“Stand Fast” © Lawrence Klimecki
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The historical account of the death of Saints Perpetua and Felicity was written by Perpetua herself.
Perpetua was a young, well educated, noblewoman who made the decision to follow the example of her mother by becoming a Christian. Her father, a pagan, pleaded with her to change her mind but she would only answer him by saying “I cannot call myself by any other name than what I am, a Christian.”
Perpetua and Felicity were arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to die in the arena for the crime of being Christians. They suffered terribly. The prison was so crowded with people that the heat was suffocating. There was no light anywhere and Perpetua wrote that she had “never known such darkness.”
But Perpetua’s greatest suffering was being separated from her young baby. Felicity, a slave, was even worse off, she was eight months pregnant.
When Perpetua’s father came and pleaded with her to renounce her faith, she replied “we lie not in our own power, but in the power of God.”
Perpetua and Felicity, along with two others went to the arena in an air of joy and serenity. We are told that Perpetua encouraged the others and walked with “shining steps as the true wife of Christ, the darling of God.”
The two women were attacked and thrown about the arena by a rabid heifer. Finally they faced a gladiator and were killed by the sword in the arena at Carthage, in the Roman province of Africa, on March 7 in the Year A.D. 203.
