ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST
Saints celebrated on the 19th of August
WELCOME!
SAINT SIXTUS III., POPE
[He is also commemorated on March 28.] Saint Sixtus (Xystus) was consecrated July 31, 432; died 440. Previous to his accession he was prominent among the Roman clergy and in correspondence with St Augustine.
HE WAS IN CORRESPONDENCE WITH ST AUGUSTINE
He approved the Acts of the Council of Ephesus and endeavoured to restore peace between Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch. He defended the pope’s right of supremacy over Illyricum against the local bishops and the ambitious designs of Proclus of Constantinople.
HE RESTORED ST MARY MAJOR
At Rome he restored the Basilica of Liberius, now known as Saint Mary Major, enlarged the Basilica of Saint Lawrence-Without-the-Walls, and obtained precious gifts from the Emperor Valentinian III for St Peter’s and the Lateran Basilica.
(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
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ST SIXTUS III, POPE
Saint Sixtus III was a priest among the Roman clergy in 418, when Pope Zozimus condemned the Pelagian heretics.
HIS ZEAL
Sixtus was the first, after this sentence, who pronounced publicly anathema against them, to stop their slander in Africa that he favoured their doctrine, as we are assured by St Augustine and St Prosper in his chronicle. The former sent him two congratulatory letters the same year, in which he applauds this testimony of his zeal, and in the first of these letters professes a high esteem of a treatise written by him in defence of the grace of God against its enemies.
It was that calumny of the Pelagian heretics that led Garnier into the mistake, that our saint at first favoured their errors. But a change of this kind would not have been buried in silence.
HE WROTE TO NESTORIUS
After the death of St Celestine, Sixtus was chosen pope, in 432. He wrote to Nestorius to endeavour to reclaim him after his condemnation at Ephesus, in 431: but his heart was hardened, and he stopped his ears against all wholesome admonitions.
"IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR ANYONE TO ABANDON THE FAITH OF THE APOSTOLIC ROMAN CHURCH, IN WHICH ST PETER TEACHES IN HIS SUCCESSORS"
The pope had the comfort to see a happy reconciliation made, by his endeavours, between the Orientals and St Cyril: in which he much commended the humility and pacific dispositions of the latter. He says, “that he was charged with the care and solicitude of all the churches in the world, and that it is unlawful for anyone to abandon the faith of the Apostolic Roman Church, in which St Peter teaches in his successors what he received from Christ.”
A MEEK SERVANT OF CHRIST
When Bassus, a nobleman of Rome, had been condemned by the emperor, and excommunicated by a synod of bishops for raising a grievous slander against the good pope, the meek servant of Christ visited and assisted him in person, administered him the viaticum in his last sickness, and buried him with his own hands.
HIS DEATH
Julian of Eclanum or Eeulanum, the famous Pelagian, earnestly desiring to recover his see, made great efforts to be admitted to the communion of the Church, pretending that he had become a convert, and used several artifices to convince our saint that he really was so: but he was too well acquainted with them to be imposed on. This holy pope died soon after, on March 28, 440, having sat in the see near eight years.
Source: Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints
PRAYER:
Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Saint Sixtus may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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