The lives of my saints - young Roman women who bore the Greek names Pistis, Elpis and Agape (Faith, Hope, Love), and their mother Sophia (Wisdom) - for the first time, just thinking about baptism, I read with a mixture of mistrust, horror and indignation … Yes, indignation. For the motives of the Christian widow Sophia did not understand at point-blank, believing her to be a monstrous fanatic and a malicious mother.
Just think - to bring the daughters to reprisal with their own hands (I knew why they were invited to the pagan ruler Adrian!), And then, looking at the inhuman tortures that nine, ten and 12-year-old girls were subjected to, do not fight in sobs, begging the executioners for mercy, not to ask the daughters to do everything they are told to, just to preserve their young life, but to rejoice at the courage with which they endure the torment of her blood, to encourage them, urging them to endure in the name of the Lord!
And in general - after all, no one even forced them to renounce Christ - just throw a few grains of incense on the altar of Artemis! Why not pay tribute to someone else's god without renouncing your own? Will Christ not forgive such little girls for this? After all, He forgave Peter - for a minute, a healthy and awkward peasant, before whom the prospect of martyrdom at that moment did not even stand so clearly …
Distrust was aroused by the steadfastness of the holy sisters in the face of torment. Well, 12-year-old Vera - there were also pioneer heroes in our history who did not break in the Gestapo torture chambers, and in those days in Rome a 12-year-old girl was already considered a bride, an adult girl, and not a child. But at nine years old, as the youngest, Love, to have such strength of mind to fearlessly endure torments, crippling the body, monstrous pain, tearing the soul apart with animal horror? But even at ten - to laugh at the powerlessness of the executioners, like little Nadezhda? No, it's absolutely impossible to believe in such a thing. Some fairy tales …
However, everything changes, if we admit one simple thought - why not treat this as, in secular language, a fairy tale? Not in the sense that this is a lie, but in the sense that, as in a fairy tale, in the center of this story is a miracle, which, along with the will of the hero, is the main component of the victory of good over evil. After all, the same can be said about almost any history of a saint - both Holy Scripture and all lives are replete with explicit and implicit miracles, testifying to the presence of God in human life.
From the point of view of human physiology, seedless conception is impossible - but this does not mean that the birth of Christ or the ever-virginity of the Virgin are fictions. This means that a miracle happened - the direct intervention of the Lord in the lives of people, bypassing the laws of physiology. An infant who cries out in the womb or does not take its mother's breast on fast days is a phenomenon of the same order. And the feat of the saint - be it as bright as a flash of flame, takeoff, or quiet asceticism, ascending step by step to the heights of asceticism, prayer, mercy and forgiveness - also, as a rule, is an eloquent testimony to the fact that the impossible for men is possible for God.
In the secular consciousness, martyrdom (no matter how to treat it - as a senseless fanaticism or a feat worthy of admiration) is perceived as a manifestation of purely human heroism. Man loved God so much that he gave his life for Him, endured torment, but did not deny, did not change, did not betray, did not go against conscience. And thus he testified to the power of his faith, his love for God - after all, the Greek word "martiros", which denotes a martyr, is translated as "witness." However, love for God is not just always mutual - it itself comes from God, He is its constantly nourishing source. Will the loving Lord indifferently watch from heaven how the faithful suffer and die for His sake?
In the Scriptures and the lives of the saints there are many testimonies of how the Lord, by His will, saved a person from torment and death. We remember how the Angel led Peter and Paul out of the dungeon; we remember Daniel in the lion's den and the youths in the burning furnace. But the Lord is not a "god from the machine" of the ancient theater, His love is expressed not in growing out of us hothouse flowers, protecting us from any adversity. If a Christian is a soldier of Christ, then will the general keep his soldier from fighting when the enemy is up in arms against him and the time for battle has come? But a good commander will never leave a soldier without support, without equipment, weapons and communications, even when he sends him to the deep rear of the enemy.
