How to Grow a Spine
3 Lessons from Saints' Lives for Pride Month
Pride Month brings many temptations to appease secular liberalism both in the workplace and beyond, but if we respond to them properly then temptations can help to keep us humble and strengthen us in virtue. You might be tempted, for example, to say something you don’t believe to get promoted. If you resist, however, you’ll grow in integrity and your ability to do your duty.
Long before it was Pride Month, June was dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, ‘the abyss of all virtues.’ In imitating these, we learn what living with strength truly involves because that’s simply what virtue is, and Pride Month presents us with opportunities to grow in obedience, zeal and purity especially.
For reflection, then, here are some relevant saints’ lives because the best way to grasp a virtue is to see it lived out in flesh and blood.
St Basil the Great: Obedience
"I spoke of Thy testimonies before kings; and I was not ashamed.' — Psalm 118:46.
St. Basil was born in Asia Minor. After giving up a worldly career in oratory, he became a bishop and spent his life beating back the Arian heretics. Arius denied that Christ was really the Eternal Son of God, equally sharing in the Divine Nature with the Father.
Threatening him to admit the Arians to Communion, the prefect warned Basil, 'Are you mad, that you resist the will before which the whole world bows? Do you not dread the wrath of the emperor, nor exile, nor death?'
‘No,' Basil calmly replied. ‘He who has nothing to lose need not dread loss of goods; you cannot exile me, for the whole earth is my home; as for death, it would be the greatest kindness you could bestow upon me; torments cannot harm me, one blow would end my frail life and my sufferings together.'
‘Never,’ said the prefect, ‘has any one dared to address me thus.'
‘Perhaps,' said Basil, 'you never before measured your strength with a Christian bishop.'
The emperor then desisted from his commands. Appeasement doesn’t work. Weakness invites attack, but strength commands respect.
‘Fear God,’ says the Imitation, ‘and thou shalt have no need of being afraid of any man.’
Saints Marcian and Nicander: Zeal
‘And they, lifting up their eyes, saw no one, but only Jesus.'— Matthew 17:8
Marcian and Nicander were soldiers in the imperial service who refused to offer incense to the idols.
The judge offered them time to rethink it, but they refused his offer, saying they’d be happy to leave the world for the life of heaven.
‘Why do you talk of life,' said the judge, ‘if you desire to die?’
‘Because,’ Nicander answered, ‘it is life eternal which I desire, not the life of this world. Do what you will with my body. It is in your power.’
Touched by their courage, the judge protested that it was the emperor, not he, who was responsible for their death. He then gave orders for them to be beheaded without any further suffering.
Marcian and Nicander thanked him for his kindness.
On his way to be executed, Marcian’s wife met him, holding their child in their arms and begging him to yield.
He kissed his child, told his wife to leave and then knelt for the sword alongside Nicander because he knew he had to put God first.
Nicander’s wife, who’d been present at his trial and had encouraged him to keep faith with Christ, later died a martyr herself, holding their child in her arms.
‘There is no true friendship save that which God creates between souls which adhere to Him,' said St. Augustine.
Saint Potamiana: Purity
‘If thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than thy whole body be cast into hell.' —Matt. 5:29
Potamiana was a third-century Alexandrian slave and the daughter of Marcella, also a martyr. Because of her exceptional beauty, Potamiana’s master accused her as Christian to the governor, telling him to spare her life only if she’d consent to have sex with her master.
At her trial, she was tortured in various ways but stood firm. The judge then ordered for her to be thrown naked into a boiling pot of tar, but Potamiana requested to remain clothed yet lowered into the tar slowly. The judge would see, she said, what patience Christ would give her.
After three hours, the tar reached her neck, and she finally died.
Basilides, the heathen officer charged with bringing her to trial, had shown her many marks of sympathy and respect while the crowd had abused her in the streets, and she’d promised that after her death she’d obtain his salvation from Our Lord in return for his kindness.
Three days after her death, she appeared before him and placed a crown on his head. Soon, she said, he’d be with her in heaven. Basilides was then baptised and died for the confession of the Faith.
TLDR
Obedience: are you more afraid of God or of man?
Zeal: what idols will you refuse to offer incense to?
Purity: since your enemies are weaponising lust, are you weaponising chastity?