ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY
Saints celebrated on the 14th 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.
SS. BARBASCEMINUS AND COMPANIONS - MARTYRS
(Saint Barbasceminus and Sixteen of His Clergy, Martyrs) He succeeded his brother, St Sadoth, in the metropolitical see of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, in 342, which he held six years.
Being accused as an enemy to the Persian religion, and as one who spoke against the Persian divinities, Fire and Water, he was apprehended, with sixteen of his clergy, by the orders of king Sapor II.
IMPRISONMENT
The king seeing his threats lost upon him, confined him almost a year in a loathsome dungeon, in which he was often tormented by the Magians with scourges, clubs, and tortures, besides the continual annoyance of stench, filth, hunger, and thirst.
After eleven months the prisoners were again brought before the king. Their bodies were disfigured by their torments, and their faces discoloured by a blackish hue which they had contracted.
HE REMAINED STEADFAST
Sapor held out to the bishop a golden cup as a present, in which were a thousand sineas of gold, a coin still in use among the Persians. Besides this, he promised him a government, and other great offices, if he would suffer himself to be initiated in the rites of the sun.
The saint replied that he could not answer the reproaches of Christ at the last day, if he would prefer gold, or a whole empire, to his holy law; and that he was ready to die.
He received his crown by the sword, with his companions, on January 14, in the year 346, and of the reign of king Sapor II the thirty-seventh, at Ledan, in the province of the Huzites.
THE SEE OF SELEUCIA REMAINED VACANT FOR A LONG TIME
St Maruthas, the author of his acts, adds, that Sapor, resolving to extinguish utterly the Christian name in his empire, published a new terrible edict, whereby he commanded every one to be tortured and put to death who should refuse to adore the sun, to worship fire and water, and to feed on the blood of living creatures. The see of Seleucia remained vacant twenty years, and innumerable martyrs watered all the provinces of Persia with their blood.
THE SOURCE
St Maruthas was not able to recover their names, but has left us a copious panegyric on their heroic deeds, accompanied with the warmest sentiments of devotion, and desires to be speedily united with them in glory.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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