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SS GORGONIUS, DOROTHEUS, AND COMPANIONS, MARTYRS - 9 SEPTEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 9th 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 GORGONIUS, DOROTHEUS, AND COMPANIONS, MARTYRS 

Saint Dorotheus was first chamberlain to the Emperor Diocletian; Gorgonius and Peter were under chamberlains. They were the three principal eunuchs of the palace; had sometimes borne the weight of the most difficult affairs of state, and been the support both of the emperor and of his court. 

THEIR MARTYRDOM

When the palace of Nicomedia was set on fire, probably by the contrivance of Galerius, who unjustly charged the Christians with it, Dorotheus, with Gorgonius, and several others under his dependence, were very cruelly tortured, and at length strangled. 

THEIR BODIES WERE CAST INTO THE SEA

The bodies of St Dorotheus and his companions were cast into the sea by an order of Diocletian, lest the Christians should worship them as gods, as Eusebius mentions, which mistake of the heathens could only arise from the veneration which Christians paid to the relics of martyrs. 

VENERATION OF THE RELICS

The martyr Gorgonius, whose name was famous at Rome, seems different from the former. The Liberian Calendar, published by Bucherius, mentions his tomb on the Lavican way, and he was honoured with an office in the sacramentary of Pope Gelasius. Sigebert in his chronicle on the year 764, Rabanus Maurus in his martyrology, and others, relate that Saint Chrodegang obtained from Rome, of Pope Paul, the relics of Saint Gorgonius, and enriched with that treasure his great monastery of Gorze, situated two leagues from Metz. Among the poems of Pope Damasus is an epitaph on St Gorgonius. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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