Fabian

Fabian was born in the early 200s to a noble family in Rome.  History does not record much more about his early life, but it is a fair assumption that he was well-educated and raised in the Faith.

Fabian came to Rome in the year 236 as an observer to the selection of a new Bishop.  It was a difficult election – Pope Pontian had reigned only five years before he was deported, following him Anterus held the position only a few months before he died.  Discussions over the next Bishop were somewhat heated with many prominent Christians in contention.

According to the Church Historian Eusebius, who lived less than a century after this, among the assembled crowd a dove flew down and landed on the head of Fabian.  Though he was not a leader in the church, the crowd noticed this and acclaimed Fabian as the next bishop.  According to Eusebius, “the whole body exclaimed, with all eagerness and with one voice, as if moved by the Spirit of God, that he was worthy; and without delay they took and placed him upon the episcopal throne.”

Despite the unusual manner of his election, Fabian proved a very capable bishop.  He organized the city of Rome into seven ecclesiastical districts to better provide for the spiritual needs of the residents.  Deacons were assigned to administer these regions.  He also organized charitable work within the city.  Fabian also had a great concern for the lost.  He sent a number of missionaries to Gaul (modern-day France) and established at least seven churches there.  A surviving letter he sent reflects this passion for the lost:

“We beseech you also to be zealous in praying in your pious supplications, that our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who will have all men to be saved and not one to perish, may, by His vast omnipotence, cause their hearts to turn again to sound doctrine and to the Catholic faith, in order that they may be recovered from the toils of the devil…”

Fabian also had a great interest in preserving the history of martyrs.  He advocated with Rome for the return of the bodies of two martyrs who had been sentenced to hard labor in Sardinia.  Fabian initiated repairs on the catacombs where many Christians had been buried and gathered eyewitness accounts and court records of martyrs over the (then) two centuries of the existence of the Church.

Finally, Fabian exhibited a passion for sound doctrine, roundly condemning a new heresy begun by an individual named Privatus in North Africa.

In the year 249, Decius ascended as Emperor of Rome.  Part of his agenda being a restoral of the Roman stage religion, this led to another round of persecutions for Christians.  Decius put out a decree that every person should offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods within a certain period of time.  This sacrifice would be witnessed by and recorded by the magistrates.  Bishop Fabian, being one of the few vocal opponents of this edict, was one of the first victims of Decius’ persecution.  He was thrown in prison.  Historical accounts vary as to whether he died in prison or if he was beheaded but it is know that he died on January 20^th, 250 – fourteen years and ten days after his remarkable ascension.

Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, a contemporary of Fabian, and one who would himself die a martyr, wrote to the church of Rome about Fabian:

“I greatly congratulate you that you honor his memory with so public and illustrious a testimony…For just as the fall of a bishop tends to bring about the ruinous fall of his followers, so it is a useful and helpful thing when, by the firmness of his faith, a bishop becomes manifest to his brethren as an object of imitation.”

E-mail from Christian History Institute, 10 January 2022.

https://popehistory.com/popes/pope-st-fabian/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Fabian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decius

Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

Stand Up, Stand up for Jesus

Episcopal Reverend Dudley Tyng was forced to resign from his pastorate in Philadelphia for preaching forcefully against slavery.  Undaunted, he became a Presbyterian and planted a church in his home town.  In addition to his church plant Dudley, along with other ministers, preached at the local YMCA to young men and were used by God to spark a revival of thousands in the city.

In March of 1858, the thirty-three-year-old Tyng preached a sermon to about 5,000 young men in the YMCA hall where over a thousand made professions of faith.  During his sermon he remarked, “I would rather that [my] right arm were amputated at the trunk than that I should come short of my duty to you in delivering God’s message.”

That week, Reverend Tyng went to visit a local farm where he saw a mule-powered corn-shelling machine.  As he reached out to pat one of the mules, the sleeve of his coat caught in the gears and his arm was quickly pulled in to the machine.  The injury was severe and his arm was amputated.

