Peter Ould on March 6th, 2007

Welcome to An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date with what I'm writing. Alternatively, if you want to contact Peter in relation to issues of human sexuality, please use the contact form here. Thanks for visiting!

Martyrs Tradition

The clue’s in the title.

As tomorrow is a chocka day I thought I’d blog about Perpertua and Felicity today, even though their day is tomorrow. I guess that’s a bit like opening your Christmas Presents on Christmas Eve. No wait, I do that already… OK - It’s like opening your Christmas Presents on the 23rd of December if you’re Austrian (Or on January 6th if you’re Russian). You get the picture don’t you?

Anyway, back to reality. Perpetua and Felicity were Christian mistress and slave and they were martyred in Cathrage in 203 AD alongside 3 others. This was during the reign of Septimus Severus who ruled that being a Christian was illegal in the Roman Empire. Ouch. Felicity gave birth just two days before she was thrown to the lions which allowed her to be martyred alongside her fellow Christians (it being illegal to execute pregnant women in the Roman Empire). You can read oodles more about their martyrdom at New Advent.

Holy God, who gave great courage to Perpetua, Felicity and their companions: grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice and be received into the garden of peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Bookmark this Post:
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Technorati
  • YahooMyWeb
  • De.lirio.us
  • co.mments
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Print this article!

Leave a Reply

  • Do you want to change the picture next to your comment? Sign up here.
  • All comments must include a valid email address. Comments without a valid email address will be treated as spam. Your email address will not be displayed.
  • Before commenting, please make sure you have read the comment policy.