Tomorrow You Will See a Contest

Cyprian, to the martyrs and confessors in Christ our Lord and in God the Father: everlasting greetings. [a]

I am glad, and I am thankful, most courageous and blessed brothers, at what I hear of your faith and your courage — the very things our mother the Church takes pride in. Not long ago she had her boast, when a confession that held firm brought down the punishment that drove Christ’s confessors into exile. But this confession now is more splendid and carries greater honor, because the suffering in it is braver. The fight has grown, and the glory of the fighters has grown with it. Fear of tortures did not hold you back from the struggle; the tortures themselves spurred you on to it all the more. Bravely, steadily, with eager devotion, you ran back to fight the last fight of all.

I find that some of you are already crowned, and that others are within reach of the victor’s crown; but every one of you whom the danger has shut up together in one glorious company is stirred to carry the struggle forward with the same shared heat of courage, as soldiers of Christ in God’s camp ought to be. So let no enticement deceive the unspoiled firmness of your faith, let no threats frighten you, let no pains or tortures overpower you — because “greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.” Earthly punishment cannot do more to cast a man down than God’s protection can do to lift him up.

The brothers’ own glorious struggle proves it. They went ahead of the rest in overcoming their tortures and gave an example of courage and faith; they kept fighting until the fight itself gave way and was beaten. With what praise can I commend you, bravest of brothers? With what herald’s voice can I do justice to the strength of your heart and the perseverance of your faith? You bore the sharpest questioning under torture, right through to a glorious finish. You did not give way to the suffering; the suffering gave way to you. The end of the torments, which the tortures themselves would not grant, the crown granted. The questioning grew harsher and dragged on and on, and this was all it came to: not the overthrow of a faith that stood firm, but sending men of God to the Lord more quickly.

The crowd standing there watched in amazement a contest out of heaven — God’s contest, the spiritual contest, the battle of Christ. They saw his servants standing with free voices, with minds that would not bend, with courage that came from God: stripped, yes, of this world’s weapons, but believing, and armed with the weapons of faith. The tortured stood braver than their torturers. Limbs beaten and torn defeated the hooks that bent and tore them. The whip, brought down again and again in all its fury, could not conquer an unconquerable faith — not even when the flesh that held the inward parts together was torn open, and it was no longer the limbs of God’s servants being tortured but their wounds. Blood was running that could put out the blaze of the persecution, that could quench the flames of Gehenna with its glorious gore.

What a spectacle that was for the Lord — how high, how great, how welcome in God’s eyes, this loyalty and this devotion of his soldiers! As it is written in the Psalms, where the Holy Spirit both speaks to us and warns us: “Precious in the Lord’s sight is the death of his holy ones.” Precious indeed is a death that has bought immortality at the price of its own blood, that has received the crown at the completion of its courage. How Christ rejoiced in it! How gladly he both fought and won in servants like these — the guardian of their faith, giving to those who believe as much as the man receiving believes he receives. He was present at his own contest. He lifted up the champions who stood for his name, strengthened them, put heart into them. And the one who once conquered death on our behalf always conquers it in us.

He himself said: “When they hand you over, do not worry about what you are to say; it will be given to you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” The present struggle has proved that saying true. A voice filled with the Holy Spirit broke out of a martyr’s mouth when the most blessed Mappalicus said to the proconsul, in the middle of his torments, “Tomorrow you will see a contest.” And what he said with the witness of courage and faith, the Lord carried out. A contest out of heaven was put on display, and God’s servant was crowned in the struggle of the fight he had promised.

This is the contest the prophet Isaiah predicted long ago, when he said: “It will be no small contest for you with men, since God is the one who appoints the struggle.” And to show what that struggle would be, he added the words: “Look, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel.” This is the struggle of our faith — the one we enter, the one we win in, the one we are crowned in.

This is the struggle the blessed apostle Paul held up in front of us, the one we have to run in if we are to reach the crown of glory. He says: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.” “They do it to receive a crown that perishes; we, one that does not.” And when he sets out his own struggle and says that he himself is soon to be a sacrifice for the Lord’s sake, he writes: “I am already being offered up, and the time of my being taken up is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day — and not to me only, but to all who love his appearing.” So this fight, foretold long ago by the prophets, begun by the Lord, waged by the apostles, is the fight Mappalicus promised the proconsul all over again, in his own name and in his companions’. And that faithful voice did not lie in its promise: he put on the fight he had pledged, and he received the reward he had earned.

So I do not only beg the rest of you, I urge you: follow that martyr, now most blessed, and the others who shared that engagement — soldiers and comrades, steady in faith, patient in suffering, winners under torture. You are already bound together by the bond of confession and by the shared lodging of a prison; be bound together as well in bringing your courage to its completion and in a crown from heaven. Let your joy dry the tears of our mother the Church, who is grieving over the ruin and the death of so many. And let your example be the challenge that steadies the others who are still standing.

If the battle calls you out, if the day of your contest comes, engage bravely, fight without flinching. You know that you are fighting under the eyes of a Lord who is present, and that by confessing his name you are arriving at his own glory. He is not the kind who only looks on at his servants: he wrestles in us himself, he is in the contest himself — and in the struggles of our fight he does not merely hand out crowns, he is crowned himself.

But if peace comes before the day of your contest, by God’s mercy, you still have your will whole and a conscience that carries its own glory. And none of you should be downcast, as though he were the lesser man beside those who suffered torture before you, who overcame the world and trod it underfoot and so came to the Lord by a glorious road. For the Lord “searches minds and hearts.” He sees through what is secret and looks straight at what is hidden. To earn a crown from him, his own testimony is enough by itself — and he is the one who will judge us.

So, beloved brothers, either case is equally high and equally splendid. The first is the safer: to hurry to the Lord with your victory complete. The second is the more joyful: to be granted leave after glory, and to flourish in the praises of the Church.

Blessed Church of ours, lit up by the honor of God’s gracious regard, made famous in our own days by the glorious blood of martyrs! She was white before, in the works of the brothers; now she has turned purple in the blood of the martyrs. Among her flowers neither roses nor lilies are missing. Now let each one strive for the fullest dignity of either honor. Let them receive their crowns — white, for their labors, or purple, for their suffering. In the camp of heaven both peace and battle have their own flowers, and with them the soldier of Christ may be crowned for glory.

I wish you well, most courageous and dearly loved brothers, always and heartily in the Lord; and remember me. Farewell.