It’s a fundamental message. Take your suffering and turn it into your strength.
Or that suffering is good and godly, and you should be glad for it.
This is the message Mother Theresa took as she withheld medication for sick children, claiming their suffering brought them closer to God.
See also: ritual self-flagellation.
Literal death cult.
I went to look up whether this is why spinning fireworks is called a Catherine Wheel, (it is) and learned she was not executed on the breaking wheel. They tried to torture (“break”) her on it, but the wheel broke when she touched it. So they chopped off her head.
I don’t get it.
These saints ended up granted domains that are related to the gruesome way they died.
One imagines that being reminded of one’s painful death every time someone shoots up a prayer for you to pass along is a mite unpleasant.
That bit I got, I’m just not sure how Jesus figures into it. What’s his domain, in this scenario?
Christians in general use the cross, something the Romans used exclusively as a way to make people suffer a lot before dying, as their religious symbol, because that was how Jesus died. It’s the equivalent of using an impaled head as a religious symbol
