In Praise of Martyrdom

Although it is out of place, dearest brothers, to bring any trepidation into this honored task of speaking, and it is not at all fitting to diminish the glory of so great a devotion by confessing that I have begun to hesitate, yet I say again that my mind is broken by the very deliberation. It is kindled by the desire to carry out the praise, and held back from speaking by the greatness of the virtue, since it is not fitting to be silent and it is dangerous to say too little; only this one thing helps me in my agitation, that pardon, it seems, can easily be given to one who has not feared to dare. Therefore, dearest brothers, the power of the subject weighs down the capacity of my talent: however far it advances in expressing the dignity of martyrdom, it is so far crushed by the very weight of the praise and weakened and broken by the estimate of all the things of which it chiefly speaks, so that, entangled within itself, it fails in speech and cannot, with free and loosened reins, bring out into the open eloquence of discourse the force of so great a praise. Yet there will be, unless I am mistaken, some faithfulness in the speaking, which, strengthened by the very words of the work, may pour out freely what the consciousness of an unequal talent would keep from being spoken. Since, then, dearest brothers, entangled in so many and such great matters, we strive with all zeal and labor to prove the excellent and most beautiful fruits of salvation, I do not fear that some fear of sloth will frighten me into withdrawing or into silence. For if anyone wishes to look at the subject we are treating, weighing the seat of devotion and considering its very greatness, he will rather wonder that I could have dared, placed as I am where the grandeur of the subject presses on me and the fervor of my longing drives my mind, confused with joy, into straits. For whom does this subject not terrify? Whom does it not overturn with the awe of wonder?

For there is surely, unless I am mistaken, even in the very strength of conscience a wonderful dread that both stirs us and inflames us: the more deeply you look into its power, the more, from the very sight of its venerable splendor, it sends before it the awe of its sanctity. For you ought surely to consider how great a glory it is to expiate by the remedy of a single stroke whatever stain of filth there is from life, the contagions, however slight, contracted unjustly by a polluted body, and the guilt of the world taken on over so long a time: a stroke by which the reward can be increased and the guilt shut out. Hence the whole consummation and standing of life is placed in martyrdom. This is the foundation of life and of faith, this the protection of salvation, this the bond of liberty and honor; and although there are other ways by which the light can be reached, yet one comes nearer to the promised reward when sufferings plead one's cause the better.

Weigh how great a glory it is to set against the adversary's threat a mind separated from the desires of this life and from all dealings with nature and the world; not to shudder at the savagery of the torturer; for a man to be given life by the very pain by which he is thought to be extinguished, and to take for the increase of his virtue what the punisher thinks will serve to torment him. For though the hook rebounds from the enduring ribs and runs back into the wound, and though, as the scourges fall, the thong is drawn back bringing with it a torn-off piece of the body, he stands unmoved, stronger than his punishments, turning over in himself only this: that in that cruelty of the executioners Christ himself, for whom he suffers, suffers more. For since, if he denies the Lord, he would incur guilt on behalf of the one for whom he ought to have conquered, it must be seen that he endures all things, since victory is owed him from his punishment.

Since, then, martyrdom is the highest thing, there are three things we have proposed to say about it: what it is, how great it is, and what it profits. What, then, is martyrdom? The end of sins, the limit of danger, the guide to salvation, the teacher of patience, the home of life; when it is completed, even those things perish that could have been reckoned as torments in the judgment to come. Through it, testimony is rendered to the Name and the majesty of the Name is increased: not that it could be diminished in itself, or its greatness broken by the crime of one who draws back, but because it overflows into a heap of glory, while the terror of the crowd roaring around makes minds fearless in pain and adds to their title of honor from the threats of gnashing hatred, so that the mind grows in the fight as much as the one through whom Christ willed to crown a man thinks himself to be conquering. Then, therefore, the whole strength of faith is set out, then belief is proved, when you have come into the talk of the crowd and into reproach, and when with a devout mind you have stood firm against those popular madnesses, refuting and resisting whatever profane talk has hurled at you to insult Christ: as when a breakwater set against the sea resists it, and though the waves strike and the rolling sea beats on it again and again, its strength holds fast unmoved and does not give way, though covered by the foaming waves, until the force, broken on the rocks, subsides, and the sea, dashing over it, runs out spent across the open reaches of the shore.

