Exhortation to Martyrdom 34–46

And let us observe this too: that the Savior's prophecies about martyrdom are given not in his words to the multitudes but in those to the apostles. For after it has first been said, “These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them: Do not go into the way of the Gentiles,” and what follows, there is added: “Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you. Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in this city, flee to the next, and if they persecute you from that one, flee to another; for truly I say to you, you will not finish the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” And Luke records similar things: “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious how you are to make your defense or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” And after other things: “Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate beforehand how to answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. And not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.” And Mark says similar things: “When they lead you away and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand or meditate what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake; but he who endures to the end will be saved.” And these words also, in Matthew, which urge us on to martyrdom, were spoken to no others than the Twelve; and we too must hear them, as those who will be brothers of the apostles who heard them, and will be counted with the apostles. The sayings run thus: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” And next to this the Lord teaches us that no one comes into the contest of martyrdom without providence. For it is said: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father in heaven. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who confesses in me before men, I also will confess in him before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny him before my Father in heaven.” Equivalent to these are the words in Luke: “I say to you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will show you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. And I tell you, everyone who confesses in me before men, the Son of Man also will confess in him before the angels of God; but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” And in another place: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and of the holy angels.” And Mark recorded something close to this: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Those, then, who put us to death kill the life of the body; for such is the meaning of “Do not fear those who kill the body,” said in these very words by Matthew and by Luke. And after they have killed the body, even if they wish, they cannot kill the soul; nor do they “have anything more that they can do.” For how is it possible for a soul to be destroyed that has been made alive by its confession itself? For he who urges us to martyrdom in Isaiah, and his Servant, bear witness to it in return, where it is written: “Be witnesses for me, and I am a witness, says the Lord God, and the Servant whom I have chosen.” And note this also: that this commandment was given not to Jesus' servants but to his “friends”: “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.” We must fear, then, “him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” For he alone “after he has killed has authority to cast into Gehenna.” And he will cast into it those who have feared those who kill the body and have not feared “him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna,” and “him who after he has killed has authority to cast into Gehenna.” And if the hairs of anyone's head “are numbered,” they are clearly numbered for those beheaded for Jesus' sake; let us confess in the Son of God, and before men and not before gods, so that he who has been confessed may repay us by confessing us before his God and Father, and himself confess in heaven the one who confessed him on earth.

Who, having considered such things, will not cry out that saying of the apostle: “That the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us”? For how is confession before the Father not far greater than confession before men? And how does the confession in heaven by the one who has been confessed not exceed beyond measure the confession on earth by which the martyrs confess the Son of God? And let anyone who is thinking of denying “before men” remember him who said without falsehood: “I also will deny him before my Father in heaven.” And since Matthew recorded, “I also will confess in him before my Father in heaven,” and Luke, “the Son of Man also will confess in him before the angels of God,” I consider whether perhaps “the firstborn” of “all creation,” “the image of the invisible God,” will confess the one who confessed him before the Father in heaven, while he who was born “of the seed of David according to the flesh,” and is for this reason “son of man,” and was born of a woman who was herself a human being and is for this reason called “Son of Man”—by which is understood the man in Jesus—will confess those who confessed him “before the angels of God.” The corresponding account must be given of those who deny. And this too must be considered: that the one who confesses in the Son “before men” commends, as far as in him lies, Christianity and the Father of this Christianity to those before whom he confesses; while the one who is confessed by the firstborn of all creation and by the Son of Man is commended, through the confession of the Son of God and of the Son of Man, to the Father in heaven and to the angels of God. And if “it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends,” how must we not consider approved the one judged worthy of being commended to the Father in heaven and to the angels of God? And if he is approved, and those like him, whom the Lord “tested” by tortures and examinations “like gold in the furnace and accepted like a whole burnt offering,” what must be said of those who have been exposed in the furnace of temptation and have denied, whom he who denies the one deserving denial denies as unapproved before the Father in heaven and “before the angels of God”?

