Perpetua: A Bride, A Martyr, A Passion

It was my husband, not I, who spent the rest of our stay brooding and being moved. The Spirit had freed me, how exactly I couldn’t recount. A wide and secure work of faith had been built in me. By no means was I perfected, but this faith made little all the things that were once huge. “For it is by grace you were saved, through faith. And this not of yourself. It is the gift of God. Not by works, that no man should boast.” A truer disclaimer has never been made. The faith came not from me. It was God’s gift. And as such, it was indefinable.

No, it was not I who retreated into thought and the Word and the correction of a father, and emerged once again in Carthage a wiser man. Saturus had also submitted something in our absence from the great city of lust and destruction. Neither one of us had known that Sicily and Larcius and the Spirit of the living God would do such unexpected works.

When next I saw Felicitas, we stood silent before each other, quiet, gently searching the other’s eyes. By my vision passed a gauzy remembrance of her silhouetted form stepping resolutely into the square of light that was Aelius’ room and disappearing from my sight. But it was without the tearing pain, the snarling, ripping sound of evil claws imbedding in her flesh and bringing my soul to a scream. A dull ache, a sorrowful dip of the eyelashes, a slight quiver of bodily sympathy. These came and went and left me behind in her arms, knowing her wholeness in Christ.

“Oh, Perpetua. I have been so worried for you.”

The tears in my voice were ironically deeper than hers, and muffled against her cheek and hair. “I’m so sorry.” Whispers were easier to speak in. “I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry?” She pulled away and gently chided, my instructress.

“For your suffering. That you must endure what I do not have to.” Bared truth came out unconsciously. I was no longer guarded in speech. She took my head between her two hands and shook her own, forcing my eyes back into her gaze.

“You misunderstand. I am the sorry one. For you. I see this great pain in your eyes. Almost as if I have betrayed you. The people of your birth and friendship have betrayed you. You are shamed before me. Isn’t this what you’ve been feeling?” My downcast eyes can speak just as plainly as my open gazing ones. She moved her hands down to my arms. “Know that I am in peace.”

“Come with me. Come talk.” I slipped my fingers through hers and drew her from Sophie’s atrium to the lamplit sitting room. None moved or joined us. In fact, they discreetly drifted away until we two were the only dear souls in that room. “Tell me if you can.” The damask covered couch and cushions rustled their readiness to hear a story as we settled in and her eyes flashed and quickened.

“Mevia was older than me. I knew her, but not as closely as Revocatus did. He was like her little brother for years. She had this totally loving, almost enveloping, nature, even before she was saved. She had been Aelius’ concubine for several years. After Jesus found her, she became delightful, so delightful! Unfortunately, it drew Aelius back to her.” I shivered, but she did not. “He had many concubines among the slave girls. But no one serious. Now that she objected, he took to her seriously. Lady Julia was insanely jealous. But she is such a hypocrite.” She sighed, and I found a clouded expression that exactly matched my own concern and disgust for Julia. “Her son is not his.” Lupus? I hid my shock. “But Master Aelius doesn’t know that. Or at least, he seems not to.”

“She belonged to him, just as I do, Perpetua,” she said, almost as if breaking terrible news to one who had not known. I suppose I never really did know what that ownership entailed for the owned. “And she was such an open person, so honest …” she trailed off, remembering Mevia.

“Yes. He found out quickly that she was a Christian. It was not something she could, or even tried to, keep hidden.” She shrugged. Dark hair was pulled back into a tight plain catch at the neck. It framed an eloquent face. “I was not her confidant, so I don’t know exactly what happened. I was her pupil by then. Learning the things of Christ.” Only at this memory did tears reflect from her brown eyes. “One of the slaves betrayed Mevia’s faith to Julia in order to gain favor. He certainly did. It was exactly what Julia needed.”

“All the slaves knew?”

“Oh yes. Mevia shared Christ with everyone.”

