but they will do this because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have spoken to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.' And again: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, that you shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice; you shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall turn into joy.' And again: 'These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace; but in the world, tribulation. But be of good 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 heed that no one deceive you. For many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many. And you shall begin to hear of wars and rumors of wars.
See that you are not troubled; for these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and earthquakes and pestilences in various places. But all these are the beginnings of birth-pangs. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and will kill you, and you shall be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many shall be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall arise and shall lead many astray; and because iniquity abounds, the love of many shall grow cold. But he who endures unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached throughout all the world for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the end come.
When therefore you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place—let him who reads 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 out of the house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to fetch his garment. But woe to those who are with child and to those who give suck in those days. Pray that your flight be not in winter, nor on the Sabbath. For there shall then be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall be; and unless those days had been shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Then if anyone shall say to you, Behold, here is Christ, or behold, there, do not believe.
For there shall arise false christs and false prophets, and shall give great signs and wonders, so as to lead into error, if it were possible, even the elect. But take heed; behold, I have foretold you all things. If therefore they shall say to you, Behold, He is in the wilderness, do not go out; behold, He is in the inner chambers, do not believe. For as the lightning comes forth from the east and appears even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. Wherever the corpse shall be, there shall the eagles be gathered together. And immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. And He shall send His angels with a great trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the highest heavens to their farthest bounds.' Nor are these things which now befall Christians new or sudden, since the good and the righteous have always, devoted to God by the law of innocence and by the fear of true religion, walked through tribulations and injuries and the grievous and manifold punishments of those who assailed them, by the difficulty of the narrow way.
Thus at the very origin of the world the righteous Abel is the first to be slain by his brother; and Jacob is put to flight, and Joseph is sold; and David, the merciful, King Saul persecutes; and Elijah, who steadfastly and bravely asserted the majesty of God, King Ahab attempts to crush. Zechariah the priest is killed in the midst of the temple and the altar, that he himself might there become a sacrifice, where he was wont to offer sacrifices to God. So many martyrdoms of the righteous, in short, have often been celebrated; so many examples of faith and virtue set forth for the ages to come. The three children, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, equal in age, harmonious in love, steadfast in faith, constant in virtue, stronger than the flames and punishments that pressed upon them, proclaim that they will serve God alone, know Him alone, worship Him alone, saying:
'O King Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you concerning this matter. For there is a God whom we serve, who is able to deliver us from the furnace of burning fire; and from your hands, O king, He will deliver us. But if not, be it known to you that we do not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.' And Daniel, devoted to God and full of the Holy Spirit, cries out and says: 'I worship nothing except the Lord my God, who founded heaven and earth.' Tobit also, although under royal and tyrannical servitude, yet free in mind and spirit, keeps his confession to God and sublimely proclaims the divine power and majesty, saying: 'In the land of my captivity I confess Him, and show forth His power in a sinful nation.'
But what of the seven brothers in the Maccabees, alike both in the lot of their birth and of their virtues, filling up the sevenfold number in the sacrament of perfect consummation? Thus the seven brothers cohere in martyrdom, as the first seven days in the divine arrangement containing seven thousand years; as the seven spirits and the seven angels who stand and abide before the face of God, and the sevenfold lamp in the tabernacle of testimony; and in the Apocalypse the seven golden candlesticks; and in Solomon the seven pillars, upon which Wisdom builds her house: so here too the number of the seven brothers, embracing in the quantity of their number the seven churches, according to what we read in the first book of Kingdoms, that the barren woman bore seven.
And in Isaiah seven women lay hold of one man, demanding that his name be invoked upon them. And the apostle Paul, who makes mention of this lawful and certain 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 among the brothers, that the lawful consummation may be fulfilled. Plainly with the seven children is joined also the mother, the source and root, who afterward bore the seven churches—she herself the first and only one, founded upon the rock by the voice of the Lord. Nor is it without meaning that in the sufferings the mother alone is with her children.
