Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XIII/Chapter 20

Chapter XX.&#8212;Peter Addresses Mattidia.

While Peter was saying this, he saw the good and chaste Mattidia weeping for joy; but thinking that she was grieved at having suffered so much in past times, he said: &#160; &#8220;Take courage, O woman; for while many have suffered many evils on account of adultery, you have suffered on account of chastity, and therefore you did not die.&#160; But if you had died, your soul would have been saved.&#160; You left your native city of Rome on account of chastity, but through it you found the truth, the diadem of the eternal kingdom.&#160; You underwent danger in the deep, but you did not die; and even if you had died, the deep itself would have proved to you, dying on account of chastity, a baptism for the salvation of your soul.&#160; You were deprived of your children for a little; but these, the true offspring of your husband, have been found in better circumstances.&#160; When starving, you begged for food, but you did not defile your body by fornication.&#160; You exposed your body to torture, but you saved your soul; you fled from the adulterer, that you might not defile the couch of your husband:&#160; but, on account of your chastity, God, who knows your flight, will fill up the place of your husband.&#160; Grieved and left desolate, you were for a short time deprived of husband and children, but all these you must have been deprived of, some time or other, by death, the preordained lot of man.&#160; But better is it that you were willingly deprived of them on account of chastity, than that you should have perished unwillingly after a time, simply on account of sins.