SS. RUFINA AND SECUNDA, VIRGINS AND MARTYRS - 10 JULY

 

 ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JULY

Saints celebrated on the 10th of July

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.

SS. RUFINA AND SECUNDA, VIRGINS AND MARTYRS

Saint Rufina and Saint Secunda were sisters, and the daughters of one Asterius, a man of a senatorian family in Rome. Their father promised them in marriage, the first to Armentarius, and the second to Verinus, who were then both Christians, but afterwards apostatised from the faith when the storm raised by Valerian and Gallien in 257, fell upon the church. 

THEY FLED

The two virgins resisted their solicitations to imitate their impiety, and fled out of Rome; but were overtaken, brought back, and after other torments condemned by Junius Donatus, prefect of Rome, to lose their heads. 

THE WHITE FOREST

They were conducted twelve miles out of Rome, executed in a forest on the Aurelian Way, and buried in the same place. It was then called the Black Forest, Sylva Nigra, but from these martyrs this name was changed into that of Sylva Candida or the White Forest. 

THEIR RELICS

A chapel was built over their tomb, which Pope Damasus demolished, erecting a large church in its room. A town rose in the same place, which was called Sylva Candida, and made an episcopal see. 

But the city being destroyed by barbarians in the twelfth century, the bishopric was united by Callistus II, to that of Porto, and the relics of the saints were translated at the same time, in the year 1120, to the Lateran basilica, where they are kept near the baptistery of Constantine. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)