Julian of Cilicia (in present-day Turkey) is remembered most for the astounding horrors inflicted upon him during one of the various persecutions of Christians that transpired during the third and fourth centuries of the common era. He fell into the hands of a sadist with political power and, over the course of more than a year, Julian was dragged from town to town to face public ridicule. He had his flesh torn and his sides “furrowed” (I had to look this particular torture up: it meant the use of metal tools to “plow” his body). Butler writes that Julian’s bones were laid bare and his bowels exposed to view. Then followed lashings, and various uses of fire and of swords that are only mentioned and not described except that they were worse than the flesh-tearing and furrowing.

When this was insufficient to stop Julian’s professions of faith and efforts to encourage other Christians, the judge/sadist found himself stymied and so ordered that Julian be executed in as cruel a way as he could come up with. So “he caused the martyr to be sewed up in a sack with scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and so thrown into the sea.” When Christians found Julian’s body, they took it to Antioch for burial. It is reported that Julian’s relics were such a great cause for faith “that no devil could stand their presence, and that men by them found a remedy for their bodily distempers [women are not mentioned here], and the cure of the evils of the soul.”

For me, the story of Julian is poignant because it reminds me of the POWER to be gained from honoring the stories and lives of those people who had truly harrowing lives and yet managed to respond by offering love, encouragement, and goodness to others.

My Grandmother Koch (my father’s mother) grew up in a violent and abusive home–her father was an alcoholic who attacked and molested her. Holidays were the worst times for her and her family because that’s when drinking was at its heaviest. She decided that her only means of escape was to find some man who would not be too cruel to her and who would impregnate and then “have to” marry her (this being the early 1920s).

So she found, got knocked by, and subsequently married “Mr. Koch”–she never called him by anything else, to my knowledge–and thereafter gave birth to two children. Mr. Koch’s mother hated my grandmother, and used every opportunity to show it (even things so petty as telling her that one of her haircuts made her “look like a monkey”), feeling that my grandmother had trapped her beloved son (males apparently not being responsible for self-control).

Then, in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, my grandmother became a widow with two youngsters when Mr. Koch died of a heart attack. So she went to work in middle of the night, serving in the cafeteria of a whiskey distillery so she could make a minimal income to support her children. Dinner for her was often a bowl of milk that she heated and poured over a few crackers.

What is amazing is that, along the way, my Grandma Koch made promises (to God and herself) that she kept. While growing up, she swore that if she survived and was ever in a position to do so, she would go out of her way to make holidays special and wonderful for her family. And, indeed, my happiest holiday memories are of Thanksgivings at her home! She also swore that if she ever had a daughter-in-law, she would treat her like a queen–and, quite honestly, my mother mourned the passing of my Grandma Koch (her mother-in-law) more than she did the death of her own mother, because Grandma Koch always treated my mother with so much love.

I never thought of my Grandmother as a martyr, but that’s because she was more intent on showing love than showing the scars. I only learned about what all she went through when, in my 20s, I spent hours and hours with her during my college breaks, asking and listening and asking more about her life, her past, her stories, and her life lessons

There is power, power, wonder-working power in these saints’ stories–of how, when faced with a choice, they led with their love and not their mistreatment.