Exhortation to Martyrdom 18–33

A great theater is gathered to watch you as you contend and are called to martyrdom, as if we were saying that such a thing happened in the case of some supposedly marvelous contestants, with countless thousands … to the spectacle of the contest. And when you contend, you will say no less than Paul: “We have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” The whole world, then, and all the angels on the right and on the left, and all men, both those of God's portion and those of the others, will hear us contending in the contest for Christianity. And either the angels in heaven will rejoice over us, and “the rivers will clap their hands together, and the mountains will rejoice,” “and all the trees of the field will clap with their branches”; or, God forbid, the powers below that rejoice in evil will rejoice. And it is not out of place to see, from what is written in Isaiah, what will be said by those in Hades to those who have been defeated and have fallen from heavenly martyrdom, so that we may shudder still more at the impiety of denial. For I think that such things will be said to the one who has denied: “Hades below was embittered on meeting you; all the giants who ruled the earth were roused for you, who roused all the kings of the nations from their thrones. They will all answer and say to you.” And what will the defeated powers say to those defeated, and those captured by the devil to those captured in denial, what are these words? “You too were captured, as we were, and you have been counted among us.” And if someone who had a great and glorious hope in God is overcome, through cowardice or the pains applied to him, he will hear: “Your glory has gone down to Hades, your great joy; under you they will spread decay, and the worm will be your covering.” And if someone often shone in the churches, appearing to them like “the morning star,” as his good works shone “before men,” and afterwards, contending in the great contest, lost the crown of such a throne, he will hear: “How the morning star that rose at dawn has fallen from heaven! He has been crushed upon the earth.” And this also will be said to him, who has become like the devil through denial: “You will be cast out on the mountains like an abominable corpse, with many dead pierced by swords, going down to Hades. As a garment soaked in blood will not be clean, so neither will you be clean.” For how will he be clean who is defiled with blood and murder by the abominable fall of denial, and soaked in so great an evil? Now let us show that we have heard the saying, “He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”; let us take care that no hesitation arise in us even as to whether we should deny or confess, so that the word of Elijah may not be said to us too, which runs: “How long will you limp on both your hams? If the Lord is God, go after him.”

It is likely too that we shall be reproached by neighbors and sneered at by some who surround us and shake their heads at us as at fools. But when these things happen, let us say to God: “You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, a sneering and a laughingstock to those around us. You have made us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples. All day long my disgrace is before me, and the shame of my face has covered me, at the voice of the one who reproaches and slanders, before the face of the enemy and persecutor.” And blessed it is, when all these things happen, to say to God the words that the prophet boldly adds to them: “All these things have come upon us. And we have not forgotten you, and we have not dealt falsely with your covenant. And our heart has not turned back.”

Let us remember that while we are in this life and consider the paths that lead out of this life, we say to God: “You turned aside our paths from your way.” Now is the time to recall that this place in which we have been humbled is a place of the soul's affliction, so that we may say in prayer: “For you humbled us in a place of affliction, and the shadow of death covered us.” And let us say with confidence also this: “If we have forgotten the name of our God, and if we have spread out our hands to a foreign god, will not God search this out?”

Let us strive to take up perfectly not only the martyrdom that is in the open but also that which is in secret, so that we too may cry out as the apostle did: “For this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity” “we have conducted ourselves in the world.” And let us join to the apostle's words the prophet's: “For he knows the secrets of the heart,” ours, especially if we are led away to death; when we shall say to God what only martyrs say: “For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.” And if ever, from the mind “of the flesh,” fear of the judges who threaten us with death is suggested to us, then let us say to them the words from Proverbs: “Son, honor the Lord, and you will be strong; but besides him fear no other.”

