ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY
Saints celebrated on the 25th of February
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.
SAINT VICTORINUS, AND SIX COMPANIONS, MARTYRS
(A.D. 284.) These seven martyrs were citizens of Corinth, and confessed their faith before Tertius the proconsul, in their own country, in 249, in the beginning of the reign of Decius.
THEY PASSED INTO EGYPT
After their torments they passed into Egypt, whether by compulsion or by voluntary banishment is not known, and there finished their martyrdom at Diospolis, capital of Thebais, in the reign of Numerian, in 284, under the governor Sabinus.
TORTURED FOR BEING CHRISTIANS
After the governor had tried the constancy of martyrs by racks, scourges, and various inventions of cruelty, he caused Victorinus to be thrown into a great mortar (the Greek Menology says, of marble.) The executioners began by pounding his feet and legs, saying to him at every stroke: “Spare yourself, wretch. It depends upon you to escape this death, if you will only renounce your new God.” The prefect grew furious at his constancy, and at length commanded his head to be beaten to pieces.
THEY WERE NOT INTIMIDATED
The sight of this mortar, so far from casting a damp on his companions, seemed to inspire them with the greater ardour to be treated in the like manner. So that when the tyrant threatened Victor with the same death, he only desired him to hasten the execution; and, pointing to the mortar, said: “In that is salvation and true felicity prepared for me!” He was immediately cast into it and beaten to death.
HE LEAPED INTO THE MORTAR
Nicephorus, the third martyr, was impatient of delay, and leaped of his own accord into the bloody mortar.
The judge enraged at his boldness, commanded not one, but many executioners at once, to pound him in the same manner.
THE JUDGE WAS ENRAGED AT THEIR BOLDNESS
He caused Claudian, the fourth, to be chopped in pieces, and his bleeding joints to be thrown at the feet of those who were yet living. He expired, after his feet, hands, arms, legs, and thighs were cut off. The tyrant, pointing to his mangled limbs and scattered bones, said to the other three: “It concerns you to avoid this punishment; I do not compel you to suffer.”
"WE ARE DETERMINED NEVER... TO DENY JESUS CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR"
The martyrs answered with one voice: “On the contrary, we rather pray that if you have any other more exquisite torment you would inflict it on us. We are determined never to violate the fidelity which we owe to God, or to deny Jesus Christ our Saviour, for he is our God, from whom we have our being, and to whom alone we aspire.”
The tyrant became almost distracted with fury, and commanded Diodorus to be burnt alive, Serapion to be beheaded, and Papias to be drowned.
THEIR FEAST DAY
This happened on February 25, on which day the Roman and other Western Martyrologies name them; but the Greek Menaeaa, and the Menology of the Emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus honour them on January 21, the day of their confession at Corinth.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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