She slipped her finger between the curtains, just enough to put her eye in the slit. The sun was finally dipping behind the fence. The shadows of the trees were long broken fingers stretched out, reaching for the house on the sandy, barren ground. The surface of the pool rolled orange and indigo blue in the slight breeze. It would be dark enough soon.
Through the bedroom door she heard the men laughing. They had gotten louder and more raucous as they got drunker. They were waiting for their companions to arrive then “the party” would begin. She knew she and her two daughters would be the “entertainment”. That was their culture. She and her daughters were infidels, less than human. They would be used in inhuman ways until the dawn came.
She had escaped once before. The insurgents overtook her city and were exterminating Christians. Her husband was nominal so he tolerated her and their daughters’ conversion to Christianity. When the soldiers came to take his family he joined their cause. He told them he would make them renounce Christ if they would give him time to make them submit. In the middle of the night she disguised herself and her daughters and they fled the city to this new place.
She should have known she did not, could not, run far enough. The insurgents were powerful and brutal and over-ran her new town. Perhaps a friend, a neighbor, a shop-keeper told them of the new single woman and two beautiful daughters who had come into town a few months before, whom they had never seen pray to their god.
The room was now charcoal gray. Their icons were just black portals in the walls. The sliver of light under the bedroom door grew brighter and spread on the floor toward them. The voices were like a pack of barking dogs leaping at a cat on a fence.
“It’s time,” she whispered to her daughters. “Put these on, quickly!” She handed each of them a coat and a hajib. “It’s going to be cold and these will help us blend into the night.”
She peered through the edges of the curtains. There was no one in the yard. The pool surface shimmered in the rising moonlight. She slid the window open. “SHHH! Quietly, keep down, quickly… to the other side of the pool, behind the rock there!”
They crouched behind the rock. She heard the voices inside the house. She heard her daughters’ short, frightened gasps. She knew they could not escape. She imagined… the unimaginable.
She stared at the pool.
“I think I hear something! Quickly, quietly… into the pool! Be still!”
They slipped into the dark water, she in the middle of them. She put her arms around their necks, pulled them close and kissed them. “Forgive me,” she whispered, then pushed them under. The weight of the clothing made it easy to hold them down. They did not struggle. They too understood.
She looked toward the moon. “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me,” then she sank beneath the still waters and joined her daughters.
‡
This story illustrates the tangled messiness of faith. It is messy at the intersection where our theology and our gut intuitions and emotions collide.
Our predominant Augustinian/Thomist theology and monastic ascetical traditions which informs both Eastern and Western Christianity say this was a faithless murder-suicide, an act of hopelessness, despair and a lack of trust in the providence and plan of God; it was a usurping of God’s authority over life and death; it was a denial of His omnipotent orchestration of the temporal and eschatological outcomes of good and evil; it was a disbelief in His promise to control how much suffering one can bear, and to uphold the sufferer and provide divine comfort even in unbearable pain. The Church’s hagiography is replete with saints who endured far more and trusted in God, died in faith, and were thus saved. If she had a funeral, according to a strict application of the Church canons, it would be outside the walls of the Church with perhaps only excerpts from the prayers for the dead said over her grave if the Bishop was compassionate.
On the other hand, our gut emotion says this was a horrific situation, the unimaginable evil was unbearable, the decision was tragic… but deep within, unless we are deluded, we know if we were in that same situation (and we pray to God we never would be), we might be tempted to do the same. We might even do the same.
Our gut says, in spite of what our intellectual theology says, we cannot, dare not judge nor condemn this woman. Which is our way of saying obliquely to ourselves if we were God, in spite of theology, in spite of the hagiography, in spite of the Church’s rules: In my heart I cannot but consider she’s saved by God’s mercy.
But this is where it gets messier.
The Church that holds forth to us the theologies of suffering, the omnipotence and omniscience of God to direct suffering for the benefit of His children, the example of the acceptance of suffering and death by the martyrs and ascetics, and the theology and traditions regarding murder and suicide that forbids full funeral services for suicides, that same Church agrees with our “guts”: This woman would indeed be canonized as a saint of the Church along with her two daughters. I know this to be true because this is essentially the story (re-told in a modern setting) of St. Domnina and her daughters, St. Bernike and St. Prosdike of Syria.* (310 AD, celebrated Oct. 4)
But this is where it gets even messier.
She and her daughters are commemorated as martyr saints. St. John Chrysostom, when he preached about St. Domnina, does not say what we might expect: she was forced to make this tragic decision, she and her daughters were very pious, we know what God says about accepting suffering for His sake, we know what the church teaches about murder and suicide. But God knows her heart, hence we will not judge and we must leave the matter of her eternal state to God who is merciful. But no, he does not equivocate. He does not hedge about making pronouncement on God’s judgment of her actions. He declares that she is a saint of God. Period.
But this is where it gets even messier still.
St. John, in his homily says,
"[Domnina] endured far greater tortures in the river [than she would have at court]. My point, as I started saying, is that it was truly far more cruel and painful than to see flesh scourged, to drown her own innards, I mean her daughters, by her own hand, and to see them suffocating, and it required far greater philosophy than to endure tortures for her to have the capacity to restrain her children's right hands and to drag them along with her into the river's currents. For it was not the same in terms of pain to see [her daughters] suffering badly at the hands of others and to herself act as death's servant, to herself promote their end, to herself stand against her daughters in place of an executioner."*
It was a “far greater philosophy”, a greater spiritual achievement of holiness to gather the strength to murder her daughters (or possibly assist them in their own suicides, which the Church considers an act of murder) than it would have been to endure seeing them tortured and abused before her eyes.
But, this is where it gets still even more and more messy.
Not only does St. John turn “greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends” into “greater piety hath no one than to murder and commit suicide” he goes on to say the act was virtually sacramental:
"The mother baptized them. Yes, women too baptize with baptisms of this kind, just as assuredly that women too both baptized at that time and became a priestess. For truly she offered rational victims, and her purpose became her ordination. Indeed, what was most astonishing is that she didn't require an altar when she performed the sacrifice, nor wood, nor fire, nor a knife. For the river became everything - altar and wood and knife and fire and offering and baptism."*
‡ ‡ ‡
How, we must ask, and by what criteria does the Church sanctify murder and suicide in light of its own teachings? How do these acts become regarded as holy instead of a damnable sin against God’s sovereignty and His sacred creation? By what judgment does one become a saint rather than damned for killing one’s children and one’s self? By what spiritual measure does the Church (and our own hearts) understand the difference between a commendable “pious murder/suicide” and a profane affront to God and the sanctity of His created life?
‡ ‡
NEXT: What do faith and love demand?
*Eusebius’ story of St. Domnina can be found HERE, the quoted excerpts from St. John Chrysostom’s Homily HERE, and a summary of his homily HERE.
Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (2 Cor 3:6)
I'll always choose economia over dogma.
This is to much. Which is just enough. Beautiful 'hard' truths here Steve. I don't even know what to ask, or say. So, thank you will suffice for now.