Offisite Post: ‘Tomorrow’s Martyrs’

 

Burning winds and scalding sands were your food

And shelter in your final days of life.

For your true confession of Christ, exile

Is your reward from the Arian king.

The Sahara, like a giant furnace,

Swallows your Graces, Felix, Cyprian,

And the four-thousand nine-hundred sixty-six

Courageous African Christians

Who voluntarily followed you.

 

Sharp hunger, parched throats, burnt faces and feet –

No apparent reprieve from your agony.

‘Renounce your faith and live!’ the skeptical

Onlookers shout, not knowing that Christ’s

Presence with His co-sufferers transforms

Earthly pains into a foretaste of Heaven’s joys.

In no way, then, do you grumble against God

Or look back with longing to your cities.

Your great company, instead, sings praises

More fervently to the Sweetest Trinity,

Though your voices crack and hearts are failing.

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/tomorrows-martyrs-poetry.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!