“But if Aelius already knew and didn’t care, what could Julia do?”

Felicitas laughed. “Oh, one day Aelius came home to find his wife had called soldiers and sent Mevia to the prison, all in his own name. She faked innocence. Pretended that when she learned of Mevia’s faith, she knew Aelius would want her punished immediately. He had no choice but to prosecute after that, or be called a procurator who broke the law for his own pleasure.”

“The Senate would have had something to say about that,” I mused. “Scipio would have breathed down the emperor’s neck until a new successor was named.” I imaged the scene on the day of trial. “I suppose Paulina’s father prosecuted her. And Aelius had to pass judgment and sentence.”

“Aelius is not stupid. He knew what Julia was really doing. He went along with it, but balked at sentencing her to the beasts. He cannot sentence to death, you know, without approval from Minucius Timinianus, who is still recovering in Egypt. The Church thought he was being crueler,”

and insightful, I thought.

“…to sentence her to the brothel. I think he was just defying Julia.”

“And you, Felicitas?”

“I had spent enough time with Mevia, and she had taught me so much of God,” here her voice broke, and I waited a moment before she could continue. “After she was gone, his attention moved to me. I think he did it partly to spite Julia. But Perpetua, his facade is deceiving. He seeks power. He eats it for morning and evening meals; he grinds the poor under it. He enjoys hurting the helpless, persecuting Jesus’ people. It’s extremely satisfying for him. There will be more after me.” Her voice quieted and fell, as if it was lying down to sleep.

“But Felicitas, what about you?”

She knew what I was asking.

“He knows I am a Christian. Julia doesn’t. I told him the first night he called me to his chambers, hoping it would put him off, but it did the opposite. He claims it is his curse to love the cursed. But he doesn’t love me.” She read my anguished movements. I have never plucked. But I plucked my dress and the cushions and my ringlets until her hand covered my own and quieted it. “I fought. And lost. It is done. Now there is nothing more to do but run to Lady Julia and tell her that I am a Christian. But that wouldn’t be dying for love, for Jesus. It would be escaping. My death is not for my own choosing.”

I remembered Saturninus’ anger over my impulse to escape Apuleius by turning myself in to the authorities as a Christian. I had grown enough since then to understand what this slave sister of mine was saying. The death would be in vain if it was actually a means of running away, and was not wholly a result of the intense love of Christ that had grown in her spirit. I quoted, “… if I give my body to be burned but have not love, I am nothing …”

“But Perpetua,” her face paled, the dark brown losing its lively hue. “You have awakened me to something. I have been afraid. Afraid of what happened to Mevia,” she glanced down quickly. “Afraid of defying him …” I drew closer to her and held her two hands in mine. “But really I have been afraid of obeying God.” Tears dropped from her eyes.

“I have learned one thing, Felicitas,” I whispered. “I never have to be afraid of obeying Him. Everything He does is good, to be trusted.” She gave me a wavering smile, and we sat in silence for several minutes.

“There are some perks. My freedom, and Revocatus’, to attend this night and our Dies Solis gatherings. These two things are his concessions to me.”

“It is precarious. Your position,” I spoke as I thought. “What is to keep another favor-seeking slave from betraying Aelius’ connection with you, and your faith, to Julia even tomorrow? Or tonight?”

“Nothing. Nothing keeps them from it but the hand of God. And when He allows … Perpetua, I do not expect to live a long life,” she laughed, little ripples of humor shimmering up from her mouth as if she truly was struck by the laughability of the idea. Long life. Had such a prospect ever existed for Felicitas? “Death will be a release for me, like it finally was for Mevia. But I will miss you,” she sobered and leaned intently toward me, an achy longing haunting her aspect, “and these precious people. I do not want to be separated. And Revocatus will suffer. His heart will be broken, I think.”

That was the closest she ever came to acknowledging what could have been. Her widened eyes and tremble of lips possessed only a moment, but in it her heart was revealed. She loved him too. Now I took her hand.

