Saint Perpetua delivers her brother from Purgatory

By virtue of the recent edict of the emperor Septimius Severus punishing with death "those who make Christians and those who make themselves Christians", in February 203, the Thuburbo majus Roman colony police arrested a group of neophytes preparing for baptism. The group consisted of Saturninus and Secundulus, of noble rank, the slave Revocatus, his wife Felicity, eight months pregnant, and Vibia Perpetua, aged 22, from the local aristocracy and mother of a baby boy just a few months old. Shortly afterwards, their catechist, Saturus, voluntarily joined them in prison to baptise them and provide them with the graces they needed to face martyrdom. The thought of the torments to come didn't leave their mind. Perpetua, separated from her baby whom she was breast-feeding and unprepared for prison conditions, seemed to be the weakest in the group. Yet she ended showing extraordinary courage and fortitude. Soon, Saturus and Perpetua were given supernatural visions while in prison.

Les raisons d'y croire :

• The documents we have about the martyrs of Carthage are among the most complete that Christian antiquity has left us. They consist of two versions of their martyrdom - one in Greek, the other in Latin (generally attributed to Tertullian), The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity and their companions - as well as the records of their trial and one last invaluable text: Perpetua's prison diary, in which, in addition to her suffering and anguish, she recounts her mystical experiences, visions, dreams and prophecies right up to the eve of her death.

• Perpetua was young, rich and happy. She had never faced up to the painful aspects of life. Yet she remained steadfast in her faith, despite her father's pleas, her mother's anguish, the suffering she endured, and the legitimate terror that the prospect of being handed over to the beasts inspires in anyone. She also endured the terrible blackmail of being prevented from seeing her son, at the risk of his dying without his mother's milk. It is this constancy and the greatness of the sacrifices accepted to remain faithful that give credence to her visions. The mystical graces were the fruit of her suffering, and Perpetua knew it.

• Converted too, but not arrested because he had not been denounced, one of Perpetua's brothers, who visited her in prison, said to her: "Sister, you are now worthy of very great graces, so great that you could even ask for a vision that would reveal to you whether you would be released or whether you should prepare for martyrdom". This request is not one of Perpetua's visions, which proves that these were not autosuggestion.

• Perpetua explained that she was not dreaming, but seeing invisible truths. Her visions include a revelation of paradise and of the Good Shepherd, who welcomed the new martyrs after they have climbed a ladder guarded by a serpent and bristling with sharp blades, and fought against the demonic powers. The symbolism of these visions is so powerful, and so well suited to Christian revelation, that the Church approved them.

• Perpetua also had a vision of her younger brother Dinocrates, who had died in infancy. By her own admission, this child, who died when Perpetua was very young, had faded from her memory and she never thought of him. There was theforere no reason for her to suddenly be preoccupied with him.

• The fact that the thought of her deceased brother came to her "as we were all praying" indicates that it came from above: "I raised my voice in the middle of my prayer and began to speak of Dinocrates. I was astonished, for I never thought of him, and I suddenly felt sad when I remembered his unfortunate fate".

• Perpetua's religious formation was accelerated. She did not know enough about the Christian doctrine to make up the mystical experiences she recounted, unless she really experienced them. She could not have been taught what she was contemplating, because her revelation ended up contributing to the theological development of the notions of purgatory (already present in the Old Testament), the communion of saints and the salvation of the unbaptized.

• "I woke up from my ecstasy and knew that my brother was suffering. From then on, I prayed for him night and day, weeping and moaning, and I pleaded with God as for a soul who was my own."The idea that the prayers of the living could free the dead from their sufferings, let alone pagans, is a bold one and cannot be the fruit of Perpetua's imagination.

• For several days, Perpetua received no answer to her prayers, and it was not until the beginning of March, as her execution approached, that she had another vision, while in a state of ecstasy: "I saw again the place I had already seen and Dinocrates, washed, properly dressed and looking much better [...]. I woke up [from ecstasy] and knew that my brother had been released from his sorrows."