All through his life, Origens thoughts ran on Martyrdom. He was a martyr by race; yearned in his youth to be martyred with his father Leonides. The exaltation of martyrdom was the core of Origen
All through his life, Origens thoughts ran on Martyrdom. He was a martyr by race; yearned in his youth to be martyred with his father Leonides. The exaltation of martyrdom was the core of Origen's training in the Christian life, and cornerstone of his teaching.
When he received the School of Alexandria, Origen courageously assisted many of his students who were martyred, and he assisted them in their last moments. He considered himself that he was called to the task of preparing Christians for martyrdom. He prepared not only the hearts of believers but also those of the catechumens to receive martyrdom joyfully. He breathed his own spirit into them. He visited them in prison, acted as their advocate, and gave them the brotherly kiss in open court.
Every person who came to him for instruction in the faith was liable to the penalties of the law. Liable also were his more advanced pupils who had submitted to baptism in spite of the imperial edict against it. But in the eyes of the law the born Christian who lived by his faith was not as much a criminal as the Christian who made converts of others, and it is probable that Origen owed his immunity to the tolerance of the local administration at Alexandria. It is probable that the edict of Severus, which was directed against converts only, did not touch him, and that so long as he abstained from formal defiance he was personally safe."
While he was old, he recorded his feelings concerning a persecution occurred at Alexandria from about forty years. In his Homilies on Jeremiah he describes the glorious persecuted Church of Alexandria.
This happened when man (a Christian) was a true believer. In courage he used to go to the church to be martyred.
We usually returned from the cemetery, in companion with the bodies of the saints, to our meetings, where the church in steadfast assembles.
The catechumens heard sermons amongst martyrdom. They overcame suffering, and confessed the Living God without fear.
Truly we behold marvelous and heroic deeds!
The believers were little in number, but they are believers in truth, they had progress in the straight and narrow way which leads to life.
EXHORTATION TO MARTYRDOM (Exhortatio ad Martyrium)
During the persecution of Maximinus, he wrote the Exhortation to Martyrdom, has the same message of his letter to his father while he was a child, with the amplifications that seemed necessary to the mature man. He wrote it in Caesarea of Palestine in 235 A.D, to Ambrose and Protocotius the priest of Caesarea, who were cast in prison. He declares martyrdom as his sweet desire that his soul demanded.
Origen stands with St. Ignatius of Antioch by reason of his desire for martyrdom, and with St. Clement of Alexandria because he taught that martyrdom was the perfection of love. He regarded it as one of the proofs of the truth of Christianity, not merely because it showed that Christians were capable of dying for their faith - other people die too, for their country or their ideas - but because in the Christian martyrs contempt for death was a sign that they had already defeated the powers of evil that use death as their instrument of torture (I Cor. 15:55). Martyrdom brought the resurrection, in a way, into the present as a living reality; the martyrs charismata, impassability in particular, were a sort of foretaste of the resurrection. Martyrdom was thus a continuation of the work of redemption.
Apart from the fact that this treatise is of great historical value as a first-class source for the persecution of Maximinus, it remains an important document of Origens own conviction and courage, his faith and his religious loyalty. It reveals the hopes and fears of the Egyptian Christians in the first half of the third century.
This work shows that he had lost nothing of his enthusiasm. However, in chapters 45 and 46, he mentions, not without purpose, that this desire for martyrdom was not shared by all. There were some who regarded it as a matter of indifference if a Christian sacrificed to the demons or directed his invocation to God under another name than the correct one. There were others who thought it no crime to agree to the sacrifice which the pagan authorities demanded, since it would be enough "to believe in your heart." It was for such circles that Origen wrote his treatise.
This work may be divided into five parts:
a. Exhortation to martyrdom:
It is a short work of great vigor and immense assurance. He is like someone standing at the elbow of Ambrosius, saying: "The time has come. Put away all other thoughts. There is need for martyrdom." Origen regards martyrdom as the most holy profession of the Christian. By martyrdom the Christian shows with his whole soul the desire to be united with God. It is best to die righteously, best to depart from life with the single purpose of entering the kingdom of Heaven: all other purposes are meaningless in comparison with this. He believes the martyrs received a special and greater fullness of beatitude than any holy men, they were the elect of God, sitting by Gods side on the Throne of Judgment, and therefore themselves beyond judgment; and their blood has the power to obtain remission of sins for others. All through the book there breathes the quiet assurance in the supreme validity of the martyr.
Origen asks: What greater joy there can be than the act of martyrdom? A great multitude is assembled to watch the last hours of the martyr. And let each of us remember how many times we have been in danger of an ordinary death, and then let us ask ourselves whether we have not been preserved for something better, for the baptism in blood which washes away our sins and allows us to take our place at the heavenly altar together with all the companions of our warfare.
Have faith, have courage, above all prepare yourselves for the blessedness of martyrdom. "We are the sons of a patient 