The ninth century was a time of trial for many Christians in the eastern Roman empire, the lands today remembered as Byzantium. Once an empire stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Palestine, Byzantium was in the early stages a steady decline of influence that ultimately ended in their extinction.
It had been in the 7th century that the rift between east and west began to take solid form. The Council of Trullo, accepted by the east but rejected by the west, codified many of the variant practices between east and west such as the celibacy of priests and the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist. And it wasn’t far into the future that this rift would become permanent.
It was also in the 7th century that Islam took control of large amounts of territory in northern Africa and the Middle East, including the Holy Lands, that was previously under Byzantine control.
Moreover, it was during the 8th and 9th century that the iconoclast controversy showed persecution of the Church, especially the monastic communities, by the Byzantine state.
After centuries as the lead religion in the eastern Roman empire, the Church began to feel persecuted. The alliance between the Roman government and the Byzantine Church was proving to be temporary and unstable.
It is in the midst of these trials, monks at the Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai in Egypt, deep in the heart of the Islamic empire, were granted a vision which led them to find the incorrupt body of St. Katherine the All-Wise of Alexandria, who lived and died in the pre-Christian, early 4th century empire, and had been buried centuries earlier on the mountain. The Egyptian monks were living in an un-Christian world after centuries of living in a Christian empire, and here was St. Katherine, a hero from another time, a time before there was a Christian empire. Likely because so many Byzantine Christians could see themselves in her story, the life of St. Katherine quickly became one of the most popular saints of all time. To this day the Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai is referred to at St. Katherine’s, Mount Sinai itself is labelled on maps as Mount Saint Catherine, and Katherine remains one of our most popular saint’s names.
The story of St. Katherine reads almost like a fairy tale. We all know the outline of this story. It goes something like this: “Once upon a time a beautiful princess, nearly perfect in every way, was trying to find her perfect prince. The princess caught the attention of an evil ruler whose authority is threatened by her in some way and he tries to kill her. Ultimately, her perfect prince arrives on the scene, saves her, and they live happily ever after.” Sound familiar? Listen for these tropes in the story of St. Katherine. They are all there. Some of them are spot on. And others are turned on their head to show their absurdity in the face of Christian truth.
St. Katherine is said to have been the most beautiful princess in all the lands surrounding Alexandria in Egypt. She is also said to have been very well-educated. This is not as strange as it sounds. Middle eastern culture at the time was actually relatively progressive, allowing women to be educated, own property, and have legal standing in ways that were not permitted in Greco-Roman society. Add this to her aristocratic roots and you can see where she might have had access to one of the greatest educations the world had to offer. In fact, her home Alexandria, famous as once being the home of one the greatest libraries in the world, was still largely considered the home to the world’s most influential thinkers. To be educated in Alexandria at that time would being educated at Oxford or Harvard today.
So Katherine was beautiful and smart, and the as the story goes she could not find a man worthy of her. Princes from around the world sought her hand, but she had no interest in them. They doubtless told her that she was beautiful and said how much they appreciated her wisdom, but she remained unimpressed. She told her parents that until they could find a man as handsome and wise as she, she would prefer to remain unmarried. This was, of course, a worry for her mother and father who strongly desired for her to get married.
Now Katherine’s mother was a secret Christian. At this crossroads in her life she sought council at a nearby monastery. The abbot invited her to bring Katherine to see him. Katherine speaks with the Abbot about her decision not to wed any who are not her equal in beauty and wisdom. The abbot does not scold her for her pride and arrogance or insist that she be obedient to her mother and father. Instead the abbot takes this opening to tell her that he knows of just such a prince and that he thinks he might be able to introduce them, though it might take a little work. Katherine is intrigued by this potential solution to her dilemma and agrees to whatever work might be necessary. The abbot offers her an icon of the Theotokos, tells her to pray to the icon unceasingly, and that if she does this the Theotokos will lead her to the promised wise and powerful prince.
We are not told how Katherine feels about this task she has been given to do, but we are told that she prays all night to the icon until finally, in a dream, the Theotokos speaks. Mary says to the child in her arms, “Behold your handmaiden, Katherine.” And what do you think happens? Remember the many courtiers and all the praise they had heaped upon Katherine? The Christ-child does the exact opposite. He turns his head away from her in disgust, saying, “She is filthy and ignorant. I will have nothing to do with her.” Katherine was taken aback by this greeting. She returns to the abbot and relates her vision. The abbot explains that Christ is indeed the prince of whom he had spoken, but that this prince sees her interior rather than her exterior and that she has much work to do in her heart before she can be truly married to this prince.
Inspired by this challenge, Katherine becomes a catechumen, studies, and is ultimately baptized, becoming a Christian. We are told that sometime after this, Katherine had a second vision where Christ again appeared to her, this time gifting her a ring, and that from that time forward she lived as if she were betrothed to Christ. Notice how this turns the fairy tale trope of the perfect princess marrying the perfect prince on its head. All Christians are called to find their true love and support in Christ alone. Spouses can help with this, but they are not the answer to all of life’s problems.
One day after this the emperor came to visit Alexandria and in celebration of his arrival sacrifices to the Roman gods were ordered to be made by all. Many of the Christians refused to participate, and those that were caught resisting were tortured. This stirred Katherine’s conscience and she knew that as royalty she would be allowed to speak out in a way than the other Christians would not. And so she made her way to the court to confront the emperor about his treatment of her fellow Christians.
Katherine is ultimately allowed to stand before the emperor, where she shows all due respect, prostrating herself before the emperor, before confessing her own Christianity and asking the emperor to cease his persecutions. Katherine goes on to recount to the emperor how many of the philosophers of the Greco-Roman tradition themselves reviled the Gods and how others considered them merely allegories, attempting to show that Christians were not alone in this notion.