For what is there in them but empty talk, vain conversation, and a depraved pleasure in words? As it is written: “They have eyes and do not see; they have ears and do not hear; their foolish heart has been made heavy, lest at any time they should turn and I should save them.” For there is no doubt that he said this of all whose hard minds and obstinate savagery of heart always stand apart, driven away from life-giving devotion, with madness leading them, fury seizing them, and in short every savagery harrying them, by which they are both goaded and carried away; so that, though their own deeds would be enough for their punishment, the crime of the persecution they have stirred up adds weight to that very punishment.

All this looks to the praise of martyrdom; all this the glory of suffering lights up, in which the hope of the time to come is seen, in which Christ himself is at work, whose examples we follow and seek, whose power it is by which we resist. And since at this point there is something to set forth: supreme indeed and wonderful is that condescension, which we can neither conceive in mind nor express fully in words. For what more could he have granted us in his abundant kindness than to show first in himself what he would crown in others? He became mortal so that we might be immortal, and he endured the end of human destiny, he by whom human things are ruled, so that what he suffered might be seen as done for us. He granted confession, he set martyrdoms before us; in short, all the things by which the light could be put out he bound, by the merits of his birth, into a saving remedy, with humility as the chief virtue, a divine one. Whoever have deserved to be worthy of this have been free of all this vilest stain of the world; having undergone the condition of death, they have lived.

For there is no doubt how much those will obtain from the Lord who have put the name of God before their own safety, so that on that day of judgment their gore would make them better, and their blood would show them to be … Death indeed makes life more whole; death rather leads to glory. So whenever the grain swells on milky stalks, filled out by the rains, fruitful harvests are gathered in summer; so whenever the vine is cut with the knife, it is better clothed with bursting shoots. For whatever profits by being injured gives way to the coming of a future season. Often it has helped to set fire to the fields, so that the heat of the spreading blaze might open the earth's hidden breathing passages; it has helped to scorch the light stubble with crackling fire, so that the pregnant crop might rise higher and the ear flourish more thickly on the laboring stalks. Such, then, is martyrdom: first a fall, afterward a fruit; it condemns life by death so as to keep life safe by death.

For what is so excellent and sublime as to keep the whole strength of faith with robust devotion amid so many instruments of the executioners? What so great and so beautiful as, amid the swords of so many standing around, to profess again and again the Lord of one's liberty and the author of one's salvation, and especially if you set before your eyes that nothing is more detestable than disgrace, nothing fouler than slavery, and that you ought now to seek nothing else and desire nothing else than to be snatched from the calamities of the age, stripped of the evils of the world, and, amid the ruins of a world just about to perish, to live apart from earthly contagion? For what have you to do with this light, you to whom eternal light has been promised? What with this traffic of life and nature, you whom the breadth of heaven claims? Let that desire of living hold, rather, the one whom afterward the fire, raging with an evil that cannot be expiated, will torment with eternal vengeance for his crimes. Let that desire of living hold those for whom both dying is punishment and lasting is torment. For you, now, the world itself gives way and the earth yields, you who, while all are dying, have been kept for this, that you might be a martyr. Do we not see funerals every day? We see new kinds of death become long-lasting; and, with diseases raging, we behold the unprecedented ravages of a certain plague and the destruction of depopulated cities; from this we may recognize how highly the dignity of martyrdom is to be esteemed, since even the pestilence has begun to compel us to recognize its glory.

Look, then, dearest brothers, I beg you, more fully at this, on which both salvation turns and our height is reckoned. I am not unaware that you too know very well that the state of all of us depends on judgments, and that you are not ignorant that this discipline has been handed down to us: to defend without any fear, as in military service, the power of so great a name; since the desire for eternal remembrance has long since drawn us away from the desire for this light, the longing for things to come has torn us away, and the desirable fellowship of Christ has separated us from all vices. If here we hesitate to yield to death and to offer our soul to death, then the divine benefits are no longer ours to hold and embrace, though their reward, beyond all ardor, is so great that human weakness can hardly express it in words. Heaven opens to our blood; the dwelling of gehenna gives way before blood; and among the glory of all, the title of blood is marked as the more beautiful and its crown as the more complete.