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And the feat of the martyr - the battle that is being waged, it would seem, on enemy territory is evidence not only of man's love for God, but also of love for man - God. Testimony and eloquent proof that even in prison, in chains, in the hands of torturers, a person is not alone, that he is invisibly supported and strengthened by strong loving hands. And this is most clearly manifested when it would seem that there is nowhere to take one's own strength, when weakness itself turns into strength - a tender young maiden, a weak old man, a quiet and timid "little man" … Or a child - as in the case of Sofia's daughters.
A martyr for Christ never relies solely on his own strength, since most often he does not know their limit and understands that there may be too few of them. Yes, there are people among them who are strong and courageous in themselves: it is probably not hard to imagine that 40 adult men, hardened by a harsh military life, had enough strength, encouraging and supporting each other, to stand all night in an icy lake, exhausted from the cold and pain in the frostbitten body, that the guard decided to share their fate out of admiration for their steadfastness and contempt for the executioner's share, and not at all because he saw the crowns falling on the heads of the martyrs. But where to get such strength for little girls - probably not sissies, probably accustomed to work and hardship (the life of a widow with three children was hardly easy), but by no means titanids, not heroines, not warriors?
Let's turn again to fairy tales as the most striking comparison. Children rarely became heroes of legends in pagan times - except perhaps for stories about the childhood of great epic heroes: they say, already at such a tender age, the inclinations of a hero, exorbitant strength or other unusual properties were manifested. Children in droves have become heroes of fairy tales already in modern times - maybe because the fairy tale, in the words of Tolkien, was "sent to the nursery", but rather for other reasons - based on the gospel "be like children." A little boy (or, as is often the case in folklore, a simple, fool, clumsy) goes to battle with a dragon or an evil wizard and defeats an enemy that the famous knights could not cope with.
Fiction? Yes, if you do not take into account the main circumstances - the fight is not with a simple, but rather, with a metaphysical enemy. And always the strength and weapons to defeat the enemy give the hero wonderful helpers, meeting with whom requires kindness and the ability to trust. Isn't this an image of spiritual warfare? Remember the episode, especially beloved by Orthodox publicists, from Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen" - when the Finnish sorceress asks her Lappish friend to give Gerda the strength of a thousand people, and she answers her that she cannot do anything, for the love that lives in the girl's heart, much stronger … It is not difficult to guess who gave Gerda such power if you remember what the heroine does when the snow monsters, created by the spell of the Snow Queen, block her path. She prays - and the forces of evil retreat …
Three young sisters, bearing the names of the three Christian virtues, and their mother went out to battle with an enemy a hundred times greater - death itself. The one in front of which the weak human nature, afraid of pain and injury, the maternal instinct, for which the body of the native child is always immeasurably more important than his soul, is powerless … her. They were with Him - with all their pure childlike faith, hope and love - and won. Did they feel pain? Of course, they felt - like Himself on the Cross. Although the description of their torment is replete with miracles, when, thrown into the fire, into the burning furnace, the martyrs remained invulnerable, God does not relieve suffering - He only gives strength to endure them.
Never once did this pain exceed the limit of their strength - because He gave them a strength greater than the strength of a thousand people. Trustingly holding onto His hand, the three girls walked with Him through monstrous torments, through the shadow of death - and entered His Kingdom. Where, also holding His hand, their mother soon came, who had to go through her bitter way of the cross - to watch how her children suffer, bury them and quietly, in prayer, go to the Lord at their grave. Her name is Wisdom, Sophia. And this wisdom was manifested in not standing between the daughters and God, humbly accepting the incredible and terrible freedom of choice that He gives us, and letting them go into the battle for which they were ready and in which they managed to win, because they were not alone …
… They met again - safe and sound - and embraced in the house of the One whom they loved most in the world. And this is the happiest end that can only be in a fairy tale and in life itself …
HOPE Loktev
