves from the ideal of service; a maturity of goodness that overcomes every temptation, and, of course, we see the ultimate victory of life over death itself.
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
Rather than allow themselves to be separated from the love of Christ, they submitted cheerfully to every privation, to contumely and disgrace, and to death itself.