In today’s martyrdom, we hear about Sts. Romanus and Barulas’s sufferings under the governor Asclypiades. When Asclypiades is brutally torturing St. Romanus for the latter’s denunciation of the governor’s worship of the gods, Romanus points to a child witnessing that even he knows the gods are to be denounced. The governor questions the child and the child confirms what Romanus has stated. Asclypiades then becomes enraged at this mere child and has him put to death. Barulas is encouraged to welcome martyrdom by his own mother. It is always with the intentions for the spiritual that the mother must lead her children. Thus, a mother must be willing to offer her children up to God as St. Hannah did with her son, the Judge Samuel.
We see this theme often times in the holy martyrdoms. In the account of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste who were thrown into a bath that was cooled first and then heated, as the cart led their dead bodies away to be burnt, one mother saw her son fall out of the cart. She took his body and ran all the way after the cart pleading to the soldiers not to deny her son the opportunity of holy martyrdom.
Our children are not our own but they are God’s and they must be given back to God. This is a difficult thing for many parents to understand. It is a difficult thing for my own non-Catholic parents to understand. As a Catholic, I cannot be for them first and foremost but must be for God. I owe myself in dedication to the Church and they must render me to the Temple. If they desire to join me in the Temple, they may have that authority given back to them. St. Symeon the New Theologian discusses in his Discourses on Theology how we as Christians are to give more allegiance to our spiritual parents, our confessors, our godparents, our priests, our spiritual directors, than to our earthly parents, especially when our own parents turn from God. Thus, I owe much devotion to my godparents.
A parent possesses tremendous authority over their children’s guardian angels and can ask the child’s guardian angel to protect them. But in my case, my parents don’t really do that for me. These last few days, I have been asking my godmother to ask my guardian angel to protect me. The fact that she is willing to do so has shown that in lieu of an earthly family at church, I have a spiritual family which is much stronger. My godmother accepts me not just as one of her own godchildren, but she looks at me as if I were one of her own children. I stood next to her and her youngest the other day as she was chatting with a couple who visited our church and my only hope was that this couple did not come to the mistaken conclusion that I was one of her own blood relations. The spiritual bond is much closer than the blood bond and all parents are required one day to offer their children to God. St. Barulas, pray for us!
Theological Rejuvenation 