ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY
Saints celebrated on the 20th of January
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
ST SEBASTIAN, MARTYR
Saint Sebastian was born at Narbonne, in Gaul, but his parents were of Milan, in Italy, and he was brought up in that city.
A FERVENT SERVANT OF CHRIST
He was a fervent servant of Christ, and though his natural inclinations gave him an aversion to a military life, yet, to be better able, without suspicion, to assist the confessors and martyrs in their sufferings, he went to Rome, and entered the army under the Emperor Carinus, about the year 283.
It happened that the martyrs, Marcus and Marcellianus, under sentence of death, appeared in danger of being shaken in their faith by the tears of their friends: Sebastian seeing this, stepped in, and made them a long exhortation to constancy, which he delivered with the holy fire that strongly affected all his hearers.
MIRACLES
Zoe, the wife of Nicostratus, having for six years lost the use of speech, by a palsy in her tongue, fell at his feet, and spoke distinctly, by the saint’s making the sign of the cross on her mouth.
She, with her husband Nicostratus, who was master of the rolls, the parents of Marcus and Marcellianus, the jailor Claudius, and sixteen other prisoners, were converted; and Nicostratus, who had charge of the prisoners, took them to his own house, where Polycarp, a holy priest, instructed and baptised them. Chromatius, governor of Rome, being informed of this, and that Tranquillinus, the father of SS. Marcus and Marcellianus, had been cured of the gout by receiving baptism, desired to be instructed in the faith, being himself grievously afflicted with the same distemper.
A NEW CONVERT TO THE FAITH
Accordingly, having sent for Sebastian, he was cured by him, and baptised with his son Tiburtius. He then enlarged the converted prisoners, made his slaves free, and resigned his prefectship.
Not long after, in the year 285, Carinus was defeated and slain in Illyricum by Diocletian, who, the year following, made Maximian his colleague in the empire.
The persecution was still carried on by the magistrates, in the same manner as under Carinus, without any new edicts. Diocletian, admiring the courage and virtue of St Sebastian, who concealed his religion, would fain have him near his person, and created him captain of a company of the pretorian guards, which was a considerable dignity.
When Diocletian went into the East, Maximian, who remained in the West, honoured our saint with the same distinction and respect.
Chromatius, with the emperor’s consent, retired into the country in Campania, taking many new converts along with him. It was a contest of zeal, out of a mutual desire of martyrdom, between St Sebastian and the priest Polycarp, which of them should accompany this troop, to complete their instruction, and which should remain in the city, to encourage and assist the martyrs, which latter was the more dangerous province.
St Augustine wished to see such contests of charity amongst the ministers of the church. Pope Caius, who was appealed to, judged it most proper, that Sebastian should stay in Rome, as a defender of the church.
ST SEBASTIAN STAYED IN ROME
In the year 286, the persecution growing hot, the pope and others concealed themselves in the imperial palace, as a place of the greatest safety, in the apartments of one Castulus, a Christian officer of the court.
St Zoe was first apprehended, praying at St Peter’s tomb on the feast of the apostles. She was stifled with smoke, being hung by the heels over a fire. Tranquillinus, ashamed to be less courageous than a woman, went to pray at the tomb of St Paul, and was seized by the populace, and stoned to death. Nicostratus, Claudius, Castorius, and Victorinus were taken, and after being thrice tortured, were thrown into the sea. Tiburtius, betrayed by a false brother, was beheaded. Castulus, accused by the same wretch, was thrice put on the rack, and afterwards buried alive. Marcus and Marcellianus were nailed by the feet to a post, and having remained in that torment for twenty-four hours, were shot to death with arrows.
HE WAS HANDED OVER TO THE ARCHERS
St Sebastian, having sent so many martyrs to heaven before him, was himself impeached before the Emperor Diocletian; who, having grievously reproached him with ingratitude, delivered him over to certain archers of Mauritania, to be shot to death. His body was covered with arrows, and he left for dead.
Irene, the widow of St Castulus, going to bury him, found him still alive, and took him to her lodgings, where, by care, he recovered of his wounds, but refused to fly, and even placed himself one day by a staircase, where the emperor was to pass, whom he first accosted, reproaching him for his unjust cruelties against the Christians.
This freedom of speech, and from a person too whom he supposed to have been dead, greatly astonished the emperor; but recovering from his surprise, he gave orders for his being seized and beat to death with cudgels, and his body thrown into the common sewer.
ST SEBASTIAN'S MARTYRDOM
A pious lady called Lucina, admonished by the martyr in a vision, got it privately removed, and buried it in the catacombs, at the entrance of the cemetery of Calixtus. A church was afterwards built over his relics, by Pope Damasus, which is one of the seven ancient stationary churches at Rome, but not one of the seven principal churches of that city, as some moderns mistake; it neither being one of the five patriarchal churches, nor one of the seventy-two old churches which give titles to cardinals.
ST SEBASTIAN'S MARVELLOUS INTERCESSION
St Sebastian has been always honoured by the church, as one of her most illustrious martyrs. We read in the life of Paul the deacon, in what manner, in the year 680, Rome was freed from a raging pestilence, by the patronage of this saint. Milan, in 1575, Lisbon, in 1599, and other places, have experienced, in like calamities, the miraculous effects of his intercession with God in their behalf.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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