Here’s to all those who dive in and care when there are public health emergencies, without regard to their own safety! Today, in the Roman Catholic’s 18th-century calendar of saints, those being honored are so numerous and so many whose names have been lost to history, they are simply referred to as “Martyrs Who Died in the Great Pestilence in Alexandria.”

In the years 261, 262, and 263, Alexandria was decimated with widespread disease and pestilence, so much so that no family and no home were left untouched by death. Butler writes, “All places were filled with groans, and the living appeared almost dead with fear. The noisome exhalations of carcasses, and the very winds, which should have purified the air, loaded with infection and pestilential vapours from the Nile, increased the evil.” It was so bad, according to Butler, that people threw their dying family members into the streets to avoid contagion.

Yet many Alexandrian Christians–including many who had hidden themselves during the Decian persecutions or even publicly denied their Christianity to save their lives–felt compelled to assist the sick, the mourning, the grieving. They came out in great numbers during this particular pestilence to wash and properly bury the dying, to comfort the suffering, to offer true presence to those during these years of horror. And many, many of these Christians lost their lives because they became infected with the diseases of the people that they were helping.

Theirs was and still is a clarion call to give a damn in ways that do not discriminate between those who are “deserving” of help and those who are deemed not to be. Theirs is testimony that there are worse things than growing sick or dying–including not lifting a finger when those around you are in torment, sickness, or pain. We all die one day–the question becomes how we will spend our time between now and then.

These are saints we can and should still call upon.