“It would be if he was left behind. But he says he will die with you.”

“Yes, he does,” she acknowledged. The pain didn’t leave her face. “But it is not his choice, is it?”

“Don’t you ever think of running?”

“How far could I really get? That’s not an option, Perpetua. I just have to trust Jesus. If this is my path to martyrdom, I’ll rejoice to eventually suffer with Him.” She looked honestly at me. “Thank you for reminding me.”

We stayed beside each other all evening, silently enjoying the sisterhood that shone, like a bright cord to bind, between her and I. She, perhaps, loved me because she knew the pain of heart I bore in pity for her. I loved her for the adoration she poured on my Lord. It never occurred to me, although I’m sure it did to Saturus and he kept it hidden, that her precipice was our own in more than a figurative sense. In all the wide, wide world, our lives were intertwined irretrievably both with those who could fall and those who would cause the fall. But was it any different for the rest of the brethren? At first I thought not. Yet over the next few months, I began to hope so, to hope that out of all the possible givers-of-self God had in the world, He had chosen my husband and I to be the ones privileged to honor Him in such a way. Yes, I hoped it was a gift to some and not a standard for each. For something stirred within me, even as my son formed and added flesh to bone and stirred in small flutterings beneath my heart. Vaguely held yearnings grew and were knit and became the solid evidence of faith not seen. The child within me reflected a fresh and permanent aspect of my spirit: the new incubating life of a desire to return love to the Originator of love.

I spoke of this to no one but my Saturus. As my belly swelled and my family of Jesus lovers knew without my revelation that a child was coming, I felt any expression of such an unnatural passion would be dismissed by them as simply the brooding emotions of an expecting mother. Perhaps I underestimated them. So Sophie whispered to me later on, through the iron bars and rotting air of a Roman dungeon. But this too I see as God’s design. Some of the most beautiful creatures are birthed in secrecy and silence, and the death of my self-life became such a birth.

“Perpetua’s passion” soon sounded as my husband’s favorite word play. When I first began to express what God was creating in my heart, I found tears in place of the fear I’d expected from his eyes. And when I’d hastily adjusted my expectations, and told myself to be strong before the love of wife that would plead from him for moderation, that too was smashed in an instant.

“No, no,” he let them fall softly, marring the manly strength our friends were used to, “I do not weep because I will lose you, dearest, although you are my heart.” His mouth pursed and forehead bent, almost falling upon my six-month-large belly. Instead it hovered just above, and liquid gold dripped, squeezed out and purified, onto our son. “I,” he gasped, and I reached out to hold his head like he had so often held mine in the early months of nausea. “I am overcome, I am weakened, oh, I am undone by the same desire.” Poetry, as literary as my husband had always been, did not normally flow out of his mouth in such a fashion. I knew he was speaking with the Spirit’s longing within him. There are some moments that come to define a vision, where one looks back and says, “There, there it came forth,” and in spite of all the gentle leadings the Holy Spirit was working through a length of perhaps years, clarity is only found in that glimpse. Such it was as I reclined under my husband and supported the fair head that bent over his family with the weight of holy desire. I have never seen a body shake with all the muscled power of a mighty man, and be reduced to childlike sobs at the touch of a very living and present God. I saw God that night. Saw Him in a physical way I’d never even found among the dancings and groanings and shakings of a gathered community of saints. I was used, in my congregation and Tertullian’s, to the normalcy of God’s Spirit visibly moving and touching fragile human beings. But perhaps it had become so normal as to lose for me the awe and majesty of such a great God confining His power to one born by flesh without causing its disintegration.

