When we think of early Church history, our minds naturally turn to the Church Fathers. Sadly, we normally fail to even consider the Church Mothers. Yet, these godly women heroically waged spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Their loses and their victories, their pain and their joy, their walk with Christ and their journey with one another are all an inheritance from which each of us are eligible to draw. There is a mighty company of gallant women believers from whom we can all learn.
From Victim to Victor
Vibia Perpetua heads that company. The early Church preserved her manuscript (The Martyrdom of Perpetua) as a martyr’s relic because it is one of the oldest and most descriptive accounts of martyrdom. It is also the earliest known document written by a Christian woman.
Anyone who has ever suffered for the faith or been oppressed by the powerful can carry on a conversation and feel a bond with Perpetua. In fact, in the introduction to her story, we read that it was “written expressly for God’s honor and humans’ encouragement” to testify to the grace of God and to edify God’s grace-bought people.[i]
Of course, even reading the word “martyrdom” likely causes us to imagine that Perpetua was a spiritual super woman whose life and ministry we could not possibly emulate. The story of her life, however, demonstrates just the opposite.
Perpetua lived in Carthage in North Africa during the persecution of Christians under Septimius Severus. At the time of her arrest in 202 AD, she was a twenty-year-old mother of an infant son. Born into a wealthy, prominent, but unbelieving family, she was a recent convert with a father who continually attempted to weaken her faith and a husband who was, for reasons unknown to us, out of the picture. Nothing in Perpetua’s situation or background prepared her for the titanic spiritual struggle God called her to face.
Perpetua, her brother, her slave (Felicitas), and two other new converts were discipled by Saturus. We learn from Perpetua of the arrest of all these faithful followers of Christ. “At this time we were baptized and the Spirit instructed me not to request anything from the baptismal waters except endurance of physical suffering. A few days later we were imprisoned.”[ii]
A Light in the Darkness
Perpetua candidly faced her fears and expressed her internal and external suffering. “I was terrified because never before had I experienced such darkness. What a terrible day! Because of crowded conditions and rough treatment by the soldiers the heat was unbearable. My condition was aggravated by my anxiety for my baby.”[iii]
This very human woman exuded superhuman strength. In the midst of her agony, she empathized with and consoled others. Her father, completely exhausted from his anxiety, came from the city to beg Perpetua to recant and offer sacrifice to the emperor. “I was very upset because of my father’s condition. He was the only member of my family who would find no reason for joy in my suffering. I tried to comfort him saying, ‘Whatever God wants at this tribunal will happen, for remember that our power comes not from ourselves but from God.’ But utterly dejected, my father left me.”[iv]
On the day of her final hearing, the guards rushed Perpetua to the prisoners’ platform. Her father appeared with her infant son, guilting her and imploring her to “have pity on your son!” He caused such an uproar, that Governor Hilarion “ordered him thrown out, and he was beaten with a rod. My father’s injury hurt me as much as if I myself had been beaten. And I grieved because of his pathetic old age.”[v]
Perpetua provides a classic portrait of biblical empathy. Her as if experience of her father’s pain is the essence of sustaining soul care.
She not only found in Christ the strength to empathize with her father, she also summoned Christ’s power to console and encourage her family and her fellow martyrs. “In my anxiety for the infant I spoke to my mother about him, tried to console my brother and asked that they care for my son. I suffered intensely because I sensed their agony on my account. These were the trials I had to endure for many days.”[vi] Incredibly, Perpetua’s greatest pain was her ache for others who hurt for her!
A few days passed after the hearing and before the battle in the arena commenced. During this interval, Perpetua witnessed to her persecutors and ministered to other detainees. “Pudens, the official in charge of the prison (the official who had gradually come to admire us for our persistence), admitted many prisoners to our cell so that we might mutually encourage each other.”[vii]
[i]Perpetua, “The Martyrdom of Perpetua,” in A Lost Tradition, p. 19.
[ii]Ibid., p. 20.
[iii]Ibid.
[iv]Ibid., p. 22.
[v]Ibid.
[vi]Ibid., p. 20.
[vii]Ibid., p. 23.
