Happy Easter triduum to all POMOCONs!
Last night at the Holy Thursday service here in Houston, Father mentioned a famous early saint associated with the Eucharist- the boy Saint, Tarcisius (d. 275 AD). This young Roman was beaten to death on the streets by a gang. The street thugs had asked him to give up whatever he was holding in his hands; he was carrying the Eucharist, and refused to give it up. The Christians who found his body pried open his hands and found the Eucharist safe in his stoic grasp. As a poem about this event says:
When an insane gang pressed saintly Tarcisius, who was carrying the sacraments of Christ, to display them to the profane, he preferred to be killed and give up his life rather than betray to rabid dogs the heavenly body.
To fully grasp the import of what makes Christianity different in Western Civilization, I think Tarcisius is best contrasted with a pre-Christian boy who stoically endured a beating rather than reveal what he had in his hands. In Plutarch’s life of Lycurgus, he describes a parallel in ancient Sparta:
The boys make such a serious matter of their stealing, that one of them, as the story goes, who was carrying concealed under his cloak a young fox which he had stolen, suffered the animal to tear out his bowels with its teeth and claws, and died rather than have his theft detected. And even this story gains credence from what their youths now endure, many of whom I have seen expiring under the lash at the altar of Artemis Orthia.
The Spartan education entailed that boys not be given enough food but were encouraged to steal food, in order to learn how to forage during war campaigns. But the stealing was supposed to be concealed, to make them even better thieves. There is something heroic and supernatural about the young Spartan who stood and refused to reveal the fox he had stolen even unto death.
But that stoic heroism was only out of duty to his education, which aimed at creating a better Spartan war machine. And what’s the point of Spartans winning wars, at the end of the day? It seems rather meaningless. As Peter Lawler might say- Spartans were “polis fodder.” What is more impressive about Saint Tarcisius (and perhaps this is what makes one a saint, rather than just a hero), is that he performed his stoic sacrifice out of LOVE for God- and that is very meaningful. Happy Easter!
A to-the-point and illuminating juxtaposition.