The critics could not understand. Nay, even now, many whole congregations are at a loss to identify the good in a passion that pushes us to throw away life, to lose everything we’d worked to gain, to give up the raising of our son, all for the prize of Christ. “One must live and teach and be an example,” they claim. “One must rein in extravagant passions, subdue the soul to discipline and not chase the quick satisfaction of a blazing moment. Would it not be better to have lived a long life and brought many to God?” Oh, what a grief these words are to me. I do these Christians an injustice to believe that they are devoid of a passionate love for God. And yet my heart cringes and shudders to hear the Scriptures used for our own comfort and prosperity. There is but one way I can declare to Christians and persecutors and sinners alike that He alone is the worthy One. This is with love. With my death.

Saturus gave me the strength to follow what my spirit had received from His. I am more than grateful to God for the gift of my husband. He was a changed man, although I doubt many knew him well enough to see it. Where his passion had been toward me, and our forming son, and his duty as provider, it changed to be toward God’s will on earth, toward obedience, and toward love.

When his weeping subsided, his hand moved to press my stomach, cradling it with gentle strength, and slipping off its covering of amictus and tunic, until my bare skin bulged under his fingers.

But he spoke not to me. “These, these two are my flesh and bone, my body. God, they are the majestic saints You have given to my care. They are the blood that runs in my veins. They are the holy and the lovely. I,” his eyes screwed shut in pain, “give them up. I give them up. You are better to me than life. You are better than my wife’s life and my son’s. You are worth these three bodies and souls. Take us and do Your will.”

Some might say it was an insignificant prayer. Or a prayer that could have been taught and uttered by any man at any time. But I was taken out of my husband’s arms and placed into God’s. And my son with me. Freedom, like that I found in Venetiae’s letters from Aria, doubled. Trebled. Our little family did not belong to us anymore, and neither did the worries that accompany ownership.

In the ensuing months, I lost all consciousness of the external trappings.

I was in my home and not aware of the plenty spread before me. I was in Selina’s home and not aware of the little that came to the table. My riches and her poverty did not matter ever again. And I found myself willing to entertain Paulina, whose strict father was the most powerful prosecutor in Carthage, and Lupus, whose father was the judge and sentencer. On the same day I could hostess Jocundus, who had murdered the first child of my heart, and embrace Andrew, who I had once lusted after. I am dead, and my life is hidden with Christ in God. Claudia’s snobbery no longer bothered me. I prayed for her instead of condemning her ambition. And I let them see me as I was. I did not make a show of Christianity, for they would have seen it as simply flaunting rebellion. But I did not fear should they ask, or see, or suspect.

Saturus, to whose new humility had been added abandonment of self-life, agreed with Pomponius to take leadership of our group of catechists. Sophie and our deacon remained our closest spiritual parents, but our weekly meetings were changed to our big domus on the top of the hill, and my heart thrilled to the prospect of gathering such a handful of treasures into my four walls. The saints, the majestic, excellent ones, in whom David of the Psalms took such delight, had become to me like so many pearls on a string, to be counted and hoarded over. As our love for Jesus grew, our certainty that martyrdom was coming grew. I soon decided that Saturus should will the Sicilian estate to Pomponius. We had such a bountiful inheritance to leave our son. And I doubted it would matter to Larcius, my father-in-law. The day Saturus came home with news he had changed his will, I rejoiced. Saturninus was with me.

My husband’s sky blue eyes sought mine. “Well, it is done.” He shrugged off his cloak and let it fall into Marcellus’ hands.

“Oh,” I could only say, probably looking quite rapturous, for my brother piped up immediately.

“What is done? Have you taken a position at the university?” Excitement grew in his voice.

“No,” Saturus laughed. “I will never accept a position there. Reason is elevated above true knowledge.”

“But wouldn’t you say that quite a bit of reason leads to knowledge?” Saturninus was eager to plunge into debate. He had picked up too much of the rhetorical habits of an advocate.

“The human mind is like, like an aqueduct,” my husband settled thoughtfully onto his favorite couch and stretched the tight shoulder muscles that still made my heart skip, pregnant though I was. “It narrows the channel of a great wide lake into a confined square foot area.” His hands illustrated with his voice, which managed to sound like water and waves and squaring stone all at once. “The mind can only channel so much of God’s truth, of His Spirit and His ways. The rest is foolishness to human reason. The mind blocks His truth; it doesn’t conduct it.”

“And so you’re determined to be a man of leisure,” my brother quipped, having no retort to Saturus’ statements.

I came to my husband’s defense. “A man of scripture, Saturninus. He studies every day with Aspasius. If we live, he will end up a very useful man for the kingdom of God in Pusilla Roma.” My prediction was edged with tease. Little Rome, as Carthage was affectionately called, already cast its dark shadow of hatred down our via, and neither of us expected to live.

“If you live?” Saturninus picked up on the surety in my voice and reeled, turning from the caustic university student back into the growing man of Christ I’d missed recently. Marcellus still lingered by the door, confident of his inclusion. I felt his stocky form move uncomfortably. Saturus’ cloak whispered against the floor.

“Yes,” I answered slowly, “we may not, you know.”

“I know,” my brother came closer to me, holding out his hands until I placed mine in them. Saturus watched us together. “Do you know how soon?” His hands weren’t satisfied with mine, and they went to my upper arms, holding them gently.

I shook my head in a negative and silent answer.

“Please,” he said lowly, sounding like pebbles had been placed in his mouth, and his enunciation was perfect and deep and slow around them, “tell me.”

“Saturus?” I deferred.

As my husband began to speak, my brother slid his arms around my back and pulled me into a complete embrace. He held me there tightly, possessively, until Saturus finished. I rested my head down against his chest, for I had no need to hold it up. My child pressed comfortably into his body.

“We are ready anytime, Saturninus. What was ‘done’ today was my will. I have already transferred ownership of one hundred slaves into your sister’s name, and her will, including their manumission, was signed yesterday.” He paused, embracing our hug with his eyes. “But we do not know when it will happen. In fact, we do not know if it will happen. I only know that I am willing, and it is Perpetua’s passion.”

“Your passion, your passion,” Saturninus released me and kissed my forehead. “Many who want such a passion never receive it, like Tertullian. It is in his heart, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” I answered lightly, as if we were talking about something ordinary. “But you have known for a long time that it would be for me both a passion of heart and a passion of body, haven’t you?”

He stared at me and then at Saturus, and then back to me. Finally, with a turn and almost apologetic gesture of the hand, he addressed my husband. “Yes.”

That was all that needed to be said. We three settled back into our chairs, and Marcellus departed, a sadness I understood covering his face. Saturninus tried to lighten our mood with his magical humor, but I still sensed something withheld, a question unasked but burning him.

“So, did you leave me the stables?”

“Oh,” his grin twisted comically, “just the stable shovel?”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“Hmmm. It’s true. But surely you left me something? Don’t tell me my nephew gets the shovel?” he cried playfully.

“We prayed about the distribution …” I understood why my husband wasn’t eager to share. It would sober us all very quickly, particularly Saturninus. But it needed to be understood. “There were some significant inclusions, and some significant exclusions.” His throat cleared. “Andrew and Selina have been given a piece of land I own near the Bagradas. Great farming area. Pomponius has been given the Sicilian estate,” Saturninus nodded agreement, “Marcellus and Ruth have been given the steward’s post at Venetiae, to run it for our son, and Tertullian has been given this home, to sell for money for the church’s widows and poor in Carthage. The villas in Rome and Antium are my father’s, and he will leave them to our baby, along with all the property left my mother by her father, which is substantial.” Saturninus was the one significantly missing.

“Saturninus,” I began, about to explain that we followed the Spirit but could make no interpretation of where He led us, when he stopped me with a hand. His voice rose in relief as his hand lowered back to his lap.

“And I, it seems, am counted by the Spirit as among those who will no longer need an earthly dwelling, is that right?”

“We can’t say that for sure.” Saturus thought he would assuage him, mistaking relief for disappointment. “You have your father’s lands in the province and Carthage.”

But I understood my brother’s question. “Not for sure, Saturninus,” I added, “but it is what I think it means.”

Now tears joined relief in my brother’s eyes. “I have waited a long time to hear this.” Saturus gaped at him. “A long time. So long, I’d almost forgotten …”

Although he knew his own heart, and his new willingness to die, my husband had a difficult time believing that others, Saturninus in particular, who were so young and fresh and had so much to look forward to in life, would have the same yearning he did. My brother gained a new maturity in Saturus’ eyes. In mine as well. We talked quietly of our mutual desires, for heaven, for worship, for freedom from a world of sin, until the rest of our small group joined us. Felicitas and Revocatus. Jocundus and Secundulus. Selina and Andrew. My brother, myself, and my husband. This was our precious circle of God-lovers. Our conversation did not end with their arrival. It broadened and spread its pulsing excitement into every new addition to the group around the lamplit room. I could not tell after a while whether the light I saw shining off the faces around me was a reflection of the flames, just as the sparkling semi-precious stones of the mosaic floor and the deep muraled wall shone back, or whether it was a joy from the internal Holy Spirit bearing witness of His eternal worthiness to each one. I gave up deciding, and relaxed into their simple beauty.

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” The Lord’s words sank into me that evening. We nine were discovering the true hearts of the others, and finding that they were as one.

“Perpetua,” Jocundus began awkwardly, but fell into an easy tone at my half-smiling gaze. “Have you fully forgiven me?” I started to protest, but he continued quickly. His handsome face and Tumi-like eyelashes no longer averted my gaze, but they were focused concernedly on his hands, as if it were to them the question had been posed, so he could not see the pleading in my eyes. “What I mean is, what can I do to heal it?”

“Jocundus, it was all done on the cross. You’ve been healed, and I’ve been healed. But by Jesus’ stripes, not by each other.”

“Are you really healed? I esteem you so much, you and Saturus,” he glanced up anxiously, lest his words be misplaced, “I am so sorry for how I hurt you.”

The hoarse catch of his last words was the arrow that finished it. Pride sources unforgiveness in me, and every leftover thread of superiority I’d harbored over Jocundus was pinned to the wall and disintegrated before his humble face.

“I do want to be in unity with you. Forgive my slowness, Jocundus.” The child in my belly moved. His heel, kicked into my back, sent a stab of pain down my right leg. A tingling residue stayed behind.

I had not realized how much of a tense sorrow always tightened across Jocundus’ face until it eased, and softened, and was gone. I could not find the petulant self-assurance I’d always associated with him, left over from the few contacts we’d had at Venetiae when children and from his first months in Carthage with Lespia. It did not just disappear. The realization was a shock to me. It has been gone a long time, and only my eyes have imagined it there. He was my brother at last.

Andrew began when Jocundus was unable to. His deep voice pulled my attention off my soul. “I saw my parents in a dream two nights ago. I’m going to go see them.” Selina slipped her hand into her husband’s, a small knowing smile playing at the angles of her mouth. It was a silvery habit that had only formed after Andrew set the wedding date. “I’ve got to tell them about Jesus one more time. Just one more time …” his voice broke like a man’s, all gruff and crackly. “I have the same push from the Spirit, Jocundus. Everything that has been wrong should be set right. In our relationships, I mean.”

“But Andrew,” Secundulus was bewildered, “they’re the ones who disowned you. What do you have to set right with them?”

Andrew’s bulky frame leaned, his elbows resting heavily on his knees, his broad hand rubbing the forehead visible beneath a mop of coarse black hair. “I’ve never seen them since. I have to say that I still love them, and warn them one last time. I don’t know why,” he tightened and relaxed his shoulders, “but I do.” We were silent for a moment, remembering all that Andrew lost for the Gospel.

