To Fortunatus: Exhortation to Martyrdom 11–13

That it was foretold that the world would hate us and would stir up persecutions against us, and that nothing new happens to Christians, since from the beginning of the world the good have labored and the righteous have been oppressed and killed by the unrighteous.

The Lord forewarns and foretells in the Gospel, saying: “If the world hates you, know that it hated me first. If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own; but because you are not of the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you too.” And again: “The hour will come when everyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God; but they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have spoken these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.” And again: “Truly, truly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” And again: “I have spoken these things to you so that in me you may have peace, but in the world affliction. But take courage, for I have overcome the world.” And when he was asked by his disciples about the sign of his coming and of the consummation of the world, he answered and said: “Take care that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will deceive many. And you will begin to hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed; for this must happen, but it is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes and pestilences in various places. But all these are the beginnings of birth pains. Then they will hand you over to affliction and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and will lead many astray; and because lawlessness abounds, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end, he will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. When therefore you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything from the house, and let him who is in the field not turn back to fetch his garment. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing in those days. Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath. For then there will be great affliction, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ, or, Look, there, do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders to lead into error, if possible, even the elect. But you, take care; see, I have told you everything beforehand. If then they say to you, Look, he is in the wilderness, do not go out; Look, he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it. For as the lightning that comes out of the east and shines as far as the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will gather. And immediately after the affliction of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. And he will send his angels with a great trumpet, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from the heights of the heavens to their farthest bounds.”

Nor are these things new or sudden that now befall Christians, since the good and righteous, devoted to God by the law of innocence and the fear of true religion, have always walked through afflictions and injuries and the heavy and manifold punishments of their persecutors along the difficult narrow way. So at the very beginning of the world righteous Abel is the first to be killed by his brother; Jacob is put to flight; Joseph is sold; King Saul persecutes the merciful David; King Ahab tries to crush Elijah, who asserted God's majesty steadfastly and bravely; the priest Zechariah is killed between the temple and the altar, so that he himself became a victim there where he used to offer victims to God. So many martyrdoms of the righteous, in short, have often been celebrated; so many examples of faith and courage have been set forth for those who came after. The three youths, Ananias, Azarias, and Mishael, equal in age, one in love, firm in faith, constant in courage, stronger than the flames and punishments that pressed upon them, proclaim that they serve God alone, know him alone, worship him alone, saying: “King Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you on this matter. For the God whom we serve is able to rescue us from the furnace of burning fire, and he will deliver us from your hands, O king. And if not, let it be known to you that we do not serve your gods and do not worship the golden image that you have set up.” And Daniel, devoted to God and full of the Holy Spirit, cries out and says: “I worship nothing but the Lord my God, who made heaven and earth.” Tobias too, though under royal and tyrannical servitude, yet free in mind and spirit, keeps his confession to God and proclaims loftily the divine power and majesty, saying: “In the land of my captivity I confess him and show his power to a sinful nation.”

And what of the seven brothers in Maccabees, alike in the lot of their birth and of their virtues, filling up the number seven with its sacred sign of perfect completion? So the seven brothers are joined in martyrdom as, in the divine arrangement, the first seven days contain the seven thousand years; as the seven spirits and the seven angels who stand and go about before the face of God; as the seven-branched lamp in the tabernacle of witness, and the seven golden lampstands in the Apocalypse, and in Solomon the seven pillars on which Wisdom builds her house. So here too the number of the seven brothers, by the measure of its number, embraces the seven churches, as we read in the first book of Kingdoms that the barren woman has borne seven. And in Isaiah seven women take hold of one man, whose name they ask to be called upon them. And the apostle Paul, who remembers this lawful and fixed number, writes to seven churches. And in the Apocalypse the Lord directs his divine commands and heavenly precepts to seven churches and their angels. This number is now found here in the brothers, so that a lawful completion may be fulfilled. With the seven children, clearly, is joined the mother also, the origin and root who afterwards bore seven churches, she herself the first and the one, founded upon the rock by the Lord's voice. Nor is it without meaning that in the sufferings the mother is alone with her children. For the martyrs, who in their suffering bear witness that they are sons of God, are now reckoned as having no father but God, as the Lord teaches in the Gospel, saying: “Call no one on earth your father; for you have one Father, who is in heaven.”

