"Through Christ the eyes of our hearts are opened, and our weak and clouded understanding reaches up toward the light."
St. Clement, Letter to the Corinthians
We live in challenging times, but we are not the first. St. Clement was a pope and martyr. He's mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass and was the fourth to sit in Peter's chair. Murdered under the reign of Trajan, he was joined by tens of thousands of other Christians including St. Ignatius of Antioch who died about ten years later. The first century was, indeed, a bloody time and Trajan one of the most eager to persecute, even his own faithful lieutenants:
