The Reader With the Scars

Cyprian to the elders and deacons, and to the whole congregation, his brothers in the Lord: greetings.

God’s gifts, dearest brothers, ought to be recognized and taken to heart. In our own times the Lord has been pleased to grace his church and make it shine by granting a breathing space to his good confessors and his glorious martyrs, so that men who had confessed Christ so magnificently might afterward be an ornament to Christ’s clergy in the church’s own service. [d]

So be glad, and rejoice with me as you read this letter. In it I, and the colleagues who were with me at the time, tell you that our brother Celerinus — as glorious in his character as in his courage — has been added to our clergy. He came there on no human recommendation, but because God counted him worthy. When he hesitated to give way to the church, the church herself pressed him in a vision at night, warning him and urging him not to refuse what we were asking of him. She proved the stronger, and she overruled him. It was neither right nor fitting that a man the Lord had honored with the rank of heavenly glory should be left without honor in the church.

This man was the first into the struggle of our own day. He was the leader among Christ’s soldiers. In the burning first days of the persecution he closed with the very head and author of the trouble, and with unbeatable steadiness he overcame the adversary who faced him in that contest. He opened the road for the rest to win. He came off victorious with no small number of wounds, but his triumph was a marvel: the damage of that long, grinding fight stays on him and will not go away. [g]

For nineteen days he was shut up under close guard in a dungeon, racked and in irons. His body lay in chains; his spirit stayed free and at large. His flesh wasted with the long hunger and thirst he bore, but God fed his soul — a soul alive with faith and courage — with spiritual food. He lay under punishment and was the stronger for the punishment. He was imprisoned, and was greater than the men who imprisoned him. He was thrown down flat, and stood higher than the men on their feet. He was bound, and was firmer than the links that bound him. He was judged, and was above the men who judged him. His feet were clamped to the rack, and it was still the serpent that was trodden on, crushed and beaten.

In that glorious body of his the bright proofs of his wounds shine out. Their marks are plain; they show on the man’s sinews and limbs, worn down by the long wasting. Great things they are — astonishing things — that the brotherhood may hear about his courage and his praise. And if anyone turns up like Thomas, who puts little trust in what he hears, faith by sight is not lacking either, so that a man may see what he has heard. In this servant of God the glory of the wounds won the victory, and the memory of the scars keeps that glory alive.

That kind of claim to glory is nothing strange or new in the case of our dear Celerinus. He is walking in the footsteps of his own family; he matches his parents and his relatives in the same honors God counted them worthy of. His grandmother Celerina was crowned with martyrdom some time ago. His uncles as well, Laurentius on his father’s side and Egnatius on his mother’s, once served in the camps of this world; but they were true and spiritual soldiers of God, and by confessing Christ they threw the devil down and earned palms and crowns from the Lord by a famous death. We always offer sacrifices for them, as you remember, whenever we keep the martyrs’ sufferings and days in the yearly commemoration. [k]

So he could hardly turn out degenerate and second-rate, when this standing in the family and a generous nobility kept challenging him with examples of courage and faith at home. If in a worldly family it counts for pedigree and for praise to be of patrician stock, how much greater is the praise and the honor of coming into noble rank in the roll of heaven! I cannot say which of them I should call the more blessed — those ancestors, for descendants so distinguished, or him, for so glorious a beginning. God’s regard passes back and forth between them so evenly that, just as the standing of their offspring brightens their crown, so the height of his ancestry lights up his glory.

When a man like this came to us, dearest brothers, so honored by the Lord — famous by the testimony and the astonishment of the very man who had persecuted him — what else was there to be done but set him on the platform, that is, on the church’s tribunal? There, resting on the height of a higher station and in plain view of the whole congregation for the brightness of the honor on him, he can read out the Lord’s commands and the Lord’s Gospel, which he follows so bravely and so faithfully. Let the voice that has confessed the Lord be heard every day in the words the Lord himself spoke. Let it be seen whether there is any further step for him to climb in the church. [m]

There is nothing by which a confessor can do the brothers more good than this: while the reading of the Gospel is heard from his mouth, everyone who hears it should copy the faith of the man reading. He ought to be joined with Aurelius in the reading, since he was already joined with him in the honor God gave them both, and united with him in every mark of courage and praise. The two are equals and alike; as high as they stood in glory, that is how low they stood in modesty. As they were lifted up by God’s regard, so they kept themselves quiet and unassuming; and both of them are examples to everyone of courage and character, fit for a fight and fit for peace, to be praised in the one for their strength and in the other for their modesty.

The Lord takes delight in servants like these; in confessors of this sort he glories. Their way of life is so much to the good in announcing their glory that it gives everyone else a lesson in discipline. That is why Christ has willed them to stay on here in the church for a long while. That is why he has kept them safe, snatched out of the middle of death — a kind of resurrection, if you like, worked on their behalf — so that, with nothing higher in honor and nothing lower in humility to be seen among the brothers, the brotherhood’s own way of life may keep company with these same men. [p]

So know that for the present these men have been appointed readers. It was fitting that the lamp should be set on the lampstand, where it can give light to everyone, and that faces as glorious as theirs should be fixed in a higher place, where the whole brotherhood standing around can look at them and be spurred on to glory by the sight.

But know this as well: I have already settled on the honor of the eldership for them. They are to be honored with the same allowances as the elders, and to share the monthly divisions in equal amounts, and to sit with us later on, when their years have grown and their strength with them — though in truth no man can seem short in the qualities of age who has already brought his age to its full term by the dignity of his glory. I wish you always well, brothers, dearly loved and greatly missed. Farewell.