It’s a story that could scream out of the headlines of today: ‘Boy beaten to death on mission of mercy’ . . . ‘Just how far bullying can go’.
It calls to mind the timeless, tragic wisdom of Ecclesiastes:
‘What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.’ (1:9)
Yet there is something precious in the shining goodness of the 12-year-old boy Tarcisius (sometimes rendered Tarcissus) of Rome, whose premature death came in the midst of a single great act of Christian kindness. While every youngster is precious in the eyes of his or her own folk, Tarcisius belongs to us all, as an example and as a rarity.
SECRET CELEBRATIONS
His story unfolds thus: In a time of persecution under the Emperor Valerian (reign 253–260 CE), secret Sunday celebration of the Eucharist took place in Rome, according to tradition, in the catacombs.
Whether or not there were secret Masses held there, Christians at that time certainly faced the threat of social exclusion. Valerian ordered severe penalties for Christian senators, bureaucrats and upper-class women who did not perform ceremonies to worship Roman gods, including the emperor-god.
This was enough for anti-Christian hate-speech and violence to flourish as an acceptable part of Roman behaviour. It followed that many Christians were held in prison, awaiting the death penalty.
And here is where Tarcisius comes to the fore. One Sunday, the bishop asked for a volunteer to take the Blessed Sacrament from the assembly to the brethren in prison. Tarcisius, being a minor, believed his youth would enable him to pass into the prison without suspicion that he was bearing the Eucharist.
On the way, he passed a group of non-Christian youngsters who knew him and pressed him to join them in a game they were playing. He could not, for obvious reasons, and soon they became suspicious of what he was carrying.
VINDICTIVE BRUTALITY
When Tarcisius refused to surrender the Eucharist for them to abuse, all the anti-Christian rhetoric of the times had the effect of tipping the boys over into vindictive brutality; they bludgeoned Tarcisius to death in the street.
His martyr’s death was memorialised in a poem by Pope Damasus, part of which reads:
‘He wished rather to release his spirit, struck down,
Than to betray the heavenly limbs to mad dogs.’
Usually we celebrate saints for years of good work, or for a lifetime spent spreading the word. Even a martyr such as St Stephen left a major speech – the cause of his martyrdom – through which we can get to know him. St Maximilian Kolbe, before his sacrifice in prison, spent years undermining the Nazi Party as an expression of his Christian personality.
Tarcisius is honoured for one supreme act, an act which instantly recalls the second-toughest challenge Christ ever laid down: ‘I was in prison and you visited me’ (Matthew 25:36).
Let’s face it: we may all have provided clothing, food and drink to the needy, as Christ also asked us to do, but how many of us have cared as much for prisoners, even prisoners of conscience, especially on Death Row?
AN ACT REMEMBERED FOREVER
Tarcisius did that; and not only that – he died defending the sacred Body of Christ, surrounded by sheer hate, almost a companion on the Cross, his goodness lifted up alongside God himself.
Ecclesiastes goes on, ‘No one remembers the former generations’ (1:11). Yet we remember this boy, this shining boy, from hundreds of years ago, as much as any poor parent is rendered eternally mindful of a child lost to the animal stupidity of violence today.
Peter Fleming is a writer and teacher. He doesn’t own a mobile phone and thinks ‘facebook’ is something you should do after taking one off the shelf to read.
Image: Alexandre Falguière: Tarcisius, Christian martyr, 1868, Musée d'Orsay. Wiki Commons.
SAINT TARCISIUS
Martyr
c. 260
Feast day: 15 August
Patron saint: altar servers and first communicants