In the bustling, hustling chaos of the modern world, there is a truth as ancient as the stones beneath us: The lions come. That is the raw, unadorned reality etched into the marrow of Christian history. The lions come – silent predators lurking behind the veneer of civility, behind the gleam of modernity, behind the hypocritical smiles of those preaching for tolerance and civility.

Throughout time we’ve seen that the worst thing the world can unleash on the Church, on Christ’s flock, is what it eventually unleashes – its fury, its hatred, its savage, unrelenting hunger. It did this to Christ, pierced by nails and crowned with thorns, abandoned by friends, mocked by foes, and left to bleed in the dust. And it will do it to His followers. Again and again. There will be new faces, new methods. They won’t necessarily be emissaries of the Roman Empire, despotic kings, or communist dictators of the past. But it will be the same hatred and violence in new guises and faces, under the banner of political correctness, secular rage, or indifferent apathy.

And here is the brutal, uncompromising fact: if you are strong enough in your faith, if the dogma lives loudly within you, if the truth burns fiercely like a lantern in the night, the lions will come for you too. Not just in the distant past, not only in the catacombs of antiquity, but today when the streets are lined with the banners of progress, and the air is thick with the scent of revolution. The lion’s prey is the faithful, the bold, the unwavering. The ones who refuse to dilute doctrine into a thin lukewarm soup.

We’re seeing it now. Catholic Churches vandalized and torched with little more than a bureaucratic shrug from authorities. Confused young men shooting into churches full of children or assassinating a public figure who speaks a little too loudly, a little too clearly about Christ.

So they go after the Church. Persecution. Big, loud, messy. They think, “This’ll knock ‘em down, right?” or “this’ll shut ’em up.”

But their tossing fire on dry kindling. You persecute the Church, and what happens? The Church grows. You make her stronger, more determined. It’s ironic, really. That’s the paradox. You persecute her, and she just gets bigger – more fervent, more alive. Because the truth? The more you try to drown her out, the louder she echoes. You see, persecution isn’t her death sentence. It’s her fuel. That’s the irony. That’s the truth. Persecution isn’t her end. It’s her beginning.

The stories, the legends, the martyrs – they become the stories that echo through the ages, that inspire and galvanize. People understand violence. They see it on the news. They see it online. Hate and violence are the coin of the realm. They get it. What people don’t understand is the courage to speak out in the face of violence. And something in them stirs. It tugs at their immortal soul. They want to be that clear eyed. They want to be that brave. They too want to feel the Holy Spirit.

Think about the early days, the Roman Empire, Nero, the catacombs. Every time they tried to silence the believers, they only made the message louder.

So, in the end, persecution doesn’t weaken the Church. It fuels it. It makes the story richer, the community more fierce, more alive. It’s the paradox that keeps the whole thing spinning, the more they try to crush our faith, the more it grows.

They seek its ending but that it is our beginning.