Raising Your Children to Be Martyrs

A few years ago I heard about a book from a friend titled Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul. Though I never read it, the premise was intriguing and even a little…disconcerting. A suburban Christian housewife living a comfortable life prayed with her husband one night before going to bed: “God, we will do anything. Anything.” And God took them at their word.

That is a dangerous prayer, one that has wandered into my mind from time to time. I know the God we serve has worked miracles in our life that I can’t otherwise explain, so I know He is true to His word and capable of more than I can imagine. He hasn’t asked more of us than our faith and trust in Him, and yet He has showered us a hundredfold with blessings and consolations.

Prayer of Abandonment

Because of my attachments, however, I can say that such a prayer of abandonment–of handing God a blank check to write in whatever amount He wants to claim–has not yet passed my lips. What if He demands something big–I mean, really big–something really important to me that I’m not sure I would be able to live without? What if I say I’ll do anything, and He takes me at my word? What if He takes everything?

We know our Lord does not take anything we freely give Him without repaying one hundredfold. We deposit a mustard seed’s worth of faith capital and harvest the dividends.

Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)

St. Paul professed to the Romans that he was a slave of Christ Jesus the Lord (Romans 1:1). He knew his life was ransomed at a price, a debt owed to the One who saved him. But, one might object: Are we not “friends of Christ, not slaves” (John 15:15)? A slave has no rights, whereas a friend enjoys the free-exercise of reciprocity.

Jesus revealed the secrets of the kingdom to His closest friends, the Apostles. But note what our Lord says in the same verse: “A slave does not know what his master does.” St. Paul continues,

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. (Romans 6:16-18)

To become friends with God, we must do what He commands. (John 15:14). Abraham, the father of faith, exemplified this in that he did not, in fact, know what his Master was doing, but in faith, he “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness – he was called a friend of God” (James 2:23).

We tend to give God the things we choose to give Him. But God demands something from Abraham as a condition to enter into the privilege of such a friendship, something he willingly gives in anguish: his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loves. In testing Abraham, God spares Isaac when He sees Abraham’s willingness to put the Lord before everything he loved. When God called out his name–“Abraham!”–Abraham gave God his consent (“Here I am!”) to take anything, including his son.

Parenting Concerns

Now, for any parent, this is a disconcerting story and a revolting thought. “What kind of God,” we might ask in recoil, “demands such a thing?” And yet, we recoil because in faith we know the answer that the God we serve is one “who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” (Romans 8:32)

To be a friend of Christ, we must do what He commands. And what Commandment comes before all others? “I am the Lord thy God: thou shalt not have strange gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3). Nothing must come before Him or be preferred to Him; neither parents, nor spouses, nor children, nor jobs, houses, school, retirement plans, nor even our own desires take preference to Christ. In seeking to imitate Christ we echo His own words of obedience to the Father, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34).

When Mary and Joseph went up to the Temple to present the child Jesus to the Lord, we see the powerful prefiguring in the words of Simeon: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35).

The Role of Our Lady

As a parent, I can’t think of anyone more trustworthy to spiritually entrust my children to than Our Lady. Our children are, in essence, our “blank check” to God and more so when we specifically offer them back to the Lord. We did this by way of the family consecration to Mary in the spirit of St. Maximilian Kolbe:

O Immaculata, Queen of heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving Mother, God has willed to entrust the entire order of mercy to you. I, N…, a repentant sinner, cast myself at your feet humbly imploring you to take me with all that I am and have, wholly to yourself as your possession and property. Please make of me, of all my powers of soul and body, of my whole life, death and eternity, whatever most pleases you.

If it pleases you, use all that I am and have without reserve, wholly to accomplish what was said of you: “She will crush your head,” and, “You alone have destroyed all heresies in the world.”

We are entering into an unknown future, not only for us but for our children. In entrusting our family to Our Lady, she becomes a refuge without whom we have little hope for a victory in the battles we will surely be called upon to engage in.

St. Felicity Our Model

We teach our children to pray, we attend Mass together, and we instruct them in the Catholic Faith. But is this enough? The cultural warfare seems unprecedented, but of course, it is not; it only seems to be because we have not told God we will give Him “anything” He asks.

St. Felicity was one who did just that. She was a martyr of the second century. Appearing before the prefect of Rome with her pious sons, he exhorted her to sacrifice to idols, but in reply heard a generous confession of faith. “Do not threaten me,” she said. “The spirit of God is with me and will overcome every assault you make.”

“Wretched woman,” he said to her. “How can you be so barbarous as to expose your children to torments and death? Have pity on these tender creatures, who are in the flower of their age and can aspire to the highest positions in the Empire!”

Felicity replied, “My children will live eternally with Jesus Christ if they are faithful; they will have only eternal torments to await if they sacrifice to idols. Your apparent pity is but a cruel impiety.”

We do a disservice when we do not prepare our children not only with knowledge of the Faith, but also with an understanding of the cost of true faith in the 21st century–an age of capitulation and apostasy which demands “only a pinch of incense”.

Our children will not have the luxury of cultural Catholicism or even the option to be lukewarm. To stand for what is true, to profess it and live it, makes them targets. There is nothing more I want to shield my children from than this kind of persecution, and yet, this is exactly what our Lord says we must consider when counting the cost. It is something we must communicate to our children as well if they are to take the Faith as their own.

A Parent’s Prayer

When I ask for the intercession of St. Felicity and her martyr sons and I meditate on the Son of the Sorrowful Mother hanging on the Cross, I realize I am deceiving myself if I think I can serve the Lord of Hosts while holding anything back. The martyrdom of witness demands nothing less.

Does He desire to take a loved one for Himself by way of illness or accident? Lord, I give them all to you because I know I know I will see them again on the last day, if only I remain faithful to You. 

Does He ask me to stand firm rather than deny Him before men, even if it means losing my job and livelihood? Lord, let me never deny you. Take from me what You Yourself have given me if that gets in the way, for I know You feed Your children with bread day by day.

Are my children to go before me to test my faith like Abraham? O Lord, take them from your Mother’s arms, to whom we have consecrated them, into your own. Let me take the blows upon my own back, but if they should be taken from me, give them the grace to persevere to the end and never deny you.

In realizing that our sense of control is largely illusory and that we do not stand a chance in what we face as Christians in the coming age without Our Lady’s help, we entrust to her our children as the most important thing we have–to form them, embolden them, comfort them, teach them how to suffer well–that they might, by grace, persevere to the end.

Yet, we are never without ultimate hope in Him. Because we have nothing, no recourse in this wicked age, but to trust in the fulfillment of our Lord’s words when we give him everything, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29).