This too is useful for our present subject. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: “I praised all the dead more than the living, as many as are alive until now.” And who among the dead could so reasonably be praised as the one who of his own free choice accepted death for the sake of piety? Such was Eleazar, who, “welcoming death with honor rather than life with defilement, went of his own accord to the rack,” and who, “having taken up a noble resolve, worthy of his ninety years, of the eminence of his old age, of the gray hairs he had gained and made distinguished, of his most excellent upbringing from childhood, and still more of the holy and God-given legislation,” said: “It is not worthy of our age to pretend, so that many of the young, supposing that Eleazar at ninety has gone over to a foreign way of life, should themselves be led astray because of my pretence and for the sake of a brief and momentary life, and I bring defilement and disgrace on my old age. For even if for the present I escape punishment from men, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore by bravely giving up my life now I shall show myself worthy of my old age, and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.” And I pray that you, when you come to the doors of death, or rather of freedom, especially if pains are applied (for there is no despairing of your suffering them, from the counsel of the opposing powers), will say such things as these: “It is clear to the Lord, who has holy knowledge, that though I could be released from death, I endure hard pains in my body under the scourge, but in my soul I suffer these things gladly because of fear of him.” Such was the death of Eleazar that it could be said of him: “Not only to the young but to the great majority of the nation he left his death as an example of nobility and a memorial of virtue.”

And the seven brothers recorded in the books of the Maccabees, whom Antiochus tortured “with whips and thongs” when they persisted in the worship of God, will be able to be a most beautiful example of vigorous martyrdom to anyone who considers whether he is going to be inferior to boys, who not only endured tortures one by one but also, by having watched the torment of their brothers, displayed a firm courage in piety. One of them, having become, as Scripture called him, “the spokesman,” said to the tyrant: “What do you intend to ask and learn? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our fathers.” But why need I tell what they endured from frying pans and cauldrons heated red-hot, so that they might be tortured in them after each had first suffered different torments? For the one called their “spokesman” first had his tongue cut out; then he was scalped, and he bore the scalping as others bear circumcision for the sake of the divine law, thinking that in this too he was fulfilling the word of God's covenant. And not content with this, Antiochus mutilated his extremities “while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on,” punishing the brothers and the mother by the sight and thinking to shake their purpose by what were thought such fearful things. So, not content with these things, Antiochus, when he “had become useless,” as far as the use of his body went, through the first punishments, “ordered him to be brought to the fire,” in the pans and cauldrons, “still breathing, and to be fried.” And as the vapor rose from the flesh of the most noble athlete of piety, roasted by the tyrant's cruelty, the rest, “with their mother, encouraged one another to die nobly,” consoling themselves with the thought that God was watching these things; for the conviction that the eye of God was present with those enduring was enough for their endurance. And the judge of the contest of the athletes of piety encouraged them, being himself encouraged and, if I may so call it, gladdened by those who rose above such pains. It would be timely for us too, when we come into such things, to say to ourselves their words, which run thus: “The Lord God watches over us and in truth has compassion on us.”

When the first had been tested in this way, as gold is tested in the furnace, the second was led “to the mockery”; and the servants of the tyrant's cruelty, having “torn off the skin with the hair,” called the sufferer to repentance, asking whether he would eat of the things sacrificed to idols “before his body was punished limb by limb.” But when he refused to repent, he was led to “the next torture,” keeping his firmness to his last breath. For in no way broken nor yielding to the pains, he said to the impious man: “You accursed wretch, you release us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, who have died for his laws, to an eternal renewal of life.”

And the third, counting the pains as nothing and trampling on them for love of God, “when asked for his tongue, quickly put it out and boldly stretched forth his hands,” and said that, giving these up for the sake of God's laws, he hoped to receive them back from God, such as God would give back to the athletes of piety toward him. In the same way the fourth also was tortured, bearing the torments and saying that “it is preferable, when departing from among men, to wait for the hopes that come from God, of being raised up again by him,” a resurrection to which the tyrant will not rise; for he will rise not “to life” but to reproach and everlasting shame. Next he tortured the fifth, who, looking at Antiochus, reproached him with being mortal, while he did not curb his arrogance, thinking a tyranny of a few days to be great power. And even in these sufferings he said that the nation had not been “forsaken” by God, who would very soon torment Antiochus “and his seed.” After him the sixth, when he was about to die, said: “Do not be deceived”; we suffer these things willingly, paying the penalty for our own sins, that we may be cleansed in the pains. And he told him that he must not think that he would go unpunished for undertaking “to fight against God”; for he fights against God who fights against those made divine by the Word.