So whenever a soldier comes back laden with triumphal spoils from the enemy, he rejoices in his wounds; so whenever a sailor long wearied by storms reaches safe shores, he measures his happiness by the danger he has endured. For surely, unless I am mistaken, that toil is joyful through which security is found. All things, therefore, must be borne, all things endured; and we must not seek what you might enjoy for a short time and be punished for in everlasting burning. For we must remember that you are bound, as it were, by the terms of a covenant, from which there follows either the just condition of taking hold of salvation or the deserved dread of punishment. You stand between adversity and prosperity alike, among arms and weapons: on this side worldly ambition admonishes you, on that the heavenly greatness.

If you fear to lose your safety, know that you can die. And death is to be despised by you, for whom Christ was slain. Let the examples of the Lord's promise also crowd before your eyes; let the rewards offered and the dangers prepared crowd before them together, and consider how great the difference is between the two. For you will not be able to confess unless you know how much harm you do if you deny. The martyrs rejoice in heaven; fire will take the enemies of truth. The paradise of God flowers for the witnesses; gehenna embraces the deniers, and eternal fire blazes. And to say nothing of the rest, this ought surely to encourage us more, that the confession of a single utterance is kept by Christ's everlasting confession, as it is written: “Whoever confesses me on earth before men, I too will confess him before my Father and before his angels.” Further, the ornaments of virtues are added to the heap of glory. For it says: “They will shine like sparks running through a bed of reeds; they will judge nations and rule over peoples.”

For it is a great splendor, dearest brothers, to adorn the life of eternal salvation with suffering; a great sublimity, before the face of the Lord and in the sight of Christ, to despise the utmost torments of power and not to shudder at them. So Daniel overcame the king's threats and the rage of the roaring lions by the substance of his faith, believing that none was to be worshiped but God. So, when the youths were placed in the furnace, the fire burned against itself, while the righteous endured the flames, because, believing the Lord, they feared those of gehenna. Hence they also received a worthy return, not put off till later, not reserved for the reward of eternal salvation: God saw their faith, so that what they had promised themselves after their death they were found worthy to live in the body. For no one can estimate how great a reward was granted them in the present. If there was savagery, it gave way; if there was flame, it died down. For there was one mind in all of them, which violence could not break, nor anger overturn, nor the fear of death hold back from the service of devotion. Hence, by the Lord's grace, it came about that the king seemed rather to have been punished in them, since those whom he believed he had killed escaped.

Now I come, dearest brothers, to the point from which I may show sufficiently how great the power of martyrdom is held to be. Though it is known to all and to be sought for the marks of its inborn splendor, yet the necessity of the time has added still more to the longing for this delight. For it is a great gift if someone is crowned at a time when he reckons he would be crowned if he should happen to die. Since, then, martyrdom is sublime and lofty, is it not all the more necessary when the world itself is being overturned, and, with the globe partly shaken, failing nature bears witness to the signs of the final end? For when rain hangs over from the sky, the gloomy air shows the showers in advance; and whenever a black storm threatens the bristling sea, lightning flashes shine out beforehand through the gaps in the clouds; and when the sea rolls with great waves, little by little the wave rises and little by little the surface whitens, until you see it crash, so that on the rocks that beat it back the foam lies higher than the wave that the swollen sea spat out. You read that it is written that we must pay back to the last farthing. But this has been taken away from the martyrs. For those who, relying on their longing for eternal salvation, have conquered the desires of life, the Lord's promises have made wholly free from that suffering.

