lambs before wolves

There are certain humane types who are inclined to attribute everything that happens in the world to mere misunderstanding. If it were up to them, it would have been a mere misunderstanding whereby Christ was crucified and the apostles were killed; when the hour of martyrdom again comes to the Church, these same people are inclined to attribute it all to a misunderstanding. On the contrary: the words of Jesus now show them not a human misunderstanding but a divine necessity makes martyrs. Jesus' saying, "Is it not necessary that the Son of Man suffer these things? " applies to all the Church's sufferings. As long as the Gospel is preached in this world - and that means to the end of time - the Church will also have martyrs. If the message of Jesus had merely been a philosophical doctrine about which one had to discuss for years on end, for centuries, there would never have been martyrs. And if individual human beings died for such a philosophy of Christ - they would still not be martyrs in the Christian sense of the word. To emphasize the point one more time: not human convictions and opinions, to put it even more pointedly not even human zeal for the faith makes martyrs, but only Christ himself, who issues the summons to martyrdom and thereby makes martyrdom a special grace: this Christ, who is preached by the Church in the Gospel, offered up in the sacrifice of the altar, and whose name all those who are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ are bound in their conscience to confess. We forget so often that in this world the Gospel is preached by lambs before wolves, and that according to Jesus' own words, the message of the Kingdom of God is delivered - now as then - to an adulterous and sinful generation (Mark 8:38). How can one actually expect that the wolves won't fall on the sheep? Perhaps it is rather to be expected that the disciples of Jesus would be ashamed of him and his words before this "adulterous and sinful generation."  But he who predicted Peter's betrayal reckoned with this possibility, too. Certainly, there may be times in which martyrs are fewer and times in which they are more; but to say that at certain times there are no martyrs at all would be to deny the Church's existence at that time.

- Erik Peterson, Witness to the Truth (1937)