Last of all Antiochus took the youngest into his hands, and being persuaded that he too was brother to those who counted such great pains as nothing and had the same resolve as they, he used other approaches, thinking that he would be persuaded by entreaties and by promises confirmed with oaths that he would make him rich and “envied” “if he turned from the ways of his fathers,” and would enroll him among his Friends and entrust him with royal “offices.” But when he achieved nothing at all, since the young man paid no attention to what was said, as foreign to his own resolve, “he called the mother and urged her to become the boy's counselor for his safety.” She, making a show of persuading her son to what the king wished, and mocking the tyrant, spoke many words to her son about endurance, so that the young man did not wait for the punishment that was being brought but went ahead and called out to the executioners, saying: “Why do you delay and hesitate? For we listen to the law given by God; one must not accept a command that opposes the divine words.” And even like a king pronouncing sentence on those tried before him, he pronounced judgment against the tyrant, judging him rather than being judged; and he said that, having raised his hands against the heavenly children, he would not escape “the judgment of the almighty, all-seeing God.”

Then one could see the mother of so many sons bearing “with good courage, because of her hopes in God,” the pains and deaths of her sons; for the dews of piety and the breath of holiness did not allow the fire of a mother's love to be kindled in her inward parts, the fire that blazes up in many at the heaviest calamities. And I think it most useful for our present subject to have set out these things, abridged from Scripture, so that we may see how much piety, and love for God, which is exceedingly stronger than every other love, can do against the harshest pains and the heaviest tortures. With this love for God human weakness does not share citizenship; it is driven out of the whole soul, into exile, and cannot act even in the least degree, where there is someone able to say, “The Lord is my strength and my song,” and, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me, Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What martyrdom is, and how much boldness toward God it produces, can also be learned from this. The saint, being generous and wishing to repay the benefits that have come to him from God, seeks what he could do for the Lord in return for all that he has received from him; and he finds nothing else that a man of good will could render to God that is, as it were, of equal weight with his benefits, except death in martyrdom. For in the hundred and fifteenth psalm the perplexity is written thus: “What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?” And the answer to it, as if one had said, “What will the one who speaks render to the Lord for all that he has received from him?”, is given thus: “I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.” Now it is customary to call martyrdom “the cup of salvation,” as we have found in the gospel. For when those who wished to sit at Jesus' “right” and “left” in his kingdom reached out for greater honor, the Lord said to them: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?”, calling martyrdom a cup. This is clear also from the words, “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will.” And we learn that the one who has drunk that cup which Jesus drank will sit with, reign with, and judge with the King of those who reign. This, then, is the “cup” of “salvation,” and whoever takes it will call upon “the name of the Lord”; “and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

But it is likely that someone, because of the words, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” not having examined closely the intention of Scripture, may think that the Savior too as it were played the coward at the time of his passion; and if he was cowardly, someone might say, who is ever brave? But first we shall ask those who suppose this of the Savior whether he was inferior to the one who says: “The Lord is my light and my Savior; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers drew near to me to eat my flesh, my oppressors and my enemies, they themselves grew weak and fell. If an army is arrayed against me, my heart will not fear. If war rises against me, in this I will hope.” And perhaps these words spoken in the prophet belong to no one else than the Savior, who, because of the light and salvation from the Father, feared no one, and, because of the protection with which God protected him, was afraid of nothing. His heart did not fear at all when the whole army of Satan was arrayed against him; and his heart, filled with God's holy doctrines, hoped in God when war rose against him. It is not, then, possible for the same person to say out of cowardice, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” and out of courage to declare, “If an army is arrayed against me, my heart will not fear.” So lest something in the passage escape us, you will pay attention to the demonstrative used of the cup in all three. For Matthew recorded the Lord saying, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”; Luke, “Father, if you will, take this cup from me”; and Mark, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you; take this cup from me.” See, then, whether, since every martyrdom, accomplished by whatever manner of departure, is called a cup, you can say that the one who said, “Let this cup pass from me,” was not declining the kind of martyrdom (for then he would have said, “Let the cup pass from me”), but perhaps this particular form of it. And consider whether it is possible that the Savior, looking into the forms, if I may so call them, of the cups and what would come about through each, and grasping their differences with a very deep wisdom, declined this form of departure in martyrdom and secretly asked for another, perhaps heavier, so that some more universal benefit, reaching to more people, might be accomplished through a different cup; which it was not yet the Father's will should happen, since he arranges things more wisely, beyond the wish of the Son and beyond what the Savior saw, by way and by order. Clearly in the Psalms the “cup” of “salvation” is the death of the martyrs. That is why after “I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord” there follows, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.” So a “precious death” comes to us, as God's holy ones and not unworthy of it, if we die not the common and, so to speak, idle death that has nothing to do with piety, but an exceptional death, the one suffered for Christianity, piety, and holiness.

