The Blood of the Martyrs Is the Seed of the Church

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Martyrdom Essay: “The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church.” Tertullian had an interesting outlook on martyrdom, which led to his famous saying about said subject. The quote described perfectly what ideals the Catholic Church was built upon. It is the Christian belief that the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Jesus motivates and encourages us to live sacrificial lives of service to others, and if necessary, to die like Jesus did for the good of our fellow Catholics. The quote is also good because it talks about how helpful martyrdom was for the early Church. Without people shedding their blood so that the word of God could be spread, people may not have been as interested in what was going on. It would have taken longer for something boring to be transferred from person to person then it was to tell and hear great tales of great bravery all for the good of a special cause. It seems that blood in this sense is much like water when it comes to helping something grow. A small ideal sprinkled with the faith of many helped the Church spread nation-wide. A Martyr whose blood helped the Church spread was Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Maximilian was born in 1894 near a part of Poland then under Russian rule. In 1910 he became a Franciscan, taking the name Maximilian. He studied at Rome and was ordained in 1919. He returned to Poland and taught Church history in a seminary. He eventually left the seminary and in 1930 he went to Asia, where he founded friaries in Nagasaki and in India. In 1936 he was recalled to supervise the original friary near Warsaw. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he knew that the friary would be seized, and sent most of the friars home. In May 1941 the friary was closed down and Maximilian and four companions were taken to Auschwitz, as prisoners. Maximilian however carried on his work secretly, hearing confessions, converting some and
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