Infection set in and it soon became clear that Dudley was going to die.  His friend and fellow preacher Pastor George Duffield was at his bedside and asked him if he had any message for the men in the city.  “Tell them to stand up for Jesus,” he replied.

Duffield preached the funeral sermon for his friend Dudley Tyng.  He used as his text Ephesians 6:14, “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.”  He closed his sermon by having a hymn he wrote sung, a hymn based on his friend’s final words to him:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Ye soldiers of the cross;

Lift high His royal banner, It must not suffer loss:

From victory unto victory His army shall He lead,

Till every foe is vanquished, And Christ is Lord indeed.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, The trumpet call obey;

Forth to the mighty conflict, In this His glorious day:

Ye who are men, now serve Him Against unnumbered foes;

Let courage rise with danger, And strength to strength oppose.

[note the allusion to Dudley Tyng’s injury]

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Stand in His strength alone;

The arm of flesh will fail you, Ye dare not trust your own:

Put on the gospel armor, Each piece put on with prayer;

Where duty calls, or danger, Be never wanting there.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, The strife will not be long;

This day the noise of battle, The next, the victor’s song:

To him who overcometh A crown of life shall be;

He, with the King of glory, Shall reign eternally.

[the fifth stanza, omitted from most hymnals today, allude to Tyng’s death in the third line]

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Each soldier to his post;

Close up the broken column, And shout through all the host:

Make good the loss so heavy, In those that still remain,

And prove to all around you That death itself is gain!

https://wordwisebiblestudies.com/the-strange-case-of-dudley-tyng-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus/

https://www.hymncharts.com/2015/07/27/the-unusual-story-behind-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus/

https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus

Agape, Chionia, and Irene

In the year 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian, then in his 19^th year of power, desiring to restore Rome to his vision of its prior glory, instituted what was the final major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, and arguably the most severe.  The emperor issued a number of edicts removing legal protections from Christians and mandating they comply with religious practices only to gods officially sanctioned by Rome.  Later edicts required universal sacrifice to Roman gods and were targeted at Christian clergy.  This persecution lasted ten years.

Born in the city of Aquileia, on the northern Adriatic coast of Italy, the orphaned sisters Agape, Chionia, and Irene were living devout lives under the supervision of a priest named Xeno.  As young women, they each declined numerous offers of marriage, preferring lives of service and prayer.

When the edicts from Rome were announced, they hid their Christian writings but were arrested for refusing to eat meat sacrificed to the Roman idols.  Diocletian had been passing through the area on his way to Macedonia and they were brought before him.  Seeing their beauty, he encouraged them to renounce their faith and find grooms from among the men in his entourage.  The sisters replied that they had no bridegroom but Christ and were ready to suffer for Him.  Enraged, and seeking to make an example of them, the emperor ordered they be brought with him and put on trial in front of the governor of Thessalonica.

Standing firm, though alone, the sisters refused to bow to the demands of the governor.  They were ordered to stand before yet another official, and they were subjected to yet another trial.  At this second trial, they were found guilty of not renouncing their faith.  The official sentenced the older two, Agape and Chionia, to be publicly burned at the stake.  According to tradition, in death the sisters appeared to be sleeping as the bodies themselves had not burned.

Irene, the youngest, was ordered to be taken to a brothel.  En route, the escort was met by two soldiers who instructed them that their orders had changed and instead they were to take her to a certain mountain and abandon her to her death there.  They did so and reported back, enraging the official who had given no such order.  He sent a contingent of soldiers to bring her back and, in the melee, she was shot with an arrow in the throat and died on the mountain, allowing her dignity to be preserved.

Their names in the Greek mean, respectively, ‘love’ (Agape), ‘snow’ (Chionia – indicating purity), and ‘peace’ (Irene).  Word of their martyrdom helped buttress the Church for the remaining nine years of persecution that was to follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape,_Chionia,_and_Irene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/04/16/101106-virgin-martyrs-agape-irene-and-chionia-in-illyria