ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 8th of September
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. EUSEBIUS, NESTABLUS, ZENO, AND NESTOR, MARTYRS
In the reign of Julian the Apostate, Eusebius, Nestablus, and Zeno, three zealous Christian brothers at Gaza, were seized by the pagans in their houses, where they had concealed themselves: they were carried to prison, and inhumanly scourged.
THEY WERE INHUMANELY SCOURGED FOR BEING CHRISTIANS
Afterwards the idolaters, who were assembled in the amphitheatre at the public shows, began loudly to demand the punishment of the sacrilegious criminals, as they called the confessors.
THE ASSEMBLY SOON BECAME A TUMULT
By these cries the assembly soon became a tumult; and the people worked themselves into such a ferment that they ran in a fury to the prison, which they forced, and hauling out the three brothers, began to drag them, sometimes on their bellies, sometimes on their backs, bruising them against the pavement, and striking them with clubs, stones, or any thing that came in their way. The very women, quitting their work, ran the points of their spindles into them, and the cooks took the kettles from off the fire, poured the scalding water upon them, and pierced them with their spits.
THEY WERE DRAGGED OUT OF THE CITY
After the martyrs were thus mangled, and their skulls so broken that the ground was smeared with their brains, they were dragged out of the city to the place where the dead beasts were thrown. Here the people lighted a fire, burned the bodies, and mingled the bones that remained with those of camels and asses, that it might not be easy for the Christians to distinguish them.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE MARTYRS BEFORE GOD
This cruelty only enhanced the triumph of the martyrs before God, who watches over the precious remains of his elect, to raise them again to glory.
HE DIED OF HIS WOUNDS
With these three brothers there was taken a young man, named Nestor, who suffered imprisonment and scourging as they had done; but as the furious rioters were dragging him through the street, some persons took compassion on him on account of his great beauty and comeliness, and drew him out of the gate. He died of his wounds, within three days, in the house of Zeno, a cousin of the three martyrs, who himself was obliged to fly, and, being taken, was publicly whipped.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 📷 The ruins of the amphitheatre)
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