And what proclamations of confession did they put forth, what glorious, what great proofs of faith did they give! The hostile king Antiochus, or rather Antichrist portrayed in Antiochus, sought to defile with the contagion of swine's flesh the glorious mouths of the martyrs, unconquered by the spirit of confession; and when he had beaten them severely with scourges and could make no progress, he ordered frying pans to be heated. When these were heated and glowing, he commanded that the one who had spoken first, and had most provoked the king by the steadfastness of his courage and faith, should be brought to them and fried, his tongue, which had confessed God, having first been drawn out and cut off. This happened the more gloriously for the martyr: for the tongue that had confessed the name of God ought itself to go first to God. Then for the second, more cruel punishments having been devised, before torturing his other limbs he tore the skin from his head with the hair, in hatred, surely, of this very thing: for since the head of man is Christ and the head of Christ is God, he who mangled the martyr's head was persecuting God and Christ in the head. But he, trusting in his martyrdom and promising himself the reward of resurrection from God's recompense, cried out and said: “You, powerless man, destroy us out of this present life; but the King of the world will raise us, who have died for his laws, to the eternal resurrection of life.” The third, when his tongue was demanded, quickly put it out, for he had already learned from his brother to despise the penalty of having the tongue cut out. He also steadfastly stretched out his hands to be cut off, greatly blessed in this kind of punishment, for it was granted to him, with his hands stretched out to the penalty, to imitate the likeness of the Lord's passion. And the fourth too, despising the torments with equal courage and answering with a heavenly voice to repel the king, cried out and said: “It is better, when given over to death by men, to await from God the hope of being raised again by him; for you there will be no resurrection to life.” The fifth, besides trampling with the vigor of faith on the king's butchery and his hard and varied tortures, was also moved by the divine Spirit to foreknowledge and knowledge of things to come, and prophesied to the king the indignation of God and the vengeance that would swiftly follow. “Having power among men,” he said, “though you are corruptible, you do what you will. But do not think that our race has been forsaken by God. Wait, and see his great power, how he will torment you and your offspring.” What relief that was for the martyr, how great, how grand a comfort in his tortures, to think not of his own torments but to foretell the punishments of his torturer! In the sixth, not courage alone but also humility is to be proclaimed: that the martyr claimed nothing for himself, nor fanned the honor of his confession with proud words, but rather ascribed it to his own sins that he suffered persecution from the king, and left it to God that he would afterwards be avenged. He taught that martyrs are to be modest, to trust in vengeance, and to boast of nothing in their suffering. “Do not err in vain,” he said, “for we suffer these things on our own account, having sinned against our God. But do not think that you will go unpunished, you who have undertaken to fight against God.” Admirable too is the mother, who, neither broken by the weakness of her sex nor shaken by the loss of so many children, watched her children die willingly, and counted not the pains of her dear ones but their glories, offering to God as great a martyrdom by the courage of her eyes as her sons had offered by the torments and suffering of their limbs. When six had been punished and killed and one of the brothers remained, to whom the king was promising riches and power and much else, so that his cruelty and savagery might be soothed by the comfort of subduing at least one, and when he asked the mother too to plead with him to bring her son down, she did plead, but as became the mother of martyrs, as became one mindful of the law and of God, as became one who loved her sons not softly but bravely. For she pleaded, but that he should confess God. She pleaded that the brother should not be separated from his brothers in the fellowship of praise and glory, reckoning herself the mother of seven sons only if it were granted her to have borne seven sons for God rather than for the world. And so, arming and strengthening him, and bearing her son then in a happier birth, she said: “Son, have pity on me, who carried you in the womb ten months and gave you milk for three years and nourished you and brought you up to this age. I beg you, son, look at heaven and earth, and when you have looked at all that is in them, understand that God made them out of nothing, and that the human race comes into being in the same way. And do not fear this executioner, but become worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in that mercy I may receive you back with your brothers.” Great is the mother's praise in her exhortation to courage, but greater in her fear of God and the truth of her faith, in that she promised nothing to herself or her son from the honor of the six martyrs, nor believed that the prayer of the brothers would avail for the salvation of one who denied, but rather persuaded him to become a partner in the suffering, so that on the day of judgment he might be found with his brothers. After this the mother too dies with her children: for nothing else was fitting than that she who had both borne martyrs and made them should be joined to them in the fellowship of glory, and that she herself should follow those whom she had sent ahead to God.

And lest anyone, when the occasion of a certificate or anything else by which he might deceive is offered him, embrace the evil gift of the deceivers, Eleazar must not be passed over in silence. When the king's ministers offered him the chance of taking meat that he was allowed to eat and pretending, to get round the king, that he was eating what was being forced on them from the sacrifices and forbidden foods, he would not consent to this deceit, saying that it did not befit his age or his nobility to feign a thing by which others would be scandalized and led into error, thinking that Eleazar at ninety years of age had gone over to the ways of foreigners, abandoning and betraying the law of God; and that it was not worth so much to gain a brief span of life as to offend God and incur eternal punishment. And after being tortured long, and now at the point of death, dying amid blows and torments, he groaned and said: “Lord, who have holy knowledge, it is plain that, though I could be freed from death, I endure the harshest pains of the body, beaten with scourges; but in my soul I suffer these things gladly for fear of him.” Sincere faith indeed, and courage whole and pure enough, to have thought not of King Antiochus but of God the judge, and to have known that it could not profit him for salvation to mock and deceive a man, since God, who is the judge of our conscience and alone to be feared, can be neither mocked nor deceived at all.

If, then, we too live dedicated and devoted to God, if we make our way upon the ancient and holy footsteps of the righteous, let us go on through the same proofs of punishments, through the same martyrdoms of suffering, counting it the greater glory of our own time that, while the ancient examples can be counted, Christian martyrs, since then, by the overflowing abundance of courage and faith, cannot be counted, as the Apocalypse testifies and says: “After this I saw a great crowd which no one could number, from every nation and from every tribe and people and tongue, standing in the sight of the throne and of the Lamb; and they were clothed in white robes, and palms were in their hands, and they cried with a loud voice: Salvation to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb. And one of the elders answered and said to me: These who are clothed in white robes, who are they and where have they come from? And I said to him: Lord, you know. And he said to me: These are those who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are in the sight of the honor of God.” If so great a people of Christian martyrs is shown and proved, let no one think it hard or difficult to become a martyr, when he sees that the people of the martyrs cannot be numbered.

