To Fortunatus: Exhortation to Martyrdom

You have asked, dearest Fortunatus, that, since the weight of afflictions and persecutions presses upon us, and since at the end and consummation of the world the hostile time of Antichrist has already begun to draw near, I should compose from the divine Scriptures exhortations for preparing and strengthening the minds of the brothers, with which I might rouse the soldiers of Christ for the spiritual and heavenly contest. I had to comply with so necessary a wish, so that, as far as our modest ability suffices, aided by divine inspiration, some arms, as it were, and defenses might be brought out from the Lord's precepts for the brothers who are about to fight. For it is too little that we rouse the people of God with the trumpet of our voice unless we strengthen the faith of believers, and their courage dedicated and devoted to God, by the divine reading.

What better fits our care and concern than to prepare by constant exhortations the people divinely entrusted to us, an army set in the heavenly camp, against the weapons and darts of the devil? For no one can be a fit soldier for war who has not first been trained on the drill field; nor will he who seeks to win the athlete's crown be crowned in the stadium unless he first practices the use and skill of his strength. The adversary with whom we wage battle is old, the enemy ancient. Six thousand years are now almost completed since the devil first attacked man. By long experience itself he has learned every kind of temptation and every art and snare for throwing us down. If he finds the soldier of Christ unprepared, if untrained, if not watchful with an anxious and whole heart, he surrounds him in his ignorance, deceives him in his carelessness, cheats him in his inexperience. But if anyone, keeping the Lord's precepts and clinging bravely to Christ, stands against him, he must be conquered, for Christ, whom we confess, is unconquered.

And so as not to draw my discourse out at length, dearest brother, and weary the hearer or reader with the abundance of a fuller style, I have made a compendium: I have set out headings which everyone ought to know and hold, and under them I have joined passages of the Lord's words, and I have confirmed what I set out by the authority of the divine reading, so that I may seem not so much to have sent you a treatise of my own as to have supplied material to those who compose treatises. This serves each person with greater usefulness. For if I were to give a garment already made and finished, it would be my garment for another to use, and perhaps, made for someone else, it would be found to fit poorly the build of his stature and body. But as it is, I have sent the very wool and purple from the Lamb through whom we have been redeemed and given life; when you receive it, you will make yourself a tunic as you wish, and you will rejoice the more in it as your own, your personal garment. You will also show what we have sent to others, so that they too may make it up as they judge best, and so that all, their old nakedness covered, may wear the garments of Christ, clothed with the sanctification of heavenly grace.

I have also foreseen this useful and wholesome plan, dearest brother, in an exhortation so necessary, one that is to make martyrs: that the delays of our own words must be cut away, and the circuits of human speech withdrawn, and only those things set down which God speaks, by which Christ exhorts his servants to martyrdom. The divine precepts themselves must be supplied like weapons to those who fight. Let them be the exhortations of the military trumpet; let them be the battle signal for the fighters. From them let ears be roused, from them let minds be instructed, from them let the strength of both soul and body be made firm for every endurance of suffering. Let us only, who by the Lord's permission have given believers the first baptism, prepare each one for the other also, instilling and teaching that this baptism is greater in grace, loftier in power, more precious in honor: a baptism in which angels baptize, a baptism in which God and his Christ exult, a baptism after which no one sins any more, a baptism that completes the growth of our faith, a baptism that joins us to God at once as we depart from the world. In the baptism of water the remission of sins is received; in the baptism of blood, the crown of virtues. This is a thing to be embraced and desired and sought with all the prayers of our petitions, so that we who have been servants of God may also be his friends.

