Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
February 23
Not verified yet
Virgin
Martyr
Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 123 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
She seems to have been noble by birth, and wealthy, for the proconsul endeavoured to persuade her to relinquish her religion and marry his son.
Build up the community you belong to. This life was lived with and for a community.
Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.
THIS blessed saint suffered in the reign of Decius [Roman emperor 249–251, who ordered everyone to sacrifice to the gods], under the proconsul Paternus. He ordered her to be racked, and beaten with knotted sticks, and then taken back to prison. She seems to have been noble by birth, and wealthy, for the proconsul endeavoured to persuade her to relinquish her religion and marry his son. She, however, constantly refused, declaring that she had chosen Jesus Christ as her heavenly bridegroom. She was then ordered to be executed with the sword, and her body to be cast into a foul place. It was withdrawn from this place by a pious matron; and her relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] are preserved at the monastery of Rivæ de Sil, and in the church of Tera, in the diocese of Astorga.
Feast: February 23
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Martha's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. 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.