A Christian, Even if It Kills Me!

Exactly how seriously should we take our being called Christians?

According to St Perpetua, a twenty-two-year-old North African martyrs of the third century, like our lives depended on it. We should prefer death to doing anything that would soil that Name: Christian.

Vibia Perpetua was a newly married noble woman of “good family and upbringing” in Carthage (modern-day Tunisia), and catechumen when she and her companions were arrested for their Christian faith in 203. This came following an edict by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus who, in an attempt to suppress the growth of Christianity had forbidden his subjects from converting to the Religion. Christians who were discovered were given the opportunity to renounce their faith and offer sacrifices to the pagan gods. If they refused, they would be put to death.

Perpetua had only recently given birth when she was arrested. Her persistent, sorrowful father hoped her love for her new-born son would convince her to deny her faith and save her life. But Perpetua had made up her mind. Although her heart suffered for her son, she knew her loyalty belonged only to Christ. She was baptized in prison and luckily, was allowed to breastfeed her son while she awaited the fateful day on which the beasts would be released on her for the entertainment of the Roman crowds.

Once, while visiting her father visited her in prison and as usual tried to persuade her to apostate, she drew his attention to a vase and asked him if it could ever be called any other thing, but what it was, a vase. When he answered no, her reply came immediately, “Well, so too I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.”

It was with the same courage and certitude that she replied, “Yes, I am,” to the Roman official who during her final trial asked her if she was a Christian (he had prior to this begged her to take pity on her grieving father). St Perpetua had learned the lesson well that “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” (Mt 10:37).

St Felicity (Felicitas), with whom St Perpetua was martyred, was a servant woman, about twenty to twenty-two years old when she was arrested. Felicity was eight months pregnant at the time and feared she would not be allowed to die with her compatriots because Roman law at the time forbade the killing of a pregnant woman. It was therefore a strange miracle that she immediately went into labor—still eight months pregnant—and gave birth to a girl.

The soldier who witnessed her great pains during the premature birth mockingly commented, “You suffer so much now—what will you do when you are tossed to the beasts? Little did you think of them when you refused [to sacrifice to the Roman gods].”

“What I am suffering now,” the daring saint replied, “I suffer by myself. But then another will be inside me who will suffer for me, just as I shall be suffering for him.”

And so, leaving their infant children in the care of their relatives, these two brave young women went into the amphitheater side by side, to give up what they had left for the sake of their Lord and King. The Romans let out for them a mad heifer, apparently a mockery of the fact that they were nursing mothers. The beast managed to wound them but did not kill them. A gladiator was thus dispatched to finish the job. The fierce soldier trembled at the sight of the glorious martyrs, so much so that St Perpetua had to guide his sword to her neck.

I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian (St Perpetua).

The way the martyrs saw it, to be called Christian was an incomparable honor, because it meant that one was a member—a part—of the Body of Christ; that one was like Christ; that one was a servant and a friend of God; that one was a child of God to whom the gates of eternal life had been opened, if only he/she lived in a manner worthy of the Glorious and Most Holy Name.

The martyrs gave their lives for the honor of being called Christian.

And, we can be sure that were they to be given the choice again, they would give up their lives for the same cause a thousand times over, even as we hear it implied in the words St Perpetua said to her brother before she was killed: “You must all stand fast in the faith and love one another, and do  not be weakened by what we have gone through.”

The feast day of St Perpetua and St Felicity is March 7. They are the patron saints of expectant mothers, mothers, butchers and ranchers.