My dear friends,

At the beginning of February I went to Rome to attend the Europe District Conference. After the meeting, I visited Christian heritage sites there, such as St. Peter’s Cathedral, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Colosseum, Arco Di Costantino, Foro Romano and  Sebastiano Catacomb etc.

Of all of them, the Sebastiano  Catacombe was the most impressive for me. I saw many Christians’ tombs with marks of cross, fish, dove, or lamb, and many paintings about
Christian martyrs.

Rev. Jongsin Lee (BA, MA, MA, MTh, MPhil)

Originally, the Catacombs were underground burial places. However, when the Roman empire persecuted Christians and killed them, the early Christians secretly buried many martyrs there and used the  catacombs as their place of worship for about 300 years.

Remarkably many catacombs have kilometres of tunnels. Although Christians could easily dig because the soft volcanic tuff rock under Rome is highly suitable for tunnelling, it is not easy to make so many metres of tunnels. Without the power of faith it is impossible to do it.

Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire began with the Crucifixion of Jesus and continued intermittently over a period of about three centuries until the 313AD Edict of Milan, when Christianity was legalized.

In particular, there were great persecutions from 64-250 AD, during the reign of Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Maximinus the Thracian, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, Galerius, and Julian the Apostate. Estimates of Christians killed for religious reasons before the year 313 vary greatly, from a high of almost 100,000.

However, persecution has not stopped – even today! According to the World Evangelical Alliance, over 200 million Christians in at least 60 countries are denied fundamental human rights solely because of their faith. In 2009 the International Bulletin of Missionary Research reported that an estimated 176,000 Christians would have been martyred from mid-2008 to mid-2009. If those trends continued the authors estimated that by 2025, an average of 210,000 Christians would die each year because of their faith.

How reliable are these figures? It is debatable. But my real concern is what makes such Christians brave enough to accept such persecution and die for their faith? Is this not the faith of resurrection? If that’s so, then the faith of resurrection must be very strong and one we should not ignore. Please think about this as you celebrate Easter 2013.

May God richly bless you at this special time.

Rev. Jongsin (John) Lee

Minister

Beechen Cliff & Weston Methodist Churches

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