blow on the face for having spoken against Mahomet: he turned
the other cheek, and patiently received a second. He received the stroke
of death out of the city-gates, with great cheerfulness, on the 11th of
March, 859. St. Leocritia was beheaded four days after him, and her body
thrown into the river Boetis, or Guadalquivir, but taken out by the
Christians. The Church honors both of them on the days of their
martyrdom.

* * * * *

If we consider the conduct of Christ towards his Church, which he
planted {566} at the price of his precious blood, and treats as his most
beloved spouse, we shall admire a wonderful secret in the adorable
councils of his tender providence. This Church, so dear to him, and so
precious in his eyes, he formed and spread under a general, most severe,
and dreadful persecution. He has exposed it in every age to frequent and
violent storms, and seems to delight in always holding at least some
part or other of it in the fiery crucible. But the days of its severest
trials were those of its most glorious triumphs. Then it shone above all
other periods of time with the brightest examples of sanctity, and
exhibited both to heaven and to men on earth the most glorious
spectacles and triumphs. Then were formed in its bosom innumerable most
illustrious heroes of all perfect virtue, who eminently inherited, and
propagated in the hearts of many others, the true spirit of our
crucified Redeemer. The same conduct God in his tender mercy holds with
regard to those chosen souls which he destines to raise, by special
graces, highest in his favor. When the counsels of divine Providence
shall be manifested to them in the next life, then they shall clearly
see that their trials were the most happy moments, and the most precious
graces of their whole lives. In sickness, humiliations, and other
crosses, the poison of self-love was expelled from their hearts, their
affections weaned from the world, opportunities were afforded them of
practising the most heroic virtues, by the fervent exercise of which
their souls were formed in the school of Christ, and his perfect spirit
of humility, meekness, disengagement, and purity of the affections,
ardent charity, and all other virtues, in which true Christian heroism
consists. The forming of the heart of one saint is a great and sublime
work, the masterpiece of divine grace, the end and the price of the
death of the Son of God. It can only be fin