Choosing Faith over Culture

When I looked at the lectionary for the month of February and saw today’s feast, I will admit that I wasn’t sure of the women’s identities whom we celebrate today—Agnes Tsao Kou Ying, Agatha Lin Zhao, and Lucy Yi Zhenmei. I had to do a little searching to find their stories, and was particularly fortified in my knowledge of their lives by their entry in Holy Women, Holy Men. These three women—all Chinese Christians—were lay catechists who were martyred on January 22, 1856, January 28, 1858, and February 19, 1862, respectively.

While each woman’s life story is unique, all three shared their faith with a small Christian minority in a country that viewed Christianity as an extension of the threat of imperial colonialism. One was an orphan and a widow, another a sort of consecrated virgin, and another a school teacher whose poor health and life circumstances limited her opportunities. But all three women shared the Gospel with all that they had in the circumstances they found themselves, and ultimately all three gave their lives for their faith. In their deaths they joined the host of faithful Christians, martyrs in word and deed, who testify to the victory of Christ over even the cruelty of the torturer’s rack and the executioner’s sword.

It is hard for me, a Christian living in the United States in 2024, to fully comprehend being persecuted for my religion. I am a member of a majority faith well represented in my culture, and from this position of social power it is unfortunately my fellow Christians who are more likely to do the persecuting than to be the persecuted. I know that there are Christians around the world today— in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, the West Bank and Gaza to name just a few—who daily face the threat of death because they are followers of Jesus Christ.

I confess that I feel some hesitancy in telling my children the stories of more recent martyrs such as these three women we remember today. I am much more comfortable sharing the stories of the early Christian martyrs because the intervening millennia provides a buffer from the possibility of dying for our beliefs. Learning about Agnes, Agatha, and Lucy, though, reminds me how important it is to share their stories, too. All three of these women are a testament to the strength and courage that we find only in Jesus Christ. That strength and courage will serve my little girls well as they walk the pilgrim’s path of life into adulthood, perhaps not at risk of death for their beliefs, but being asked to continuously choose their faith and its countercultural way of living in the world— always pursuing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

The collect appointed for the Feast of Agnes Tsao Kou Ying, Agatha Lin Zhao, and Lucy Yi Zhenmei is addressed to “Jesus Christ, who willingly walked the way of the cross…” and in my prayers today I imagine each of these three women as they walked steadfastly into the assurance of death at the hands of their torturers and executioners, rejected by their countrymen and in some cases their own family members, refusing to deny their faith, accompanied through it all by the Christ they loved so fully, and who could be a true companion to them in their sufferings, having experienced the same on his own journey to crucifixion.

May we all have such bravery, if called upon to claim our faith in the face of persecution, and may we remember the sacrifices of Agnes Tsao Kou Ying, Agatha Lin Zhao, and Lucy Yi Zhenmei if we are ever tempted to stand by, denying aid, when others are persecuted for their own faithfully held beliefs.