ANNOUNCEMENT original: "ԶԵԿՈՒՑՈՒՄՆ"

The spectacle of divine and heaven-wondrous love and the contests that the Church displayed, having been armed from the earliest times of the Christian religion, was truly marvelous. It looked toward its leader and the one who arranged the spectacle, the only-begotten Son of God, and instead of His blameless and redemptive blood, they dedicated their own blood and lives with intent readiness.

It was truly fitting for the believers of those ancient times not only to emulate the virtuous spectacle of their martyrdom, to establish feasts and commemorations in their honor, and to raise shrines over their graves, but also to imprint in books the history of their God-pleasing lives and their glorious martyrdom for the encouragement and exhortation of those who were to come. Church writings and memorials bear witness that when emperors and tyrants, those bitter enemies of the faith of Christ and the truth of the Gospel, raged with fury and thought to quench that God-kindled love with the blood of martyrs—when they organized courts and assemblies, sent out decrees of commands across the entire world, mixed threats with cajolery, and set honor and glory against torture and disgrace—those Christians who desired noble and heavenly glory were neither terrified by their threats nor weakened by their cajolery. They rushed into the arena rejoicing, choosing death for Christ over the pleasures of worldly life.

A woodcut depicts a group of early Christian martyrs standing firm before a Roman judge, symbolizing the triumph of faith over temporal power.