For the martyrs who in their passion bear witness that they are sons of God are now reckoned as having no father but God, just as the Lord teaches in the Gospel, saying: 'Call no one your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven.' But what proclamations of confession did they utter, what splendid, what great proofs of faith did they furnish! King Antiochus, the foe—nay, in Antiochus the very antichrist was expressed—sought to defile with the pollution of swine's flesh the glorious mouths of the martyrs, unconquered by the spirit of confession; and when he had grievously scourged them with whips and could accomplish nothing, he ordered the frying-pans to be heated:
and when these were heated and kindled, he commanded that the one who had spoken first and had the more provoked the king by the constancy of his virtue and faith should be brought forward and fried, his tongue—which had confessed God—first drawn out and cut off; which fell out the more gloriously for the martyr. For the tongue that had confessed the name of God ought itself first to go forth to God. Afterward, upon the second, having devised sharper punishments, before torturing the rest of his members, he stripped the skin from his head together with the hair—out of hatred, surely, even for this reason: for since Christ is the head of the man, and God is the head of Christ, he who mangled the head was persecuting God and Christ in the martyr's head. But he, trusting in his martyrdom, and promising himself the reward of resurrection from God's recompense, cried out and said:
'You indeed, O powerless one, destroy us out of this present life; but the King of the world will raise us up, who die for His laws, into the resurrection of eternal life.' The third, being demanded for his tongue, quickly put it forth; for he had already learned from his brother to despise the punishment of having his tongue cut out. He steadfastly stretched out his hands also to be cut off, greatly blessed in this kind of suffering, to whom it befell, with hands stretched out to punishment, to imitate the likeness of the Lord's passion. And the fourth too, with equal virtue despising the torments and answering the king with a heavenly voice to rebuke him, cried out and said: 'It is better that those given over to death by men should await hope from God, to be raised up again by Him. For you there shall be no resurrection to life.'
The fifth, besides treading down the king's butchery and the harsh and varied torments by the vigor of his faith, being also animated by the Spirit of divinity unto the foreknowledge and recognition of things to come, prophesied to the king the indignation of God and the vengeance that would swiftly follow. 'Having power,' he said, 'among men, although you are corruptible, you do what you will. But do not think that our race has been forsaken by God. Endure and see how His great power will torment you and your seed.' What an alleviation that was for the martyr, how great, how grand a solace in his torments, not to ponder his own torments, but to proclaim the punishments of his torturer!
In the sixth, however, not only virtue but also humility is to be praised: that the martyr claimed nothing for himself, nor with proud words paraded the honor of his confession, but rather ascribed to his own sins the fact that he suffered persecution from the king, and ascribed to God the fact that he would afterward be avenged. He taught that martyrs are to be modest, to trust in the vengeance, and to boast of nothing in their passion. 'Do not,' he said, 'go astray in vain. For we suffer these things on account of ourselves, sinning against our God. But as for you, do not think that you will go unpunished, having undertaken to fight against God.' Admirable too was the mother, who, neither broken by the weakness of her sex nor shaken by her manifold bereavement, watched her dying children gladly, and counted not those punishments of her pledges, but their glories.
offering to God so great a martyrdom by the virtue of her own eyes, as her sons had offered by the torments and passion of their members. When six had been punished and slain, and there remained one of the brothers, to whom the king promised riches and honors and many things, that his cruelty and fierceness might be soothed by the solace of even one man subdued; and the king begged that the mother too should join him in pleading with the son, to bring him down—she did indeed plead, but as befitted the mother of martyrs, as befitted one mindful of the law and of God, as befitted one who loved her sons not tenderly but bravely. For she pleaded, but that he might confess God.
She pleaded that the brother might not be separated from his brothers in the fellowship of praise and glory, reckoning herself then the mother of seven sons, if it should befall her to have borne seven sons rather to God than to the world. Arming him therefore and strengthening him, and bringing forth her son then by a happier birth, 'My son,' she said, 'have pity on me, who carried you in the womb for ten months and gave you milk for three years and nourished you and brought you up to this age. I beg you, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and beholding all things that are in them, understand that God made them out of nothing, and that the race of men is made thus. And do not fear this executioner, but, made worthy of your brothers, receive death, that in that compassion I may receive you again with your brothers.'