And we must contend not only not to deny but also not to be ashamed at all of suffering what those who are strangers to God think deserving of shame; especially you, holy Ambrose, who, having been glorified and welcomed by a great many cities, now as it were go in procession, carrying the cross of Jesus and following him as he leads you before governors and kings, so that he himself, journeying with you, may give you a mouth and wisdom, and to you also, Protoctetus, his fellow contestant, and to those who share in martyrdom with you, who fill up “what is lacking” in the sufferings “of Christ”; and that he may go with you to the paradise of God, showing you how you may pass through “the cherubim and the flaming sword that turns and guards the way to the tree of life.” For if both of these guard “the way to the tree of life,” they guard it so that no unworthy person may be allowed to pass through it and come to the tree of life. For the flaming sword will hold back those who have built on the laid foundation, Jesus Christ, “wood or hay or straw,” and the most combustible and longest-burning wood of, if I may so name it, denial; while the cherubim will receive those who are not of a nature to be held by the flaming sword, because they have built nothing akin to it, and will send them on to “the tree of life” and to all that “God planted” in the east and “made to spring up” “from the earth.” And with Jesus journeying with you to paradise, despise the serpent, conquered and crushed under the feet of Jesus, and through him under yours too, since he has given “you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.”

So we must neither deny the Son of God nor be ashamed of him or of those who belong to him or of his words, but we must listen to this: “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny him before my Father in heaven”; and this: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of mine, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and of the holy angels”; and this: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of the Father with the holy angels.” And Jesus once “endured the cross, despising the shame,” and for this reason “sat down at the right hand” of God; and his imitators too, despising shame, will sit with him and reign with him in heaven—with him who came not to bring “peace on earth” but to bring it upon the souls of his disciples, and to bring “a sword on the earth.” For since “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart,” he now above all rules our souls with the peace that surpasses all understanding, which he left to his apostles, while he has thrust a sword between the image of the man of dust and that of the heavenly man; so that for the present he may take to himself our heavenly part, and afterwards, when we have become worthy not to be cut in two, make us wholly heavenly. And he came to bring on the earth not a “sword” only but also “fire,” of which he says, “I would that it were already kindled!” Let this fire, then, be kindled in you too, consuming every earthly and body-loving thought of yours; and the baptism by which Jesus was constrained “until it was accomplished,” be baptized with it now with all eagerness. And you who have “wife and children and brothers and sisters,” remember this: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, he cannot be my disciple”; and both of you remember this: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate,” besides the former things, “even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.” But hate your own souls in such a way that by hating them you keep them for eternal life; “for he who hates,” he says, “his own soul in this world will keep it for eternal life.” So hate your soul for the sake of eternal life, persuaded that the hatred Jesus teaches us to feel is a good and useful hatred. And just as we must hate our soul in order that it may be kept for eternal life, so you who have “wife and children and brothers and sisters,” hate them, so that you may benefit those you hate by the very fact of having hated them, gaining boldness to do them good by becoming a friend of God.

At the same time remember also the one who prayed in the Spirit about the children of martyrs, left behind because of their love for God, and said: “Preserve the sons of those who have been put to death.” Only know that “it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God,” and that, just as it is said to those of Abraham's seed, “I know that you are Abraham's seed,” and, “If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham,” so it will be said to your children too: “I know that you are Ambrose's seed,” and, “If you are Ambrose's children, you do the works of Ambrose.” And perhaps they will do them, since you will benefit them more after such a departure than if you remained with them. For then you will love them with more knowledge and pray for them with more understanding, if you learn that they are your children and not only your seed. Have on your lips now the words, “He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,” and, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

By your eagerness for martyrdom, give place to the Spirit of your Father, who speaks in those delivered up for the sake of their worship of God. If you see yourselves hated and thought abominable and impious, then take up the words, “Therefore the world hates you,” “because you are not of this world”; “for if you were of this world, the world would love its own.” Having endured many reproaches for Christ's sake and many dangers since you believed, make progress in endurance to the end, because “he who endures to the end will be saved.” Know that, as Peter says, you will rejoice, “though now for a little while, if need be, you are grieved by various trials, so that the testing of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” But take “grieved” in the sense of “having toiled,” as is clear also from “In grief you shall bear children”; for a woman does not always bear children in grief as an emotion, but in toil. If the words are useful to the disciples of Christ, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away, and its desire”: do not then love the things that are passing away, but by doing the will of God become worthy of becoming one together with the Son and the Father and the Holy Spirit, according to the Savior's prayer when he says, “As I and you are one,” “that they also may be one in us.” And how many days can one gain by loving “the world” or “the things in the world,” while forfeiting or losing one's own soul, and carrying about a conscience weighed down beyond a “heavy burden,” weighed down by the fall of denial? Let each of us remember how often he has been in danger of dying the common death, and let us consider whether perhaps we were kept safe for this purpose: that, baptized in our own blood and washed clean of every sin, we might spend our time at the altar in heaven with those who have contended with us.

