Tuesday
March 16, 2010
St. Julian of
Antioch, Martyr
This saint was a Cilician, of a
senatorian family in Anazarbus, and a
minister of the gospel. In the
persecution of Dioclesian he fell into
the hands of a judge, who, by his
brutal behavior, resembled more a
wild beast than man. The president,
seeing his constancy proof against
the sharpest torments, hoped to
overcome him by the long
continuance of his martyrdom. He
caused him to be brought before his
tribunal every day; sometimes he
caressed him, at other times
threatened him with a thousand
tortures. For a whole year together
he caused him to be dragged as a
malefactor through all the towns of
Cilicia, imagining that this shame and
confusion might vanquish him: but it
served only to increase the martyr's
glory, and gave him an opportunity of
encouraging in the faith all the
Christians of Cilicia by his example
and exhortations. He suffered every
kind of torture. The bloody
executioners had torn his flesh,
furrowed his sides, laid his bones
bare, and exposed his very bowels to
view. Scourges, fire, and the sword
were employed various ways to
torment him with the utmost cruelty.
The judge saw that to torment him
longer was laboring to shake a rock,
and was forced at length to own
himself conquered by condemning
him to death: in which however, he
studied to surpass his former cruelty.
He was then at Ægea, a town on the
sea-coast; and he caused the martyr
to be sewed up in a sack with
scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and
so thrown into the sea. This was the
Roman punishment for parricides, the
worst of malefactors, yet seldom
executed on them. Eusebius
mentions, that St. Ulpian of Tyre
suffered a like martyrdom, being
thrown into the sea in a leather sack,
together with a dog and an aspick.
The sea gave back the body of our
holy martyr which the faithful
conveyed to Alexandria of Cilicia, and
afterwards to Antioch, where St.
Chrysostom pronounced his
panegyric before his shrine. He
eloquently bets forth how much these
sacred relics were honored; and
affirms, that no devil could stand their
presence, and that men by them
found a remedy for their bodily
distempers, and the cure of the evils
of the soul.
The martyrs lost with joy their worldly
honors, dignity, estates, friends,
liberty, and lives, rather than forfeit
for one moment their fidelity to God.
They courageously bade defiance to
pleasures and torments, to prosperity
and adversity, to life and death,
saying, with the apostle: Who shall
separate us from the love of Jesus
Christ? Crowns, scepters, worldly
riches, and pleasures, you nave no
charms which shall ever tempt me to
depart in the least little from the
allegiance which I owe to God.
Alarming fears of the most dreadful
evils, prisons, racks, fire, and death,
in every shape of cruelty, you shall
never shake my constancy. Nothing
shall ever separate me from the love
of Christ. This must be the sincere
disposition of every Christian. Lying
protestations of fidelity to God cost us
nothing: but he sounds the heart. Is
our constancy such as to bear
evidence to our sincerity, that rather
than to fail in the least duty to God,
we are ready to resist to blood? And
that we are always upon our guard to
keep our ears shut to the voices of
those sirens which never cease to lay
snares to our senses?
(Source: Butler's Lives of the
Saints)
Wednesday
March 17, 2010
St. Patrick, Bishop,
Confessor:
St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, was
sent to that country by Pope St.
Celestine as a missionary. He found
Ireland heathen and left it Christian.
St. Patrick died A.D. 464, and was
buried at Down in Ulster. He
scattered the seed of the Gospel with
such success that from the
innumerable band of holy men and
women which it produced, the
verdant land of Erin was known in the
Middle Ages by the glorious title of
the “Island of Saints” - a glory which
three centuries of bitter persecution
of the Catholic Faith at the hands of
the Anglican Church utterly failed to
eclipse, Pius IX in 1859 as a tribute to
the vigorous faith of this nation
raised the feast of St. Patrick which
has appeared in the Roman Breviary
since the Fifteenth Century, to the
rank of a double. Patrick is the great
patriarch of the Irish episcopate, and
of Irish monachism. This monachism
left its mark throughout mediaval
Europe wherever the Scotti planted
their tents and introduced their
traditions. His feast is a holy day of
obligation in Ireland; there is a
church dedicated to him in Rome, not
far from the Via Salaria.
(Source: Fr. Lasance, The New
Roman Missal)
Saints
Monday
March 15, 2010
St. Louise de
Marillac,
Cofoundress of the
Vincentian Sisters
of Charity
The cofoundress of the Vincentian
Sisters of Charity, St. Louise de
Marillac was born in Paris in 1591.
She died on March 15, 1660, and
was canonized in 1934. In 1613 she
married Anthony Le Gras and had a
son, Michael. Her husband died in
1625 after a lingering illness. In
1619 she came under the guidance
of St. Francis de Sales, who
strengthened her in her trials. In
1633 she became the directress at
her home in Rue des Fosses-Saint
Victor of a group of women which
grew into the worldwide organization
known as the sisters of Charity of
St. Vincent de Paul.
(Source: Butler's Lives of the
Saints)