In exhorting and preparing our brothers, then, and arming them with firmness of courage and faith for proclaiming their confession of the Lord and for the battle of persecution and suffering, it must be said in the first place: I. That idols which man makes for himself are not gods (for things that are made are not greater than their maker and fashioner, nor can they protect and save anyone, since they themselves perish from their temples unless they are saved by man); and that neither are the elements to be worshiped, which serve man according to the arrangement and command of God. II. When the idols have been destroyed and the nature of the elements shown, it must be shown that God alone is to be worshiped. III. Then must be added what threat God makes against those who sacrifice to idols. IV. Further, it must be taught that God does not readily pardon idolaters. V. And that God is so angered by idolatry that he commanded that even those who persuade others to sacrifice to idols and serve them should be put to death. VI. After this must be joined that, having been redeemed and given life by the blood of Christ, we ought to put nothing before Christ, because he put nothing before us, and for our sake he preferred evil things to good, poverty to riches, servitude to lordship, death to immortality; whereas we in our sufferings are to prefer the riches and delights of paradise to the world's poverty, eternal lordship and kingdom to temporary servitude, immortality to death, God and Christ to the devil and Antichrist. VII. It must also be impressed that those who have been snatched from the jaws of the devil and freed from the snares of the world must not, if they begin to be in straits and afflictions, wish to go back again to the world and lose what they have escaped. VIII. That rather one must press on and persevere in faith and courage and in the completion of heavenly and spiritual grace, so that one may come to the palm and the crown. IX. That afflictions and persecutions happen for this purpose, that we may be proved. X. That the injuries and penalties of persecutions are not to be feared, because the Lord is greater to protect than the devil to attack. XI. And lest anyone be terrified and disturbed at the afflictions and persecutions we suffer in this world, it must be proved that it was foretold that the world would hate us and would stir up persecutions against us, so that from the very fact that these things happen the faithfulness of the divine promise may be evident in the rewards and prizes that will follow afterwards; 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. XII. In the last part must be set out what hope and what reward await the righteous and the martyrs after the conflicts and sufferings of this time. XIII. And that we shall receive more in the recompense for suffering than what we endure here in the suffering itself.

That idols are not gods, and that the elements are not to be worshiped in place of gods.

In Psalm 134: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have a mouth and do not speak; they have eyes and do not see; they have ears and do not hear; for there is no breath in their mouth. Let all who make them be like them.” Likewise in the Wisdom of Solomon: “They reckoned all the idols of the nations to be gods, which have neither the use of eyes for seeing, nor nostrils for drawing breath, nor ears for hearing, nor fingers on their hands for handling, and their feet too are slow to walk. For a man made them, and one who has borrowed his breath fashioned them. But no man can fashion a god like himself; for, being mortal, he fashions a dead thing with lawless hands. He himself is better than the things he worships, since he has lived, but they never.” Likewise in Exodus: “You shall not make for yourself an idol nor the likeness of anything.” Likewise in Solomon: “Nor, while paying heed to the works, did they recognize who was the craftsman; but they thought either fire or wind or swift air or the circle of the stars or the great water or the sun or the moon to be gods. If they supposed these to be gods because of their beauty, let them know how much more beautiful than these is their Lord; or if they marveled at their powers and works, let them understand from them that he who established these mighty things is mightier than they.”

That God alone is to be worshiped.

As it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” Likewise in Deuteronomy: “You shall have no other gods besides me.” Likewise there: “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal; and there is none who can rescue from my hands.” Likewise in the Apocalypse: “And I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to proclaim over the earth to all nations and tribes and tongues and peoples, saying with a loud voice: Fear God rather, and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them.” So also the Lord in the Gospel recalls the first and second commandment, saying: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord,” and: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first; and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hangs the whole Law and the Prophets.” And again: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only and true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

What threat God makes against those who sacrifice to idols.

In Exodus: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, unless to the Lord alone.” Likewise in Deuteronomy: “They sacrificed to demons and not to God.” Likewise in Isaiah: “They worshiped what their fingers had made; and man was bowed down and the man was humbled, and I will not forgive them.” And again: “To them you have poured out drink offerings, and to them you have laid sacrifices. Shall I not be angry at these things? says the Lord.” Likewise in Jeremiah: “Do not walk after other gods to serve them, and do not worship them, and do not provoke me with the works of your hands to destroy you.” Likewise in the Apocalypse: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives the mark on his forehead and on his hand, he too shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his wrath, and shall be punished with fire and sulfur before the eyes of the holy angels and before the eyes of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torments shall go up for ever and ever; and they shall have no rest day or night, whoever worship the beast and its image.”

That God does not readily pardon idolaters.

