I am never more humbled by the courageous witness of the martyrs than when I reflect on their lives during my day-to-day struggles. Just as I am tempted to silently praise my own small mortifications, ...

After a long period in which the persecutions of Christianity were really spasmodic, local, [and] involved very few people, suddenly in the middle of the 3rd century, the year 250, the Emperor Decius ...