From this, then, dearest brothers, we can first weigh how much the power of martyrdom can accomplish. And, to pass over everything else, we must remember how great a glory it is to come to Christ unstained, to become a partner in his passion and to reign with the Lord in everlasting eternity, to be free of the ruin of the age that is upon us and not to be mixed with the rest in the common lot, amid the bloody slaughter of devastating diseases. And to say nothing of the crown: if, placed amid these slippery evils of nature, you were promised a departure from life, would you not rejoice with all your heart? If, tossed in the whirlwinds of this world, some nearby rest called you, would you not count death a remedy? Placed among the executioners' weapons and the instruments of interrogation under torture, stand lofty and strong, considering how great a punishment it is to deny at a time when you cannot enjoy the world for whose sake you would have denied. For the Lord knew that heavy torments and harmful arts of punishment would be armed for our destruction, and so he made us strong for all endurance. “Son,” he says, “when you come to the service of God, stand in righteousness and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation.” And the most blessed apostle Paul too exclaimed, saying: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Therefore, dearest brothers, with firm faith and robust devotion we must resist with opposing strength all the fierce and harsh roaring of our persecutors in the world, and not be afraid, we whose hope is eternity and whose life is heavenly, whose ardor is kindled by the longing for the light, and whose salvation rejoices in promised immortality. That hands are bound with tight chains and heavy fetters put round the neck press down with solid weight, or that a body stretched on the rack hisses against glowing plates, is not a matter of seeking blood but of testing. For how could we recognize the very dignity of martyrdom unless we were compelled to long for it even at the cost of our body? I myself have felt it, and the truth does not deceive me: when the savage hands of those pressing on tore the limbs apart, and the raging torturer furrowed the mangled limbs and yet did not conquer, the bystanders said: “This is surely something great, not to be subdued by pain, not to be broken by torturing punishments.” But there were other voices saying: “And I think he has children; for he has a wife sharing his home; and yet he does not yield to the bond of those pledges, nor is he drawn away from his purpose by family affection. This is something to be understood; this virtue must be searched out to its depths. For it is no slight confession, whatever it is, for which a man suffers and is able to die.”

For, dearest brothers, so great is the power of martyrdom that through it even the one who wished to kill you is compelled to believe. It is written, and we read: “In pain endure, and in your humiliation be patient, for gold and silver are tested by fire.” Since, then, the Lord tests us with earthly temptations, and Christ searches and weighs us with these evils of the world, we should give thanks and rejoice that he does not keep us for those everlasting ruins but rejoices in us, cleansed from all contagion. For from those whom he takes as sharers of the inheritance and gladly receives into the kingdom of heaven, what else does he seek but the whole circle of integrity? He himself fashioned all things: those that spread out in level plains and those that rise into sloping hills, what the vastness of heaven encircles and the slippery expanse that the surrounding sea encloses. If all things belong to him and he asks nothing from us but sincere deeds, we ought, as he himself said, to be like gold. For when you see gold in the shining ore, glittering with a trembling splendor under the light, and melting into liquid in the scorching flames (for this is roughly how the craftsman works), whenever the seething fire is belched out of the panting furnaces, the rich metal is drawn off by the flames through a narrow channel away from the earth, and the sand is held back as the dross flows back. Hence we must bear all things, so that we may be free of every crime, as he said through his prophet: “And if before men they suffered torments, yet their hope is full of immortality; and having been troubled a little, they will be greatly rewarded, for God tested them and found them worthy of himself, and received them as a whole burnt offering.”

But if ambitious rank holds you back, and the size of the money gathered in your treasuries warns you off (it always turns aside the purpose of a good mind and drives with a frenzy for honor the soul devoted to its Lord), I beg you to recall the heavenly words. For this is the voice of Christ, who says: “Whoever loses his life for my name will receive a hundredfold in this age, and in the age to come will have eternal life.” Than this we must reckon nothing greater, nothing more fitting, nothing more useful. For though purple runs into figures in the manner of precious garments, and gold wanders into patterns on the pliant threads, and the heavy metals of the treasure you have dug up and brood over are not lacking, all these, unless I am mistaken, will be reckoned empty and vain if, with everything else at your side, salvation alone seems to be lacking to you, as the Holy Spirit says that we can give nothing in exchange for our soul. For he says: “If you gain the whole world and lose your soul, what will it profit you? Or what exchange can a man give for his soul?” For everything we see is empty, set on weak roots that cannot sustain the force of their own solidity. For whatever is taken from the world is brought to nothing by the passing of time. Hence, so that nothing should be sweet or dear, nothing able to be preferred to the longing for eternal salvation, these things have been cut off by the Lord's precepts and deprived of their own right and law: so that, when a father is under torture, his son should not break him, nor brother brother, and so that affection should not perhaps turn to another will a heart bound with hardened strength, Christ by his own right has established that truth alone and salvation alone are to be embraced amid great tortures; and in him wife, children, and grandchildren, in him all the offspring of one's body, are to be claimed by a happy victory.