Let us remember also the sins we have committed, and that it is not possible to receive forgiveness of sins without baptism, and that according to the laws of the gospel it is not possible to be baptized again with water and the Spirit for the forgiveness of sins, and that the baptism of martyrdom is given to us. For so it has been named, as is clear from the fact that “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” is followed by “or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And elsewhere it is said: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” And consider whether the baptism of martyrdom, just as the Savior's became a cleansing for the world, also itself serves for the healing of many who are cleansed. For just as those who attended the altar according to the law of Moses seemed to minister forgiveness of sins to the people through the blood “of goats and bulls,” so the souls “of those beheaded” for the testimony of Jesus, not attending in vain at the altar in heaven, minister forgiveness of sins to those who pray. At the same time we know also that, just as the high priest Jesus Christ offered himself as a sacrifice, so the priests, of whom he is high priest, offer themselves as a sacrifice; on account of which they are seen at the altar as in their proper place. But of the priests, some were without blemish and, offering unblemished sacrifices, served the Deity, while those with blemishes, which Moses recorded in Leviticus, were banished from the altar. And who is the unblemished priest offering an unblemished victim, if not the one who holds fast to his confession and fulfills every requirement that the account of martyrdom demands, of which we have spoken above?

Let us not be surprised if the great blessedness of the martyrs, which will be in deep peace and calm and fair weather, must begin from what is thought a gloomier and, so to speak, wintry condition. For each of the blessed, traveling first the narrow and hard way in winter, will have to show what skill in steering he has acquired, so that afterwards may come what is said in the Song of Songs to the bride who has swum through the winter: “My beloved answers,” it says, “and says to me: Arise, come, my neighbor, my fair one, my dove. For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” And you too remember that it is not possible to hear “the winter is past” otherwise than by contending strongly and vigorously in the present winter. And after the winter is past and the rain is over and gone, the flowers will appear; “for those planted in the house of the Lord will blossom in the courts of our God.”

And we know this too: that since we have been persuaded by Jesus to leave idols and polytheistic godlessness, the enemy cannot persuade us to worship idols, but he wishes to force us; and for this reason he works such things against those over whom he gets authority, and he will make those who are tested either martyrs or idolaters. And often even now he says: “All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Let us take care, then, that we never worship idols and subject ourselves to demons; for the idols of the nations are demons. And what a thing it is, to leave the kind yoke of Christ and his “light burden” and to subject oneself again to the yoke of demons and bear the burden of most grievous sin, after we have come to know that the “heart” of those who serve idols “is ashes” and their “life more worthless than clay,” and after we have said, “How false are the idols our fathers acquired, and there is none among them that gives rain.”

It was not only long ago that Nebuchadnezzar set up the “golden image,” nor only then that he threatened Ananias, Azarias, and Misael that if they did not worship he would throw them “into the furnace of fire”; but now too Nebuchadnezzar says the same things to us, the true Hebrews, who cross over. But so that we may experience the heavenly dew that quenches all fire from us and cools our ruling faculty, let us imitate those holy men. Perhaps even now Haman wishes you, the Mordecais, to bow down to him; but say, “I will not set the glory of men above the glory of God” of Israel. Let us overthrow Bel by the word of God and with Daniel kill the dragon, so that coming near the mouths of lions we may suffer nothing from them, while only those responsible for our present contest are devoured by the lions that could not swallow us. Let us hold fast to this, that among the noble deeds of Job it is said also: “If, laying my hand upon my mouth, I kissed it, let this be reckoned to me as the greatest iniquity”; for it is likely that they will order us to put our hand to our mouth and kiss it.