But if someone, giving way through great love of life, or softness toward pain, or what are thought the plausible arguments brought by those who try to persuade us to the worse course, should deny that there is one God and his Christ, and confess demons or fortunes, let such a one know that he is preparing “a table for the demon” and filling “a mixed cup for Fortune,” having forsaken the Lord and forgotten his holy mountain, and that he will be subject to these reproofs, as Isaiah recorded in this way: “But you who have forsaken me and forget my holy mountain and prepare a table for the demon and fill a mixed cup for Fortune, I will deliver you to the sword; you shall all fall in slaughter; because I called and you did not answer, I spoke and you did not listen, and you did evil before me and chose what I did not wish. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall be glad, but you shall be ashamed; behold, my servants shall rejoice in gladness, but you shall cry out for pain of heart and wail for anguish of spirit. For you shall leave your name for a satiety to my chosen, but the Lord will destroy you.” But if, understanding what the Lord's table is, we wish to share in it, let us know this: “You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” And if, understanding what is meant by “I will not drink from now on of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of heaven,” we wish to be found among those who drink with Jesus, let us attend to this: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.” And who, hearing John, the son of thunder, say, “He who denies the Father and the Son—everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who confesses the Son has the Father also,” will not be afraid of denying the Son by saying that he is not a Christian, since in denying him he will not have the Father? And who would not be moved to confess by deeds and words that he is a Christian, so that he may also have the Father? For those who confess have the Father.

If we have passed “from death to life” by having passed from unbelief to faith, let us not be surprised if the world hates us. For no one who has not passed “from death to life,” but remains in death, can love those who have passed from the dark house, so to speak, of death to the buildings of living stones, filled with the light of life. Jesus “laid down his life for us”; let us then lay down ours too—I will not say for him, but for ourselves, and, I think, also for those who will be built up by our martyrdom. The time has come for us Christians to boast; “not only so,” it says, “but we also boast in afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance character, and character hope; and hope does not put to shame”—only let “the love of God” be poured out “in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Let Paul say, “If, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus”; but let us say, “If, humanly speaking, I was put to death in Germany.”

If, “as the sufferings of Christ abound,” “so through Christ comfort also abounds,” let us most eagerly welcome the sufferings of Christ, and let them abound in us, if we long for abundant comfort, with which all “who mourn” “will be comforted,” though perhaps not equally. For if the comfort were equal, it would not have been written, “As the sufferings of Christ abound to us, so our comfort also abounds.” Those who share in the sufferings will share also in the comfort, in proportion to the sufferings in which they share with Christ; as you learn also from him who says such things with assurance: for we know, “that as you are partners in the sufferings, so also in the comfort.” And God says through the prophet: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” What other time is so acceptable as when, for the sake of our piety toward God in Christ, we are led away under guard in procession through the world, celebrating a triumph rather than being led in triumph? For the martyrs in Christ with him strip off “the rulers and authorities” and triumph with him, as they become sharers in his sufferings and so also in his noble deeds in those sufferings; among which is also triumphing over “the rulers and authorities,” which you will shortly see conquered and put to shame. What other day is so much a day of salvation as the day of such a departure of ours from here? But I urge you: “give no offense in anything, so that” the presbyterate or “the ministry” may not “be blamed” because of you, “but in everything commend” yourselves “as ministers of God, in much endurance,” saying, “And now what is my endurance? Is it not the Lord?”; “in afflictions,” persuaded that “many are the afflictions of the righteous”; “in necessities,” so that we may claim blessedness as something necessary for us; “in distresses,” so that, having traveled the narrow and hard way without turning aside, we may arrive at life. If need be, let us commend ourselves also “in beatings, in prisons, in tumults, in labors, in sleepless nights, in fastings.” For behold the Lord, and “his reward” is in his hand “to repay each” as his works are.