For so Abraham too pleased God: tested by the Lord, he did not spare even his son, though he might perhaps have been pardoned if he had hesitated to kill him. Religious devotion armed his hands, and a father's love set aside all affection at the commands of the Lord who ordered it. He did not shudder at shedding his son's blood, nor tremble at the voice; and Christ had not yet been slain for him. For what is dearer than he who, so that you might not endure anything unwillingly today, first suffered what he was to teach? What sweeter than he who, though he himself is our God and Lord, makes the man who suffers for him a coheir of the heavenly kingdom? O something great! Whether because the reasoning of conscience can hardly keep itself from marveling at great gifts, or because the majesty of God is so generous that to all who do not hope for them he offers even things that, considering our deeds, it would have been wrong for us to wish for. For if eternal salvation alone were given, we would be held in favor for the very perpetuity of living. But now, since he bestows heaven and the power of judgment over others for an everlasting age, what is there in which human weakness could put its hope to the test for all these things? If you are driven by wrongs, he was driven first; if you are pressed by insults, you are imitating the gift of God. Hence whatever you endure for him is little, since you can do nothing more, except that in this the whole of salvation consists, because he promised everything to martyrdom. Finally the apostle, to whom all things were always at heart, marveling deeply at the measure of the promised gifts, says: “I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.” For he pondered how great a reward it was that to one for whom it would be enough to be free from death he should give not only the prize of salvation but also the ascent to heaven: heaven, which no light driven away forces into night, and no day in alternating turns opens into light, but the serene temper of clear air unfolds a pure brightness, glowing with fiery splendor through the cloudless sky.

It remains now, dearest brothers, for us to show what martyrdom is good for. And let us surely teach this, that fear of the things to come rouses us to this title of glory. For those to whom great things are promised, the things they must fear seem all the greater. For a soldier does not fire himself up for arms before the enemy has moved his hostile weapons; no one takes a ship out of harbor unless fear of the sea has gripped his mind; and the careful farmer, intent on his wealth, does not stir the earth with the fruitful plowshare until the crumbling clod has taken in the rain and dissolved into dust. So all our natural practice is such that we do not know what profits unless we have recognized what destroys. Hence a reward is given to all the saints while the torments their deeds deserve are inflicted on the unjust. So there is no one who does not know what the Lord has promised to his own, nor anyone in doubt about the greatness of his threats. And since the discourse has turned so that account must be given of both, I will set out both briefly in a few words.

The raging place called gehenna rumbles with the great groaning of those who lament, and, as flames belch out through the horrid night of thick darkness, the smoking furnaces breathe out ever-new fires; the mass of fire is pressed together and blocked up, then let loose through various outlets of punishment. Then it turns upon itself the many kinds of raging with which the devouring flame of the heat it has sent out has tormented. Those by whom the Lord's voice was refused and his commands despised it confines with unequal destructions, and according to the merit of the salvation they cast off it supplies its forces, imposing a peril equal to the crime. Some are bowed down by an unbearable weight; others are hurled by a savage force down a steep hill along a sloping path, and the heavy weight of clanking chains drags them down. There are also those whom a wheel drives, grazing them, and a tireless whirling, and those whom, packed tightly together, body clinging to body encloses, so that the fire consumes them, the iron weighs them down, and the crowd of many torments itself.

But for those by whom God has always been sought or known, the place of Christ never fails, where grace lies, where the earth, luxuriant with green fields, clothes itself in nourishing grass and feeds on fragrant flowers, where groves rise high to their summits and the dense foliage of the trees covers whatever the scene lying below the bending branches shades. Everything there is free of cold and heat; the fields do not rest in autumn, nor does the earth, made fruitful again in the new spring, bring forth. All things belong to one season, and the fruits of one summer are borne; for then the moon does not serve her months, nor does the sun run through the moments of the hours, nor does the light, put to flight, give way to night. A happy rest holds the peoples, a peaceful seat keeps them, where a spring gushes up in the middle from the bosom of a bursting bed and glides with a murmuring course in winding bends, dividing into the mouths of the rivers born from it. Hence, then, the great praise of the martyrs; hence the noble crown of the victors, to whom greater things than these have been promised, whose rewards are higher. That the body is thrown to beasts, or that the threatening sword is not feared, shows the reason for God's favor and makes his choice manifest. For it would have been unfitting for him to keep among earthly vices and filth those whom he had judged worthy of so great a gift.

