If God is For Us, Who Can Be Against Us?

Perpetua and Felicity are two saints whom the Church recognizes for their heroic virtue; their lives are certainly examples of courage and faith for the rest of us to admire, no doubt. But here’s the thing. Those ancient saints who are thrown into a wild animal’s den for being Christians, but then are miraculously spared? That didn’t happen to Perpetua and Felicity. Oh, they were thrown into the animal’s den all right, But they were brutally killed. Where was God’s supernatural bubble of protection then? If God was “for” those two, He certainly did not do a great job protecting them from the ones who were “against” them!

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mt. 10:39)

Of course, our faith tells us that Perpetua and Felicity were rewarded abundantly in the hereafter, making their suffering on earth as nothing compared to the glory that they now experience in eternity. The blip that was their life on earth has no bearing upon their rejoicing now. When we suffer, the memory of that suffering can cause us pain, even when we are no longer undergoing the trial. But for Perpetua and Felicity, the memory of their suffering carries with it only joy, as they are keenly and supernaturally aware of the fact that every ounce of sacrifice offered to Christ led them to the glory they experience now and forevermore. They would not go back and change a thing, even if they could. 

Now, all is well and good for the angels and saints in heaven who have that clarity of vision, but how does God expect the rest of us to go skipping and whistling down the path that leads to martyrdom? After all, God might hold back the savage mouths of the lions, like he did for Daniel. On the other hand, he might not, as we see was the case for today’s two saints.

I don’t know if I could honestly say, if I were standing in Perpetua’s or Felicity’s shoes, that I wouldn’t try to run away and escape such fate. Or worse, would I cave in fear and deny my Faith altogether to avoid the horrific torture and death that awaited me? Such a response would be both human and understandable. After all, God is the one who created us with the innate instinct to live! But at the same, He calls us to be willing to sacrifice our lives for His sake.

How can this be possible? There is only one way. It is the way that Perpetua and Felicity found, and it’s the way we are called to find in our own lives as well:

Then I realized that I would not fight against wild animals, but against the devil.
– St. Perpetua

The vision these two saints beheld from heaven—the hand of God in all things, that all things work for good, that every choice we make in life matters, good or bad, and that our actions affect the entire body of Christ, for better or for worse—was a vision they had already put into practice during their lives on earth. They would have spent their lives striving for it, day in and day out, so that by the time they reached the point where the rubber meets the road, they were prepared. No, they did not face that animal’s den joyfully by their own human strength. Nobody could. But after persevering in practicing the virtue of trust, their souls were in a disposition to receive the grace of God precisely at the moment when they needed it most.

These ladies were sincerely joyful. They were not crazy or pretending; nor was this an exaggerated account recorded as the legend was passed on, by word of mouth, generation to generation. When Perpetua and Felicity walked calmly into that arena, they could truly see . . .

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? . . . No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. (Rom. 8:35-37)

Friends, we can spend an awful lot of time on “what if.” But there is a very specific reason why “what if” is a waste of time, and it’s not only because the things we worry about may never come to pass. (The reality is . . . they very well might.) But the reason that worrying about our inability to handle a hypothetical situation is a waste of time is that God doesn’t give us graces for things we don’t need in the present moment. He showers us with the graces we do need, if we prepare ahead of time, by placing ourselves in a disposition to receive those graces—that is, by praising Him and thanking Him in all things, and striving to see His hand in all our circumstances.

One winter, a young adult in my community died in a car accident. I had met her mother years before, and that connection, albeit distant, brought the tragedy a little too close to home for me. The thought that anything could happen to any of my children at any time is scarcely more than I can bear. This young woman’s mother was a faithful woman! How could God have allowed this to happen to her? What is the point of us praying for Him to protect our children if He could allow such a tragedy? But then, a good friend who attended the young woman’s funeral had this to say about it: 

“It was beautiful. Perfect.”

Only God could make something so tragic both “beautiful” and “perfect.” Only one who has received His abundant, overflowing, unimaginable grace will have eyes to see that beauty and that perfection. And once that happens, a soul really and truly accepts—in a sense, equally—both the joys as well as the sorrows in life, as did Sts. Perpetua and Felicity. Such souls see only the eternity that is to come and have already begun to live that eternity here on earth.

[Love] alone can make our burdens light, and alone it bears in equal balance what is pleasing and displeasing. It carries a burden and does not feel it; it makes all that is bitter taste sweet. Nothing is sweeter than love . . . [The souls of] such lovers are free. – Thomas à Kempis

Author’s Note: Excerpt from The Safe Haven: Scriptural Reflections for the Heart and Home, Lent Edition. To purchase, visit Amazon or The Catholic Company, where all other volumes currently in print are also available. 

Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew on Flickr