The earliest age of the Church was the age of blood martyrs. As I currently am reading the Victories of the Martyrs by St. Alphonsus, I am repeatedly shocked how spontaneously the earliest Catholic men and women and children chide their Roman procurators for their pagan worship. Before the threat of flames, little girls openly declare they would rather suffer several minutes in the flames than the eternal flames to which the Roman procurator will throw himself if he does not repent for his idolatry. That early age of the Church carried the physical cross of Jesus Christ. Indeed, many of the early martyrs were literally crucified, as was Our [...]