A homily delivered at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland

According to The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, the story is told by Perpetua herself that while she was imprisoned for her faith, her father came to her begging her to renounce, for the sake of her infant son and his gray hairs.[1]

She told him, “Father, … do you see this vase here, for example, or water-pot, or whatever?” “Yes, I do,” said he. And [she] told him: “Could it be called by any other name than what it is?” And he said: “No.” “Well, so too, I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.”

Her father left deeply angered by his grief, but if he had thought twice about it, could he have blamed anyone other than himself for naming her? Perpetua: She who persists.

Family plays a central role in Perpetua’s account of her arrest and imprisonment before her martyrdom. She is sick with worry for her baby, and when he is restored to her and she is able once more to nurse him, she is healed; “My prison had suddenly become a palace, so that I wanted to be there rather than anywhere else.” In her first prison vision, after ascending into heaven, the shepherd sitting there fed Perpetua with the milk of the sheep he was tending, milk that tasted like honey, and she knew its meaning.

But her Christian companions were her faithful family. She tells of Saturus, whom she called, “the builder of our strength,” who gave himself up to the authorities willing as a Christian to join Perpetua and Felicitas and the others in their fate. In the vision, it was Saturus who led the way to heaven through a dangerous ladder guarded by a dragon. It was he who called to Perpetua, “I am waiting for you. But take care; do not let the dragon bite you.”

The relationship of Perpetua to her companions, the free African woman to the slaves, is one that I do not feel qualified to explore here. I do notice that it is Saturus the slave who chooses freely to give himself up to the authorities for the crime of Christianity, who is the first to die in the arena, and who leads Perpetua and their companions up the ladder to heaven. The first shall be last, and the last shall be forever first.

Do you ever read a piece of the Gospel, or the commentary of the epistles, and wonder what ever happened to the “yoke is light, burden is easy” Jesus? The pieces that call us to persevere through hardships and trials, to suffer the cooling of love, to trust that the way of love, the way of mercy, the way of the Cross will endure even though this world tries its best to wear it down with its little crucifixions?

In some ways, we have only ourselves to blame, naming ourselves Christians, little Christs, followers of the Son of Man who went to the Cross for us.

It is always a question, isn’t it, when we read of these martyrs, what we would do? How we would face the crisis, the challenge to our faith, the pleas of friends and family to save ourselves, to care for our own interests – or theirs – in place of the way of the Cross. We are blessed, in this time and place, not to have to choose the narrow, knife-edged, martyr’s path to heaven. That does not relieve us from the responsibility and the choice to follow the way of deep love, of Christlike love, of uncompromising love, whatever that may cost us. And we are not alone in our trials of faith. We have one another. Within one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, we are perpetual companions.

And we have Jesus, whose love never grows cold, whose presence makes a palace of a prison, who nurses us with milk that tastes of honey. By his name we are called, regardless of status and stature and strength; and his mercy is on martyrs and muggles alike. As light perpetual in the shadows of the evening, God’s mercy endures forever.

[1] Story and quotations from The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, translated by Herbert Anthony Musurillo (Oxford University Press, 1972), accessed online at https://archive.org/details/the-acts-of-the-christian-martyrs-by-herbert-anthony-musurillo-z-lib.org/