Great is the mother's praise in her exhortation to virtue, but greater in her fear of God and in the truth of her faith, in that she promised nothing to herself or to her son from the honor of the six martyrs, nor believed that the prayer of the brothers would avail unto the salvation of one who denied; she rather persuaded him to become a partaker of the passion, that on the day of judgment he might be found with his brothers. After these things the mother also dies together with her children; for now nothing else was fitting than that she who had both borne and made martyrs should be joined with them in the fellowship of glory, and should herself also follow those whom she had sent before her to God. And lest anyone, on the occasion offered him of a certificate or of any other thing, should embrace the evil gift of the deceivers whereby they ensnare, Eleazar too is not to be passed over in silence.
When the opportunity was offered him by the king's ministers, that having received flesh which it was lawful for him to eat, he should, in order to circumvent the king, pretend to be eating those things which were brought from the sacrifices and from unlawful foods, he refused to consent to this deception, saying that it befitted neither his age nor his nobility to feign such a thing, whereby others would be scandalized and led into error, supposing that Eleazar, ninety years old, had gone over to the custom of the foreigners, having abandoned and betrayed the law of God; nor was it worth gaining the brief torments of life, so as by offending God to incur eternal punishments. And he, tortured a long while and now set at the very end, while he was dying amid the lashes and torments, groaning, said:
'O Lord, who possess holy knowledge, it is manifest that, although I might be freed from death, I endure the most cruel pains of the body, being beaten with scourges; yet in soul, for the fear of Him, I gladly suffer these things.' A sincere faith indeed, and a virtue entire and quite pure, that he thought not of King Antiochus but of God the judge, and knew that it could profit him nothing unto salvation if he should mock and deceive a man, since God, who is the judge of our conscience and alone to be feared, can in no wise be either mocked or deceived.
If therefore we too live dedicated and devoted to God, if we make our journey above those very ancient and holy footsteps of the righteous, let us proceed through the same proofs of punishments, through the same martyrdoms of passions, reckoning this the greater glory of our own time: that whereas the ancient examples can be numbered, by the abounding fullness of virtue and faith that afterward followed, the Christian martyrs cannot be numbered—the Apocalypse bearing witness and saying: 'After these things I saw a great multitude, which no one could number, out of every nation and out of every tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb; and they were clothed with white robes, and palms were in their hands, and with a great voice they cried, saying: 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 whence did they come?' And I said to him: 'My Lord, you know.' And he said to me: 'These are they who came out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God's honor and serve Him in His temple.' But if so great a people of Christian martyrs is shown and proved, let no one think it hard or arduous to become a martyr, when he sees that the people of the martyrs cannot be numbered. WHAT HOPE AND 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 afflicted in a few things, in many they shall be well rewarded, because God tried them and found them worthy of Himself. As gold in the furnace He proved them, and as a whole burnt sacrifice He received them; and in the time of their visitation they shall shine. They shall judge the nations and shall have dominion over the peoples, and their Lord shall reign forever. Likewise in the same author our vindication is described, and the repentance of those who persecute and harass us is foretold. 'Then,' he says, 'shall the righteous stand in great boldness against those who afflicted them and who took away their labors:'
Seeing it, they shall be troubled with horrible fear, and shall marvel at the suddenness of unhoped-for salvation, saying among themselves, repenting and groaning through anguish of spirit: 'These are they whom we once held in derision and as a byword of reproach. We fools counted their life madness, and their end without honor. How are they reckoned among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints? Therefore we erred from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness shone not for us, and the sun rose not upon us. We were wearied in the way of iniquity and perdition, and we walked through difficult wildernesses, but the way of the Lord we knew not. What did our pride profit us, or what did the boasting of riches confer upon us?'
