Skip to main content

ST POLYEUCTUS, MARTYR - 7 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 7th 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 POLYEUCTUS, MARTYR 

The city of Melitine, a station of the Roman troops in the Lesser Armenia, is illustrious for a great number of martyrs, whereof the first in rank is Polyeuctus. 

HIS FRIEND NEARCHUS

He was a rich Roman officer, and had a friend called Nearchus, a zealous Christian, who when the news of the persecution, raised by the emperor against the church, reached Armenia, prepared himself to lay down his life for his faith; and grieving to leave Polyeuctus in the darkness of Paganism, was so successful in his endeavours to induce him to embrace Christianity, as not only to gain him over to the faith, but to inspire him with an eager desire of laying down his life for the same. 

HE OPENLY DECLARED HIMSELF A CHRISTIAN

He openly declared himself a Christian, and was apprehended and condemned to cruel tortures. The executioners being weary with tormenting him, betook themselves to the method of argument and persuasion in order to prevail with him to renounce Christ. The tears and cries of his wife Paulina, of his children, and of his father-in-law, Felix, were sufficient to have shaken a mind not superior to all the assaults of hell. But Polyeuctus, strengthened by God, grew only the firmer in his faith, and received the sentence of death with such cheerfulness and joy, and exhorted all to renounce their idols with so much energy on the road to execution, that many were converted. 

HE WAS BEHEADED

He was beheaded on January 10, in the persecution of Decius, or Valerian, about the year 250, or 257. The Christians buried his body in the city. Nearchus gathered his blood in a cloth, and afterwards wrote his acts. The Greeks keep his festival very solemnly: and all the Latin martyrologies mention him. 

THE CHURCHES DEDICATED TO HIM

There was in Melitine a famous Church of St Polyeuctus, in the fourth age, in which St Euthymius often prayed. There was also a very stately one in Constantinople, under Justinian, the vault of which was covered with plates of gold, in which it was the custom for men to make their most solemn oaths, as is related by St Gregory of Tours. 

HE IS THE PATRON SAINT OF TREATIES AND AGREEMENTS

The same author informs us, in his history of the Franks, that the kings of France of the first race used to confirm their treaties by the name of Polyeuctus. The martyrology ascribed to saint Jerome, and the most ancient Armenian calendars, place his feast on  January 7, which seems to have been the day of his martyrdom. The Greeks defer his festival to January 9; it is marked on February 13 in the ancient martyrology, which was sent from Rome to Aquileia in the eight century, and which is copied by Ado, Usuard, and the Roman Martyrology. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

WELCOME

  Please pick your saints: January - Saints by date  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17   18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25    26    27    28    29    30    31   February - Saints by date  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17 18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25    26    27    28    29   March - Saints by date: 1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17   18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25    26    27    28    29    30    31   April - Saints by date: 1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17   18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25    26    27    28    29    30   May - Saints by date: 1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15    16    17   18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25    26    27    28    29    30   

ST JOHN BERCHMANS, RELIGIOUS - 13 AUGUST

  ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST Saints celebrated on the 13th of August WELCOME! SAINT JOHN BERCHMANS, RELIGIOUS   (Patron Saint of Altar Servers.) The eldest boy of a poor cordwainer, in a small Belgian town, John was ever a dutiful, prayerful, and studious child. Our Lord called him when but young to leave his father and his father’s house, to serve Him in the Society of Jesus.  And because he was so good a son, it cost his father much to give him up to God; but he was too good a Christian to refuse outright.  HE WAS SENT TO ROME John had hardly taken his religious vows when he was sent to the centre of Christendom, the holy city of Rome. His modesty, his purity, shone out as great virtue always does; and the young laymen who attended the lectures would come to gaze upon his beautiful and holy face, and go away the better for the sight. GREAT VIRTUE Three short years, and his last sickness found him sighing for heaven, and three days before the great feast of Mary’s Assumption in 1

ST LAURA OF CORDOBA, WIDOW AND MARTYR - 19 OCTOBER

  WELCOME! SAINT LAURA OF CORDOBA, WIDOW AND MARTYR   Laura, a widow and martyr of Cordoba in Spain, is mentioned in the Spanish martyrology of Tamajode Salazar, who refers to Luitprand, where it says the following: St Laura is said to have been of a noble family, and  according to the wishes of her parents she married an equally noble man and gave birth to two daughters.  After the death of her husband and her daughters, she went to the monastery of St Aurea, named St-Maria de Cuteclara, and after her martyrdom led the same for nine years as her successor.  After she had made wonderful progress in all virtues, she was finally summoned to renounce the faith before a Saracen judge. But since she remained steadfast, she was first beaten very cruelly and then thrown into a bath of boiling pitch, where she remained in praise of God for three hours and then flew to heaven on October 19, 864.   St Laura is of the 48 Martyrs of Cordoba. PRAYER: Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that we who