Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
January 6
Not verified yet
Virgin
Martyr
Thin entry · the 1914 book gives only 135 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
During the savage persecutions of Diocletian and Maximian, emperors, one Rictiovarus was governor at Soissons, in Gaul, who laboured to put down Christianity. The virgin Macra was treated by him with inhuman barbarity; she was exposed to fire, her breasts were cut off, and she was rolled on potsherds and coals; then, spreading out her hands, she prayed, "O Lord Jesu Christ, who madest me triumph over the chains in my dungeon, and madest the fire to which I was exposed as sweet as dew, I pray Thee, receive my soul, for now is the time come for Thee to set my spirit free!" So saying, she entered into her rest.
Pray a little every day. Prayer runs all through this account.
Stay faithful when it costs you. This account is about holding firm under pressure.
Feed your mind with Scripture and good books. Learning and the Scriptures matter in this life.
Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
During the savage persecutions of Diocletian [Roman emperor 284–305, who began the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in 303] and Maximian [Diocletian’s co-emperor in the West, 286–305], emperors, one Rictiovarus was governor at Soissons, in Gaul [roughly modern France and Belgium], who laboured to put down Christianity. The virgin Macra was treated by him with inhuman barbarity; she was exposed to fire, her breasts were cut off, and she was rolled on potsherds and coals; then, spreading out her hands, she prayed, "O Lord Jesu Christ, who madest me triumph over the chains in my dungeon, and madest the fire to which I was exposed as sweet as dew, I pray Thee, receive my soul, for now is the time come for Thee to set my spirit free!" So saying, she entered into her rest.
She is regarded as the patroness of Fimes, near Rheims.
In art, she is represented with her breasts on a book which she carries.
Feast: January 6
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Macra's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.