YES!

Trappist Martyrs of Atlas

What the Pope said:


The Lord invites us to allow ourselves to be consoled by Him; and this is also helpful in our preparation for Christmas. And today, the Pope said, in the opening prayer from the Mass, we asked for the grace of a sincere joyfulness, of this simple but sincere joy:

And indeed, I would say that the habitual state of the Christian should be consolation. Even in bad moments: The martyrs entered the Colosseum singing; [and] the martyrs of today – I think of the good Coptic workers on the beach in Libya, whose throats were cut – died saying “Jesus, Jesus!” There is a consolation within: a joy even in the moment of martyrdom. The habitual state of the Christian should be consolation, which is not the same as optimism, no. Optimism is something else. But consolation, that positive base… We’re talking about radiant, positive people: the positivity, the radiance of the Christian is the consolation. - VN

21 Coptic Martyrs of Libya.

How prophetic.  Just today another shooting.  In a cathedral in Brazil.  Story here.

All Saints ...

The ecumenism of blood.

When I quote the psalm, "there is no saint left" - it might be because there are martyrs ...

In the San Bartolomeo Basilica on the island in the Tiber in Rome, an unusual icon can be found: that of “the great tribulation” depicting the “contemporary martyrs.” It does not so much point to heaven as it does to earth, directing our eyes to some of the darkest and most inhumane moments of the 20th century.

The icon features a multitude of scenes ranging from the Armenian genocide to the genocide in Rwanda. - Zeger Polhuijs

The icon shown above is stunning and seems to echo the words of Pope Francis,  “today there is an ecumenism of blood."  The saints left are those whose struggle against sin and whose witness of faith endures to the point of shedding blood.

This gives me hope.  It gives me strength... and courage.

Again, as Pope Francis remarked reflecting upon the martyrdom of Blessed Oscar Romero:

“This gives me strength. Only God knows the stories of those people who have given their lives, who have died, and continue to be stoned with the hardest stone that exists in the world: language.” - Pope Francis