Now let us show that we have longed for knowledge through works befitting knowledge. Let complete purity, free from every defilement of any sin whatever, be displayed in us. As sons of a patient God and brothers of a patient Christ, let us be patient in all that happens; “for a patient man is great in understanding, but the fainthearted is exceedingly foolish.” If one must commend oneself “with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left,” then, having commended ourselves “through glory” without being puffed up by it, let us now endure dishonor too; and if we have lived in a way that deserved good report and have been well spoken of, let us now bear the ill report of the ungodly. And if we have been admired as truthful by lovers of truth, let us now laugh at being called deceivers. Over the many dangers from which we have been rescued, many said that we were known by God; now let whoever wishes say that we are unknown, when perhaps we are the better known. So, bearing what happens, we are disciplined but not put to death, and we who rejoice seem to be sorrowful.

Paul says somewhere to those who had endured at the beginning, urging them, consistently with their former endurance, to bear second dangers for the sake of the word: “But recall the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great contest of sufferings, sometimes being made a public spectacle by reproaches and afflictions, and sometimes becoming partners with those so treated. For you sympathized with my bonds, and you accepted with joy the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you have a better and lasting possession. Do not, therefore, throw away your boldness, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance.” Let us too, then, now endure “a great contest of sufferings,” being made “a public spectacle” “by reproaches and afflictions,” and accepting “with joy the plundering of” our “possessions”; for we are persuaded that we have “a better possession,” not earthly nor even bodily, but invisible and incorporeal. For we look not to “the things that are seen,” seeing that these are “temporary,” but those “eternal.”

Since some, not having considered the doctrine about demons—that in order to remain in this thick air around the earth they need the nourishment that comes from the fumes of sacrifice, and so watch for wherever there is always the savor of burnt fat, and blood, and incense—make light of sacrificing as a matter of indifference, we would say to them too: if those who supply food to robbers and murderers and barbarian enemies of the great King are punished as having wronged the commonwealth, how much more justly would those be accused who, by sacrificing, give to the servants of wickedness food that keeps them in the region around the earth; especially if, having learned the words, “He who sacrifices to other gods shall be utterly destroyed, except to the Lord alone,” they sacrifice to the causes of the evils on earth. And I think that for the sins committed by the demons working against men, those who nourished them by sacrificing will be accused no less than the demons who did the evil; for the demons, and those who kept them on earth, have as it were jointly done the evils to men, since the demons could not have lasted without the fumes and what are thought to be the foods suited to their bodies.

Again, some, supposing that names exist by convention and have no natural relation to the things of which they are names, think it makes no difference whether one says, “I worship the first God,” or “Zeus,” or “Zen”; or whether one says, “I honor and acknowledge the sun,” or “Apollo,” and “the moon,” or “Artemis,” and “the spirit in the earth,” or “Demeter,” and all the other things the wise men of the Greeks say. To them we must say that there is a very deep and recondite study concerning names, and whoever understands it will see that if names existed by convention, the so-called demons or other powers invisible to us would not have obeyed those who know them and name them with names regarded as conventional. But as it is, certain sounds and syllables and names, pronounced with rough or smooth breathing, or with long or short quantity, perhaps by some nature we cannot perceive, bring those who are called. And if this is so, and names do not exist by convention, the first God must be called by no name other than those by which the servant and the prophets and our Savior and Lord himself name him, such as Sabaoth, Adonai, Shaddai, and again, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; for “this,” he says, “is an eternal name and a memorial for generations of generations.” And it is no wonder if the demons transfer their own names to the first God, so that they may be worshiped as the first God. This is not the ancestral custom of the servant of our tradition, nor of the prophets, nor of Christ, the fulfillment of the law, nor of his apostles. We have necessarily set this out so that no one may outwit us, or defile our reasoning even in some degree; we must attend to it carefully, giving the opponents no room for their attempts.