Moses in Exodus prays for the people and does not obtain it: “I pray you, Lord,” he says, “this people has sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold and silver. And now, if you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of the book that you have written.” And the Lord said to Moses: “If anyone has sinned before me, I will blot him out of my book.” Likewise, when Jeremiah was interceding for the people, the Lord speaks to him, saying: “And you, do not pray for this people and do not make request for them in entreaty and prayer, for I will not hear in the time when they call on me, in the time of their affliction.” Ezekiel too proclaims this same anger of God against those who sin against God: “And the word of the Lord came to me,” he says, “saying: Son of man, whatever land sins against me so as to commit an offense, I will stretch out my hand upon it and crush its staff of bread and send famine into it and take away from it man and beast. And if these three men were in its midst, Noah and Daniel and Job, they will not deliver sons or daughters; they alone will be saved.” Likewise in the first book of Kingdoms: “If a man sins by offending against a man, they will pray to the Lord for him; but if a man sins against God, who will pray for him?”

That God is so angered by idolatry that he commanded that even those who persuade others to sacrifice to idols and serve them should be put to death.

In Deuteronomy: “But if your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife who is in your bosom, or your friend who is equal to your own soul, asks you secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, the gods of the nations, you shall not consent to him and you shall not listen to him, and your eye shall not spare him, and you shall not conceal him; you shall surely denounce him. Your hand shall be first upon him to kill him, and the hand of all the people afterwards; and they shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God.” And again the Lord speaks and says that not even a city is to be spared, even if the whole of it has consented to idolatry: “Or if you hear in one of the cities which the Lord your God will give you to dwell in, people saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, you shall surely kill all who are in the city with the slaughter of the sword, and you shall burn the city with fire, and it shall be without inhabitant for ever. It shall not be rebuilt even now, so that the Lord may turn from the indignation of his wrath. And he will give you mercy and have mercy on you and multiply you, if you hear the voice of the Lord your God and observe his commandments.” Mindful of this command and its force, Mattathias killed the man who had come up to the altar to sacrifice. But if these commands concerning the worship of God and the scorning of idols were kept before the coming of Christ, how much more must they be kept after the coming of Christ, since he at his coming exhorted us not by words only but also by deeds, suffering after every injury and insult and being crucified as well, to teach us by his example to suffer and to die, so that there may be no excuse for a man who does not suffer for himself when he suffered for us; and since he suffered for the sins of others, much more ought each one to suffer for his own sins. And therefore he threatens in the Gospel and says: “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” Likewise the apostle Paul: “For if we die with him,” he says, “we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny, he too will deny us.” Likewise John: “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; whoever confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father.” Hence the Lord exhorts and strengthens us to despise death, saying: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can kill both soul and body in Gehenna.” And again: “Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

That, having been redeemed and given life by the blood of Christ, we ought to put nothing before Christ.

In the Gospel the Lord speaks and says: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not my disciple.” As it is written in Deuteronomy: “Those who say to father and mother, I do not know you, and did not acknowledge their own children, these have kept your precepts and observed your covenant.” Likewise the apostle Paul: “Who shall separate us,” he says, “from the love of Christ? Affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are killed all the day long; we are reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we overcome for the sake of him who loved us.” And again: “You are not your own, for you were bought at a great price. Glorify and carry God in your body.” And again: “He died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again.”

That those who have been snatched from the jaws of the devil and freed from the snares of the world ought not to return to the world again, lest they lose what they have escaped.

In Exodus the Jewish people, prefigured as a shadow and image of us, when with God as protector and avenger they had escaped the harshest slavery of Pharaoh and Egypt, that is, of the devil and the world, were faithless and ungrateful toward God and muttered against Moses, looking back at the hardships of the desert and the toil and not understanding the divine benefits of freedom and salvation; and they sought to return to the slavery of Egypt, that is, of the world, from which they had been set free, when rather they ought to have trusted and believed in God, since he who frees his people from the devil and the world protects them once freed. “What is this you have done to us,” they say, “in bringing us out of Egypt? It was better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in this wilderness.” And Moses said to the people: “Trust; stand and see the salvation that is from the Lord, which he will work for us today. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall be silent.” Warning us of this in his Gospel, that we should not return again to the devil and the world, which we have renounced and from which we have escaped, the Lord says: “No one who looks back and puts his hand to the plow is fit for the kingdom of God.” And again: “And let him who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot's wife.” And lest anyone be held back from following Christ by any desire for possessions or by fondness for his own family, he added and says: “Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

That one must press on and persevere in faith and courage and in the completion of heavenly and spiritual grace, so that one may come to the palm and the crown.

