We remember the martyrs, those who were to the end rooted in faith in Jesus Christ and in love with the Church, to the point that they lost their own life in this world. They would suffer many wounds to their skin and whipping, the consequences of the persecution that the first Christians suffered and that many suffer even today.
It was in the middle of this immense persecution and in the middle of this witness of love of the martyrs that the Church began to grow and to develop. Certainly, what the persecutors did was bad, the Christians would have all the right to protest and question the motive of all that was happening to them, but they did not.
They understood that the evil that they suffered had a greater objective, they knew that there existed some mystery suffering, they knew that it would have some redemptive value, for God Himself wanted to save us by passing through an immense suffering in this world, the cross. God made Himself flesh and suffered in the flesh the sufferings of this world.
In truth the existence of evil is not in order that God could draw good, evil is a mystery, it exists and because it exists, God takes from it some good.
Evil is no the desire of God for His children, God’s desire is the Good.
But what would bring these men to permit themselves to be whipped when only a small attitude, denying Christ would free them from the suffering and persecutions? What good was take from this evil?
The which moved these men was the love for Christ, the point of detachment from life in this world to reach it in God and to have the Lord alone as recompense.
God Bless you,
Translated from Portuguese