Rightly is nothing denied to you, good martyrs, whom the hope of eternity and the salvation of light await, and whose whole devotion is seen to be heavenly and whose mind is given over to service: rightly, I say, rightly is nothing that you wish unlawful for you, in whose minds this world is despised and the face of the age, estranged, has bristled as with the confused blindness of darkness; to whom this world has always been a prison, and whose houses have always been held as places of confinement, a stay endured against their will. So indeed, with victory triumphant, he is snatched from these evils whom no vain ambition has subdued with pompous step, or popular greatness exalted, but whom Christ has added to his kingdom, burning with heavenly longing.

Nothing, then, is so great and venerable as that which frees from death, makes one live, and gives to reign for ever. It is fitting for God's saints, necessary for the wretched, welcome to all: in it the good rejoice, the downcast are raised up, the chosen are cared for. For God, the husbandman of all, has given martyrdom as a kind of remedy for life, granting it to some for their merit and bestowing it on others out of his mercy. For we see that many who were noble in faith have come to this title of the Name, so that death might honor the service of their devotion. But we have also often seen others stand unterrified, so that, redeeming the sin they had committed, they might be counted washed in their own gore, and, slain, might live again, who while living were reckoned as slain. For death makes life more whole; death finds the glory that was lost. By it the hope already lost is regained and salvation is wholly restored. So, when the seed has failed the plowmen and the earth has parched with dying grasses, it has helped to draw a stream down from the sloping hills and to refresh the thirsty fields with gushing brooks, so that the barrenness of the field, overcome, might pour itself out in rich stalks, and the crop, as though rain had fallen, might bristle more thickly.

What, then, dearest brothers, shall I relate above all, or what shall I say? With so many titles of honor meeting together, my mind is troubled, my thought is drawn off, and in the very effort of straining eloquence my unequal speech fades away. For what can be said that would be enough, when, if you express the force of eternal salvation, its splendor confronts you, and if you speak of its splendor, its greatness is there first? These things agree together and run together, and nothing seems worthy to be brought forward. So the examples of martyrdom, meeting me from the opposite side, have checked the onset of my daring speech, as though entangled and ensnared. What voice, what lungs, what strength can take on the measure of so great a gift and sustain it? By the confession of a single utterance adversities give way, joys come forth, kingdoms open, empires are prepared, punishments are bound, death is subdued, life is brought forth, and the resisting weapons of the attacking enemy are broken. If there is sin, it dies; if crime, it departs. Therefore, I beg you, weigh this in your minds, and take from our speech as much as you know you can feel.

Let it come before your eyes what that day is, when, with the people watching and all looking on, unshaken devotion wrestles against earthly crosses and the threats of the world; how anxious souls and troubled minds, rejoicing amid doubtful trembling, are shaken with the horror of fearful dread; what anxiety there is, what longing prayers, what vows are recalled, when, with victory still wavering and the outcome uncertain, the victor's crown hangs over the head; and when that pestilent and furious assembly is kindled with anger, inflamed with madness, and burns with all the rage of the heart and with gnashing threats. For who does not know how great a thing this is: that to the pains of wounds and the blows of interrogations our frailty, as though despised, gives way, and the unexpected boldness of human virtue prevails; that a man should stand and not be moved, be tortured and yet not conquered, but rather be armed by the very punishment with which he is tortured?

Consider, then, dearest brothers, what it is; set the whole dignity of martyrdom before your senses and your minds. For see: in the passion of anyone who is called, the martyrs long since summoned from the world rejoice, the messengers of all good things rejoice, the elect rejoice together. There the Lord rejoices in his soldier; Christ rejoices in the witness to his name. What I say is little, dearest brothers, little. So great a task in this kind of speaking and so wonderful a burden have I taken on. But, I beg you, let not the seriousness of your judgment fall short of its purpose, knowing that as much can be said of martyrdom as can be estimated of it. And so the only reason for undertaking its praise was not that I judged myself equal and suited to its glory, but that I saw so great a virtue in it that, even if I said little about it, I could claim to have said a great deal. For though righteousness kept in the good of faith may be preferred, and unstained virginity may know itself to be better amid the praises of all, yet all things must yield to martyrdom and be subordinated to blood and gore. Those have chosen the good; these have imitated Christ.