All these things passed away like a shadow. Likewise in Psalm 116 the price and reward of suffering is shown: 'Precious,' he says, 'in the sight of God is the death of His saints.' Likewise in Psalm 126 the sorrow of the struggle and the gladness of the recompense are expressed: 'They that sow,' he says, 'in tears shall reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming they shall come with exultation, bearing their sheaves.' And again in Psalm 119: 'Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the light of the Lord. Blessed are they 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 bestower of reward for suffering: 'Blessed,' He says, 'are they who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' And again: 'Blessed shall you be when men hate you, and separate you, and cast you out, and revile your name as evil for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and be exceeding glad, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.' And again: 'He who loses his life for My sake shall save it.'
Nor do the rewards of the divine promise await only those who are condemned and slain; but even if suffering be lacking to the faithful, yet if the faith remain whole and unconquered, and if, despising and forsaking all his possessions, the Christian show that he follows Christ, he too is honored by Christ among the martyrs, since He Himself promises and says: 'There is no one who leaves house, or field, or parents, or brothers, or wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, and does not receive sevenfold as much in this present time, and in the world to come life eternal.' Likewise in the Apocalypse He speaks this same thing: 'And I saw,' he says, 'the souls of those slain for the name of Jesus and the word of God.' And when he had first set the slain in the first place, he added, saying:
'And whosoever did not worship the image of the beast, nor receive its inscription on their forehead or on their hand.' All of these, seen together in the same place with Himself, He joins together and says: 'And they lived and reigned with Christ.' He says that all live and reign with Christ, not only those who have been slain, but also whosoever, standing firm in the steadfastness of their faith and in the fear of God, have not worshiped the image of the beast nor consented to its deadly and sacrilegious decrees. 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 was caught up even to the third heaven and into paradise, and testifies that he heard things unspeakable; who glories that by the eyewitness of faith he beheld Christ as his law; who professes what he both learned and saw with the truth of a greater consciousness. 'The sufferings of this present time,' he says, 'are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that shall be revealed in us.' Who then would not labor by every means to attain to so great a brightness, that he may become the friend of God, that he may rejoice at once with Christ, that after the torments and torments of earth he may receive divine rewards?
If for worldly soldiers it is glorious to return triumphant to their fatherland after the foe is conquered, how much greater and more excellent is the glory, after the devil is conquered, to return triumphant to paradise, and to carry back victorious trophies to that very place from which Adam the sinner was cast out, having laid low him who had before deceived us; to offer to the Lord the most acceptable gift of an uncorrupted faith, an unimpaired strength of mind, an illustrious praise of devotion; to accompany Him when He shall come to receive vengeance upon His enemies, to stand at His side when He shall sit in judgment, to become a coheir of Christ, to be made equal to the angels, to rejoice in the possession of the heavenly kingdom with the patriarchs, with the apostles, with the prophets.
What persecution can conquer these thoughts? What torments can overcome them? The mind, founded upon religious meditations, endures strong and steadfast, and against all the terrors of the devil and the threats of the world the soul stands unmoved, which a sure and solid faith in things to come strengthens. In persecutions the earth is shut off, but heaven lies open; Antichrist threatens, but Christ protects; death is brought in, but immortality follows; the world is taken from one who is slain, but paradise is set before one who is restored; temporal life is extinguished, but eternity is presented.
How great the dignity and how great the security to go forth from here joyful, to go forth glorious amid pressures and straits, to close in a moment the eyes by which men and the world were seen, and at once to open the same, that God and Christ may be seen! What swiftness of so blessed a departure! You are suddenly withdrawn from the earth, that you may be placed in the heavenly kingdoms. These things must be embraced with mind and thought, these meditated on day and night. If persecution find God's soldier such a one, his valor, ready for the battle, cannot be conquered. Or if his summoning come before, the faith that was prepared for martyrdom shall not be without reward: without loss of time the reward is rendered by God the Judge. In persecution the warfare, in peace the conscience is crowned.