Perpetua

You don't back down when it counts, the higher the price, the clearer your yes. Perpetua is a young mother in Carthage, educated, well-off, a catechumen, and under arrest. Her father begs her to recant; she holds firm. In her death cell she writes down what is happening, the oldest surviving text by a Christian woman, a diary that still exists today. Then the arena. And when the executioner's hand trembles, as the Passio tells it, she guides it herself. For eighteen hundred years her name has been spoken daily in the Roman Canon; on March 6 the Church celebrates her together with Saint Felicity. Her strength was not defiance but a yes that outweighed everything else. So here is the question: what would your faith be worth to you if it truly cost you something?