The eye-witness accounts of the massacre rend the heart. I cannot imagine how the tears of the survivors must burn. No, this story ends not in tragedy, but in glory. These are martyrs for Christ. They went quickly to see the face of God. Although we knew them not, they belong to us, to you and me, in His Body, the Church. They are a spectacle to angels. So, too, are the wounded, who must carry their cross in agony and love further along on the Via Dolorosa of this life.
“Leave them alone, take me!” Fr. Thair also shouts from the altar. He too is dispatched in an instant, and dies in the arms of his dumbfounded mother. Read more here; read it to your older children; keep the memory of the martyrs alive, as we are going to need such fortitude ourselves.