But now, dearest brothers, lest anyone think that I have placed all salvation in no other state than martyrdom, consider first of all that I who seem to speak am not of such importance, and that the order of things is not such that the promised hope of immortality rests on one side only. But since the Lord testified with his own mouth that there are many dwellings with the Father, I have believed that nothing is greater than that glory by which people are proved here who are too good for the life of this world. Therefore, dearest brothers, let us compete in emulous devotion and, stirred as by the incentive of a reward, take on every measure of strength and endurance. For perishable things ought not to move us, things that are always pressed toward their overthrow, not only by the law laid down but by the very end of time. John cries out and says: “Already the axe is laid to the root of the tree,” showing and pointing out that this is the final old age of all things. And the Lord himself says: “Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.” If he foretold that we must walk at that time, surely he showed that we should walk all the more now.

And to return to the praise of martyrdom, there is the voice of the most blessed Paul, who says: “Do you not know that in a race many run, but one receives the palm? But you, run so that you may all be crowned.” And elsewhere, to encourage us to martyrdom, he called us coheirs of Christ. Indeed, to omit nothing, he says: “If you have died with Christ, why do you make rules as though you were living in this world?” For, dearest brothers, we who await the rewards of the resurrection, who look for the day of judgment, who in short trust that we shall reign with Christ, ought to be dead to the world. For you will not be able to desire martyrdom unless you first hate the world, nor reach God's reward unless you have loved Christ. And whoever loves Christ does not love the world. For Christ was cast off by the world, as the world was by Christ, as it is written: “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The world was lovable to no one whom the Lord did not first condemn, nor could anyone who gloried in the life of the world enjoy eternal salvation. This is the voice of Christ, saying: “Whoever loves his life in this world will lose it in the world to come; but whoever hates it in this world will find it in the world to come.” And the apostle Paul says: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” And elsewhere he says: “I want you all, if it can be, to be imitators of me.”

He said this who suffered; and since he suffered in order to imitate God, surely he wished us too to suffer in order to imitate Christ through him. If you are righteous and believe God, why do you fear to shed your blood for him who, you know, has so often suffered for you? In Isaiah he was sawn asunder, in Abel slain, in Isaac offered, in Joseph sold, in his humanity crucified; and I say nothing of the rest, which speech cannot tell nor the mind bear. Conscience is overcome by the example of his humility, and when it considers what happened while he suffered, it marvels that he suffered on whose account all things trembled. The day fled into night, all light gave way to darkness, and, its weight tipping this way and that, the whole earth was shaken and split apart; the shades of the dead were disturbed, the tombs were laid bare, and as the graves gaped open, bodies were given back to the light of the earth and stood up; the world trembled at the flow of blood, the curtains that hung at the doors were torn, the whole temple groaned. Hence it is a great thing to imitate him who by dying convicted the world. Therefore, when after the example of the Lord's passion, and for the whole testimony of Christ, you lay down your life and do not fear to shed your blood, everything must yield to martyrdom. Of martyrdom the glory cannot be estimated, the measure is infinite, the victory unstained, the virtue noble, the title beyond price, the triumph immense: since the one who is preferred in the praise that belongs to him who stands firm is adorned, as it were, with the blood of Christ's companion.

Therefore, dearest brothers, although all this belongs to the Lord's promise and gift, and is granted from on high and not obtained except at his command, and although it can neither be conceived in the mind nor expressed in words, nor run through in speech, nor filled out by any powers of eloquence, yet it will be a sign of your kindness, of your charity and love, if you will remember us when the Lord begins to honor martyrdom in you. That holy altar encloses you within itself; that great seat of the venerable Name embraces you as in the bosom of an enfolding lap; the powers of everlasting time uphold you, and the fact that you are to reign and conquer for ever. O blessed ones, whose sins are truly forgiven, if indeed you, who are Christ's companions, ever sinned! O blessed ones, whom the Lord's blood has dyed from the beginning of the world, and whom that splendor of snowy clothing has rightly clothed and the whiteness of the enfolding robe adorned! Indeed, I seem to myself already to see (and, as far as the human mind can judge, that divine and glorious sight rushes before my eyes and gaze), I seem, I say, already to see that true and noble company attending the glory and the journey of its Christ. The happy band of victors will go before his face, and, in thickening squadrons, as at the rising of the sun, the whole shining host will bring on its power. Would that I, most lowly as I am, might some day see this! But the Lord can bring it about, since he is believed not to refuse you when you ask.