What hope and what reward await the righteous and the martyrs after the conflicts and sufferings of this time.

Through Solomon the Holy Spirit shows and foretells, saying: “And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality; and having been troubled a little, they will be greatly blessed, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself. Like gold in the furnace he proved them, and as a whole burnt offering he accepted them, and in their time there will be regard for them. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and their Lord will reign for ever.” Likewise in the same author our vindication is described and the repentance of those who persecute and harass us is foretold. “Then,” he says, “the righteous will stand in great boldness against those who afflicted them and took away their labors. Seeing it, they will be troubled with dreadful fear and will be amazed at the suddenness of the unexpected salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning in anguish of spirit: These are those whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach. We fools thought their life madness and their end without honor. How have they been counted among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints? So we strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not shine on us, and the sun did not rise on us. We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and we walked through hard deserts, but the way of the Lord we did not know. What did pride profit us, or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow.” Likewise in Psalm 115 the price and reward of suffering is shown: “Precious,” it says, “in the sight of God is the death of his righteous ones.” Likewise in Psalm 125 the sadness of conflict and the joy of recompense is expressed: “Those who sow in tears,” it says, “will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” And again in Psalm 118: “Blessed are the blameless in the way, who walk in the light of the Lord. Blessed are those who search out his testimonies; with their whole heart they seek him.” Likewise the Lord in the Gospel, himself the avenger of our persecution and the rewarder of our suffering, says: “Blessed are those who have suffered persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And again: “Blessed will you be when men hate you and separate you and cast you out and curse your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and exult; for behold, your reward is great in heaven.” And again: “Whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” Nor do the rewards of the divine promise await only those who have been punished and killed; but even if suffering is lacking to the faithful, yet if their faith has remained whole and unconquered, and the Christian has shown that he follows Christ by despising and leaving all that is his, he too is honored by Christ among the martyrs, as he himself promises and says: “There is no one who leaves house or field or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who does not receive sevenfold as much in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Likewise in the Apocalypse he says the same thing: “And I saw,” it says, “the souls of those slain for the name of Jesus and the word of God.” And having put the slain in the first place, he added, saying: “And whoever did not worship the image of the beast nor received the inscription on their forehead or on their hand.” All of these, seen by him together in the same place, he joins and says: “And they lived and reigned with Christ.” He says that all live and reign with Christ, not only those who were killed, but also all who, standing firm in their faith and the fear of God, did not worship the image of the beast nor consent to its deadly and sacrilegious edicts.

That we receive more in the reward of suffering than what we endure here in the suffering itself.

The blessed apostle Paul proves it, who, by divine favor caught up to the third heaven and into paradise, testifies that he heard things that cannot be told; who boasts that he saw Jesus Christ with the witness of his own eyes; who professes what he both learned and saw with the truth of a greater knowledge. “The sufferings of this time,” he says, “are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.” Who then would not labor in every way to come to so great a glory, to become the friend of God, to rejoice at once with Christ, to receive divine rewards after earthly torments and punishments? If it is glorious for the soldiers of the world to return to their homeland in triumph when the enemy is conquered, how much better and greater is the glory, when the devil is conquered, to return in triumph to paradise, and to bring back victorious trophies to the place from which Adam the sinner was cast out, having laid low him who had deceived him before; to offer to the Lord the most acceptable gift, an uncorrupted faith, an unharmed strength of mind, the illustrious praise of devotion; to accompany him when he begins to come to take vengeance on his enemies; to stand at his side when he sits to judge; to become a fellow heir of Christ; to be made equal to the angels; to rejoice with the patriarchs, the apostles, and the prophets in the possession of the heavenly kingdom! What persecution can conquer these thoughts, what torments can overcome them? The mind founded on religious meditations endures strong and steady, and the soul that a sure and solid faith in things to come strengthens stands unmoved against all the terrors of the devil and the threats of the world. In persecutions the earth is shut, but heaven lies open; Antichrist threatens, but Christ protects; death is inflicted, but immortality follows; the world is snatched from the one who is killed, but paradise is displayed to the one restored; temporal life is extinguished, but eternity is made present. What dignity and what security it is to go out from here gladly, to go out gloriously amid afflictions and distress; to close in a moment the eyes with which men and the world were seen, and to open them at once to see God and Christ! How swift so happy a departure! You are suddenly withdrawn from the earth to be set in the heavenly kingdom. These things we must embrace in mind and thought; on these we must meditate day and night. If persecution finds such a soldier of God, his courage, ready for battle, cannot be conquered. Or if a summons comes first, the faith that was prepared for martyrdom will not be without reward; without loss of time the reward is given with God as judge: in persecution service is crowned, in peace the conscience.