Eric Blauer

Perpetua and Felicity: Trampling the Dragon (an excerpt from my recent sermon):

The story of Perpetua and Felicity is not the first record of Christian women facing martyrdom. From the earliest days of the Church, women suffered and died for their faith.

But what makes Perpetua and Felicity stand apart is this: their story is the first deeply personal, widely shared account that centers the voices and experiences of women themselves.

Perpetua’s own words—written in prison—are among the earliest surviving writings by a Christian woman. And the account does not treat these women as background figures in a larger group, but brings them to the forefront: a noblewoman and an enslaved woman, united in faith, facing motherhood, suffering, and death together.

Because of this, their story spread widely in the early Church. It was read publicly, remembered, and treasured. It became one of the clearest and most courageous and powerful Martyr testimonies of Christian women.

Augustine: sermon # 280 on Perpetua and Felicity

“What, after all, could be more glorious than these women, whom men can more easily admire than imitate? But this redounds supremely to the praise of him in whom they believed, and in whose name they ran the race together with faithful zeal…So the dragon was trampled on by the blessed Perpetua's chaste foot and victorious tread, when the ladder by which she would go to God was set up and revealed. Thus the head of the ancient serpent, which had been the ruin of woman as she fell, was made into a step for woman as she ascended.

They have gone ahead of us, they tower over us like giants. If we are not capable of following them in action, let us follow in affection; if not in glory, then certainly in joy and gladness; if not in merit, then in desire; if not in suffering, then in fellow feeling; if not in excellence, then in our close relationship with them. Glory be to the head, by which consideration is given to the hands above and to the feet below.

Just as that one man laid down his life for us all, so the martyrs too imitated him, and laid down their lives for their brothers and sisters; and in order that this bumper crop of Christian peoples might spring up like sprouting seeds, they watered the earth with their blood.”

“Calling on leaders to humble themselves and admit mistakes no matter what side of the political aisle someone is on is important in every Presidential cycle.

Some people avoid saying anything negative about their preferred political representatives and others can never say anything positive about anyone on the other political side.

Silent and selective tongues or endless cursing are both unhelpful, unhealthy and exhausting.

Proverbs 11:1 — “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/ericblauer/p/where-is-daniel?r=eygg6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web