We are told that because of her eloquence that the emperor was speechless in response. But instead of learning from Katherine, he saw Katherine as a threat. Why was she a threat? For one of the simplest reasons. As Christ foretold, “It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” The emperor was in love with his wealth and power, and Christians were a threat to his power. Christians did not honor the emperor as a god, but rather worshiped Jesus Christ as their Lord and God. Christians did not respect class or power, but rather masters and slaves ate at table together. In this way Katherine was a prime example of the threat of Christianity, a wealthy patrician willing to risk persecution on behalf of the poor.
Rather than stop the persecutions, the emperor insisted that every philosopher in the region try to win this argument with Katherine. And remember this was Alexandria – there were philosophers on every corner! And so we are told that scores of them came out to debate with Katherine.
We are also told that she bested all of them. And, of course, her strong comportment was in many ways due to her education. You could say God had been preparing her for this moment even before she knew who He was. In one of the versions of the story the Angel Michael visits Katherine before her ordeal and tells her that the Lord will give her the strength and wisdom to endure. Again, it is not a white knight on his steed who sweeps in to save her, but it is the Lord who gives her what she needs to face the emperor.
But I want to tell you something more. Each of us are given opportunities to speak about our faith and we can often keep silent because we feel unprepared. I want to tell you that I don’t think she simply outsmarted these men. The truth is that these philosophers could throw facts and theories and histories and traditions at her until they were blue in the face, but none of that mattered. Katherine was not defending a theory or a tradition, she was witnessing to a personal experience. She had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and no philosophical theory can assail that. So, pray. Purify your heart. If you have a relationship with your Lord and God and Savior, when you come to these moments in your life, He will give you the words to say. And I’m telling you right now the words will not be about Trinitarian dogma or the two natures of Christ. They will be words of understanding, love, and compassion. These are the words that lead others to Christ. Katherine herself was not converted by dogmas. She was converted by a personal encounter with Christ.
We are told that not only does Katherine withstand all of the philosophers, but that many of them were converted by her testimony. This infuriates the emperor and he orders Katherine thrown in prison and all of the converted philosophers to be killed. While Katherine is in prison, we are told that she is visited by the emperor’s wife and the captain of the royal guard. Katherine’s patient endurance of affliction is an inspiration to both the empress and the captain of the guard. Both are converted, along with a large number of the royal guard. We see here even more than before that Katherine’s witness is not her educated words but rather her life itself. She is able to be a witness to the power of Christ by willingly accepting persecution on behalf of the truth, just as her Lord had done centuries before. Imperial power always amounts to the power to prevent or bestow Death. The Lord of Life has overcome Death.
Orthodox theologian John Behr suggests that in the early Church it was understood that we would only become fully human as we united ourselves to Christ in the act of martyrdom. Among others, he sites St. Ignatius who wrote as he journeyed toward his own martyrdom that, “It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth. I seek him who died for our sake. I desire him who rose for us. Birth-pangs are upon me. Suffer me, my brethren….Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I shall be a human being. Suffer me to follow the example of the passion of my God.” St. Ignatius sees himself as becoming fully human as he approaches his death where he will unite himself to Christ.
We are born slave or free, rich and poor, citizen or foreigner, male or female. We are born divided from one another in a million different ways. But we are all called to unity in Christ. And this unity is gained not by force, but by humility. And this humility will often include acceptance of persecution, for in this world it is common to persecute those who are different. But as Christians we are called to react to this hate and anger with love and patience and prayer. Thus both St. Ignatius and St. Katherine transcend their stations in life and become no longer partially human, but rather fully human in Christ. St. Katherine’s peaceful acceptance of tribulation, her willingness to use her status as royalty to defend her fellow Alexandrians, rather than hide herself away safety as she surely could have, is a witness to the fact that death holds no sway over her. She is not afraid of death at the hand of the Emperor, her emperor has overcome death.
Of course when the emperor discovers his wife and his guards have become Christians, he orders them tortured and killed. And he is about at his wits end with Katherine. He makes two more attempts at winning this battle. First he offers her a place at his side as the new empress. Like Christ in the wilderness, Katherine refuses this temptation to rule the world. And so then the emperor threatens to torture Katherine on a specially devised wheel. The wheel is described in some pretty gruesome detail that I won’t go into here – this particular princess story probably wouldn’t get a G rating – but Katherine shows courage and just as she is about to be put upon the wheel it is miraculously destroyed. It is this wheel of torture that is often seen beside St. Katherine in many of her icons.
At this point, the emperor sees that his arguments, his tortures, imprisonment, and bribery are all impotent in the face of Katherine’s faith and love for her Lord. Moreover, all of his efforts have served to convert many of his most loyal servants to Christianity. And so, with his plans ultimately frustrated, the emperor finally orders Katherine to be beheaded. And what is a display of the emperors greatest power is remembered as his ultimate failure. The emperor had done everything he could to separate St. Katherine from her betrothed, but instead he brought the two together for all the world to see.
We do not today face threats to life and limb for practicing our faith. Nonetheless Christian values such as charity, patience, kindness, humility, are often under assault. Acts of charity and kindness are ridiculed. Acts of patience and humility are taken as signs of weakness. In this context, the story of St. Katherine can be an inspiration to each of us. Each of us will be given opportunities to bear crosses in the name of our Lord. And every cross that is put before us is an opportunity to show our Christian distinction. When we bear our trials in patience and love rather than in anger, we stand out as different from those around us. And while we can be sure that many will react like the emperor and take the opportunity to attack us, there will also be those who are looking on that begin to wonder where our strength of conviction comes from. And we will be given the opportunity to share with them our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, so that they too might have life with Him unto the ages of ages. Amen.