Martiriul – „din moarte la viaţă şi de pe pământ la cer”…
Martyrdom - “from death to life and from earth to heaven…”

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to highlight the values of Christian life in the face of current challenges, showing that sacrificial love for Christ is the highest calling of any Christian. Representing the witnessing power of faith through the grace of the Holy Spirit, Christian martyr heroism as a moral ideal never encountered and never seen before the founding of the Church of Christ, affirmed itself in history as death towards life in the communion of the Holy Trinity... Love as a virtue shown in the sacrifice of martyrdom starts from faith as the grace of the Holy Spirit, is fulfilled as sharing in Christ through likeness and participation in His Sacrifice for the salvation of the world, as the Apostle says: „…for to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow His steps” (1 Pet 2:21), which means that „it has been granted to us on behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil 1:29). And this sacrificial love for Christ as the grace of the Holy Spirit is not for death, but for resurrection with Christ, „for if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, so shall we also be united with Him in the likeness of His resurrection” (Rom 6:5). From a spiritual perspective, martyrdom as a virtue is „a struggle against sin to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb 12:4), a transition from the „natural man to the spiritual man”, as a „stripping” or „renouncing” of the old man of sin and death, which, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, is „a death that bestows life”. The confessors of faith felt that Christ is „the one who brings and the one who is brought; the one who receives and the one who shares”, just as faith is confessed within the Eucharistic sacrifice… When heretical practices appeared in the approach to martyrdom that were foreign to the evangelical spirit, the Church intervened, showing that martyrdom according to the Gospel has nothing provocative, spectacular or scandalous… The purpose of the witness as a confessor of Christ is not to die, but to live together with Christ in order to acquire eternal life in the love of the Holy Trinity. As a result, it is not the confessor of faith who seeks death, but his persecutors, forcing him to deny his faith… Therefore, he does not glorify himself, but the Church recognizes him and honors the sanctity of his sacrifice, thus bringing honor to Christ, who made him worthy to confess Him in the world of sin for its salvation. Having acquired the unfading crown of immortality, the confessor of Christ remains through the ages in the communion of the Militant Church as a model of holiness and forever praying for the faithful... No matter how dehumanizing the persecutions against Christians were, the Church of Christ emerged victorious, so much so that it was ascertained that „the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christianity”…

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