Let not one be wanting at the last

The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

Well into the 40 days of the Lenten Fast we are given the feast of the 40 Soldier Martyrs of Sebaste: models of solidarity in confessing Christ. Their intercession is a powerful means to completing the 40 days of Holy Lent as a single body of believers. I see in the glorious 40 Soldier Martyrs an image of the Benedictine vocation which is, essentially, not solitary but corporate. The lesson given for Matins relates the passion of the 40 Soldier Martyrs. In reading it how can one not think of the 21 Coptic Christians martyred on the shores of Libya on 15 February last?

While Licinius was Emperor and Agricolaus President, (in the year of our Lord 320,) forty soldiers at Sebaste, a city of Armenia, gave a singular instance of faith in Jesus Christ, and bravery under suffering. After being often remanded to an horrid prison-house, bound in fetters, and their mouths bruised with stones, they were ordered out in the depth of winter, stripped naked, and put upon a frozen pool, to die of cold during the night. The prayer of them all was the same O Lord, forty of us have begun to run in the race, grant that all forty may receive the crown, let not one be wanting at the last. Behold, is it not an honourable number in thy sight, Who didst bless the fast of forty days, and at the end thy Divine Law came forth to the earth? When also Elias sought thee, Thou, O God, didst reveal thyself unto him when he had fasted for forty days. Even so was their petition.

When the keepers were all asleep and the watchman only was awake, he heard them praying and saw a light shining round about them, and Angels coming down from heaven, as the messengers of the King, bearing nine-and-thirty crowns, and distributing them to the soldiers. Then he said within himself: Are not forty here? Where is the crown of the fortieth? And as he looked he saw one of them whose courage could not bear the cold, come and leap into a warm bath that stood by; and the Saints were grievously afflicted. Nevertheless God suffered not that their prayer should return unto them void; for the watchman wondered, and called the keepers, and stripped himself of his clothes; and, when with a loud voice he had confessed himself a Christian, he joined the Martyrs. When the servants of the President knew that the watchman also was a Christian, they brake the legs of them all with staves.

Under this torment died they all, saving Melithon, who was the youngest. Now, his mother stood by, and when she saw that his legs were broken, but that he was yet alive, she cried, and said My son, have patience but a little longer. Behold how Christ standeth at the door to help thee. When she saw the bodies of all the others put upon carts and taken away to be burned, and that her son was left behind, because the multitude wickedly hoped that being but a lad, if he lived, he might yet be drawn to commit idolatry, the holy mother took him on her own shoulders and bravely followed behind the carts laden with the bodies of the Martyrs. In her arms Melithon gave up his soul to God, and the mother who loved him so well laid his body with her own hands upon the pile, with those of the other Martyrs, that, as they had all been one in faith and strength, in death they might not be divided, and might enter heaven together. After the burning, what remained of them was thrown into a running stream, but the ashes were all washed together into one place, and being found and rescued, they were laid in an honourable sepulchre.