The Final Sacrifice
Surviving all of these horrors, she was finally killed with the sword by a Roman soldier. Even the torturers were wondering at this woman who endured more than anyone believed possible. How did Blandina endure it all? Not by any strength that the world had to offer, but by the grace of God that fell upon her without measure. Even after Blandina’s death and the execution of all forty-eight of the Christian prisoners, the madness of the spectators continued!
Desiring even further revenge, the angry citizens refused to allow the martyrs to be buried. Many corpses were thrown to the wild dogs while the people mocked, “Where is their God? What has their religion, which they have chose rather than life, profited them?” Finally, the pagans burned all of the remaining bodies in a huge funeral pyre. Celebrating their “complete victory,” they took the believers’ ashes and swept them into the Rhone River, “so that no trace of them might ever appear on the earth.”
They thought that by burning the earthly bodies they could prevent these Christians from attaining their future hope of resurrection from the dead, because their bodies would not be buried in one place but rather reduced to ashes and scattered to the winds. The crazed mob in Lyon was deceived – the martyrs of Lyon will be resurrected at the coming of the Lord in glory, in spite of everything their persecutors had done to prevent it.
1 Thessalonians 4:16: “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.”
Date: 17th February 2024
Martyrs: Blandina and the Martyrs of Lyon
Location: Gaul (modern-day Lyon), southeastern France
Source: God’s Generals – The Martyrs
Author: Roberts Liardon
Suffering Saturday 078
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