Feast day: March 31
St. Benjamin
A deacon of Persia imprisoned for preaching the Gospel, released on the promise that he would stay silent — a promise he refused to keep, and so was martyred.
Benjamin was a deacon of the Church in Persia, martyred about the year 424, near the end of a renewed persecution of Christians under the Sasanian kings Yazdegerd I and his son Bahram V. His story comes down through the early accounts of the Persian martyrs.
Arrested for preaching the Gospel, Benjamin was imprisoned for a year. He was released at the request of the Roman ambassador, on a condition to which the envoy agreed on his behalf — that he cease proclaiming Christ. But Benjamin declared that he could no more keep silent about his faith than a flame could be hidden, and went on preaching.
Rearrested and pressed to renounce Christ, he refused. He was subjected to excruciating tortures and finally put to death. His calm insistence that it was simply not in his power to stop announcing the God who had made him became the heart of his story.
Benjamin is honoured in both East and West as a martyr — a deacon who could not be bought into silence.
Freed on condition that he never speak of Christ again, he answered that he could not stay silent, and went back to preaching until he was put to death.
Image: Arthur Pond / After Francisco de Zurbarán (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/11712a.htm
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