ST THYRSUS, ST LEUCIUS, AND ST CALLINICUS, MARTYRS - 28 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 28th 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.

ST THYRSUS, ST LEUCIUS, AND ST CALLINICUS, MARTYRS 

Their Greek and Latin acts agree that, after suffering many torments, they were put to death, on three different days, at Apollonia in Phrygia, in the persecution of Decius. 

THE RELICS

Sozomen tells us that Caesarius, who had been prefect and consul, built at Constantinople a magnificent church under the invocation of St Thyrsus, with a portion of whose relics it was enriched. Another church within the city bore his name, as appears from the Menaea, on December 14. 

In the cathedral of our Lady at Sisteron, in a church at Limoges, St Thyrsus is one of the patrons. Many churches in Spain bear his name. 

PRESENTS TO THE CHURCH OF ST THYRSUS

Silon, king of Oviedo and Asturia, in a letter to Cyxilas, archbishop of Toledo in 777, says, that the queen had sent presents to the church of St Thyrsus, which the archbishop had built, viz. a silver chalice and paten, a basin to wash the hands in, with a pipe* and a diadem on the cover to be used when the blood of our Lord was distributed to the people.   

 NOTE

* Cum suo naso. Du Cange, not understanding, this word, substitutes vaso. But nasus here signifies a silver pipe or quill, to suck up the blood of Christ at the communion, such as the Pope sometimes uses. Such a one is kept at St Denis’s, near Paris. The ancient Ordo Romanus calls that pugillar which is here called nasus, because it sucks up as a nose draws up air. In the reign of Philip II. in 1595, in certain ruins near the cathedral of Toledo, this cover of the chalice was discovered with the diadem.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)