“It sounds like God is speaking to us all around.” Saturus cleared his throat and brought our offerings full circle. “Almost all of us have felt led to care for loose ends, to repair broken relationships.”

I read behind his words so easily. “Be not surprised at what will come. Know that God has planned and prepared for it. You will be ready.” Will I be ready?

I watched Felicitas. Was she ready? Would she have regrets when it came time to die? What about Saturninus? My dear brother. The memory of Aria’s brother, Antonius, hit me. My heart dropped with instinctual pain. How had he died? The beating and tightening of my veins grew louder and almost overwhelmed me, until I realized it was mixed with another sound, a stamping in the atrium, a quick voice. I heard a watery cloak being shed and shaken, and footsteps approaching our inner room, the same room Felicitas and I had first been led to when Saturus had become our savior.

Marcellus brought a man into the room. Tertullian! I jumped up to greet him. He placed his normal ponderous kiss upon my forehead and shuffled slowly toward the couch I indicated. His hands were chilly and sent shivers up my arms.

“Marcellus, some hot wine for the presbyter.”

He departed immediately. Tertullian’s beard was wet from the drizzle outside, and droplets glistened in our lamplight. Some fell and dampened the black tunic he wore. We all anxiously watched him, wondering what had brought him tonight.

“Why did you come, Tertullian? We are so honored to have you.” I laid my hand upon his.

“The season has begun.”

I looked in confusion at Saturus, but his blue eyes had become grave and filled with thoughts. His nature was to ruminate, and I would receive no instant interpretation of Tertullian’s statement.

The season has begun. “What season?”

The moment my question sounded the air, I reeled backward, if such a movement is possible in the Spirit, from the power of the answer it awoke in me. Like a mariner’s depth measurement which is let down, and down, and still does not reach the sea floor, I found no glib response shot back from Tertullian’s eyes. The deeper I looked, the deeper still went the sounding, until I was afraid of where it might hit bottom.

The season for which I have prepared you.

Tertullian still had not answered, and the longer his silence grew, the greater a strained realization of his unvoiced meaning appeared on each face around me. After my initial shock, the unexpected occurred. Joy. The surprising feeling welled up inside my chest, from small corners where it had lodged here and there, waiting for a time to be released, moved close, converged into a great whole.

“We have been prepared.” My hand had not left his hand, and it squeezed his as I spoke. “The Lord has prepared us.”

“I see it, and am humbled by it.”

My lips had parted with an instinctual retort before the fitness of his statement closed them unused. Who was I to say he did not need such a humbling? From the Lord’s hand, such a thing must be considered appropriate.

Tertullian continued softly, describing the daily persecution his congregation was encountering. His eyes flickered up to Saturus’, seeming to share the unique pain of shepherds helpless against the suffering of the sheep.

“Every day it is worse.” His hands spread out.

Most of our friends did not hear the Tertullian undone who I heard that evening. And his undoing had more to do with us than they could have thought. He had come a victor, a survivor of the fight; a watchman with trumpet blowing; a teacher, expecting us to need the news and need instruction. He found a people already prepared by the Lord Himself. The find was a deeper thing to his soul than perhaps even I knew at the time.

Secundulus, always concrete, was the first to demand, in his own unaccusing way, a verification. “So, you believe that these incidents are indicative of a larger movement? It is not isolated. It is a season?”

“Yes. This began with Risa, of your own congregation.” His staccato notes did not betray the depth of feeling I knew accompanied her name. “But for a time I believed the incidents were separate, isolated. I was wrong.” He looked directly at me, then, and my soul shrank back. “There is a movement, a shifting, in the spiritual realm. A battle has begun. And we are to take part.”

He didn’t mean “we.” He looked into my eyes—eyes my husband calls provocatively young and to which he finds bad news difficult to deliver—and his “we” was an unflinching “you.” I did flinch. God forgive me, I did. How can my soul leap with my spirit into worship and adoration of God, yet the next moment be quaking in a foundless fear?