In Chronicles: “The Lord is with you as long as you are with him; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.” Likewise in Ezekiel: “The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him on whatever day he goes astray.” Likewise in the Gospel the Lord speaks and says: “He who perseveres to the end, he will be saved.” And again: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Forewarning us also that we must always be ready and stand firmly equipped and girded, he added and says: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and you like men waiting for their master, when he comes from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him. Happy are those servants whom the master finds watching when he comes.” Likewise the blessed apostle Paul, that our faith may advance and grow and reach the summit, exhorts and says: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the palm? So run that you may win. And they run to receive a perishable crown, but you an imperishable.” And again: “No one serving as a soldier of God entangles himself in worldly affairs, that he may please him who approved him. And even if one contends, he will not be crowned unless he has fought lawfully.” And again: “I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God; and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewal of your mind, to prove what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of God.” And again: “We are sons of God; and if sons, also heirs, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” And in the Apocalypse the exhortation of the divine preaching says the same thing: “Hold fast what you have, lest another take your crown.” This example of persevering and holding on is set forth in Exodus, where Moses, to overcome Amalek, who bore the figure of the devil, raised his outstretched hands in the sign and sacrament of the cross, and could not conquer the adversary until he persevered steadily in the sign with his hands continually raised. “And it came to pass,” it says, “when Moses raised his hands, Israel prevailed; but when he had let his hands down, Amalek grew strong. And they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur held up his hands on this side and that; and the hands of Moses became steady until the setting of the sun. And Joshua put Amalek and all his people to flight. And the Lord said to Moses: Write this, that it may be a memorial in a book, and speak it into the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

That afflictions and persecutions happen for this purpose, that we may be proved.

In Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God tests you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” And again in Solomon: “The furnace proves the potter's vessels, and the trial of affliction proves righteous men.” Paul too testifies to the same and says: “We boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope; and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” And Peter in his letter writes and says: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that befalls you, which comes to test you, and do not fall away, as though something new were happening to you. But as often as you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice in all things, that at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice and exult. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the name of the majesty and power of the Lord rests on you; by them indeed it is blasphemed, but by us it is honored.”

That the injuries and penalties of persecutions are not to be feared, because the Lord is greater to protect than the devil to attack.

John proves it in his letter, saying: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in this world.” Likewise in Psalm 117: “I will not fear what man may do to me; the Lord is my helper.” And again: “Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of our God. They were bound by the feet and fell, but we have risen and stand upright.” And the Holy Spirit, teaching and showing still more strongly that the camp of the devil is not to be feared, and that if the enemy declares war on us our hope rests rather in that very war, and that such a conflict brings the righteous to the reward of the divine throne and of eternal salvation, writes and says in Psalm 26: “Though a camp be arrayed against me, my heart will not fear; and though war rise up against me, in it I hope. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Likewise in Exodus the divine Scripture declares that we are rather multiplied and increased by afflictions, saying: “And the more they oppressed them, the more numerous they became and the stronger they grew.” And in the Apocalypse divine protection is promised in our sufferings: “Fear none of the things,” it says, “that you are about to suffer.” Nor does anyone else promise us safety and protection but he who also speaks through the prophet Isaiah, saying: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you and called you by your name; you are mine. And if you pass through water, I am with you, and the rivers shall not overwhelm you; and if you pass through fire, you will not be burned, the flame will not burn you; for I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, who saves you.” He also promises in the Gospel that divine help will not fail the servants of God in persecutions, saying: “But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for what you are to speak will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And again: “Settle it in your hearts not to prepare your defense beforehand; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which they will not be able to resist.” As in Exodus he speaks to Moses when he hesitated and trembled to go to the people, saying: “Who gave man a mouth, and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Is it not I, the Lord God? And now go, and I will open your mouth and instruct you in what you are to say.” Nor is it hard for God to open the mouth of a man devoted to him and to breathe into his confessor steadfastness and boldness of speech, since in Numbers he even made a donkey speak against the prophet Balaam. Therefore in persecutions let no one think what danger the devil brings, but rather consider what help God gives; let not human hostility make the mind totter, but let divine protection strengthen faith, since each one, according to the Lord's promises and the merits of his faith, receives as much of God's help as he believes he receives; and there is nothing the Almighty cannot grant, unless the failing faith of the receiver gives way.

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.