Women Worthy of the Lord
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 7, 2008
We are two weeks from Good Friday, when we are called to stand at the foot of the Cross and behold Christ's excruciating pain and the love for us that made such enormous pain bearable.
It's always been striking to me that as Jesus hung upon the Cross, those who were with him to support him and, indeed, suffer with him were almost exclusively women: Jesus' mother Mary; Mary Magdalene; Jesus' aunt Mary, the wife of Clopas and mother of Jesus' cousins Joses and James; the wife of Zebedee and mother of the apostles James and John; and a woman named Salome. The only apostle who was present was the youngest, John. Nowhere to be found was Peter, who with bravado had promised that even if he should have to die for Christ, he would never betray him. The other apostles, who had been with the Lord for three years and forewarned multiple times that this would happen to Jesus but not be the end, were all cowering someplace in hiding.
Yet the women were at the foot of the Cross "standing," as St. John's Gospel tells us, not fainting. For me they have always been icons of courage — and of the fidelity and love that was the source of their courage. When the going got rough, these women showed that they were by no means the "weaker sex," but the bolder and braver, made so not because of the size of the muscles in their arms but the strength of their heart.
Today the Church celebrates the feast of two of the most heroic saints in Church history, two young mothers, Saints Perpetua and Felicity. 1805 years ago today, they were martyred in the North African city of Carthage. The account of their martyrdom is one of the great hagiological treasures of the early Church, because Perpetua wrote of their sufferings in detail the day before their death, and eyewitness accounts of their martyrdom were immediately spread around the early Church. These accounts were so highly regarded by the early Christians that St. Augustine needed to remind them that they should not be treated during Mass with the same reverence as the readings from Sacred Scriptures.
Perpetua was a 22 year-old newlywed and mother of a small child and Felicity was a young married slave pregnant with her first child. They were arrested as catechumens and baptized in prison awaiting execution. They both knew that to profess Christianity was a "crime" punishable by death, but they were undeterred.
Perpetua's father, an old man and a pagan, tried all means imaginable to get his daughter to save her life by saying a prayer and making a small sacrifice to the pagan gods. He first begged her to have mercy on his white hair. As deeply as Perpetua loved her father, Perpetua replied, "I cannot call myself by any other name than what I am — a Christian." Her father then in desperation tried violently to shake her, but he wasn't able to shake her of her fidelity. Finally he brought her much-loved baby boy, saying, "Look upon your son who cannot live after you are gone," and throwing himself at her feet begged her with tears not to bring such dishonor on their whole family. Perpetua wrote of how much she grieved for her father and family, but entrusted herself to God, whom she knew loved her family even more than she did and would take care of them should she die for love of him. When she was led before the procurator of the province, Hilarian, he tried all the same tactics of the threats of torture, of the pain of her father, of the ruin that would come to her son. But none worked. Upon his query, "Are you a Christian," she answered resolutely, "Yes, I am." She was sentenced to be killed by wild boars, cows, leopards, bears and gladiators in a spectacle for bloodthirsty soldiers.
Alongside her on the altar of the arena was Felicity. Because she was pregnant when captured, she feared that she might not be able to give the supreme witness of her love for Christ, because in general Romans did not execute women who were pregnant lest they execute a child for the "crime" of the mother. She asked some clandestine Christians, however, to pray for an early childbirth and her prayers were answered. She gave birth to a girl whom two of her fellow Christians adopted. As she was being led into the ampitheater, she was singing triumphal psalms and rejoicing that she had so quickly passed "from the midwife to the gladiator, to wash after the pangs of childbirth in a second baptism." She was to be baptized in the same baptism of blood for which Jesus once longed and said, "There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!" (Lk 12:50).
The procurator set a savage cow upon Felicity and Perpetua. The cow violently threw Perpetua down on her back, tearing her tunic and disheveling her hair. Perpetua got up and quickly pinned her hair, since letting one's hair down in the ancient world was a universal sign of mourning. In the meantime, the cow had gone after Felicity and had brutally tossed her on the ground. Perpetua ran over to her and helped her up the cow ran away. They stood awaiting another attack, but none came. They turned to the crowd and shouted to the Christians among them, "Stand fast in the faith and love one another, and do not let our sufferings be a stumbling block to you." They gave each other the kiss of peace, and since the cow wouldn't kill them, the gladiators were dispatched to pierce them with a sword and send them to God.
Jesus once said in the Gospel, "Whoever loves father or mother … son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me" (Mt 10:37). The heroic women Saints Perpetua and Felicity each proved themselves worthy of the Lord and worthy of their sex.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
