SS. CLETUS AND MARCELLINUS, POPES AND MARTYRS - 26 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 26th of April

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.

SAINTS CLETUS AND MARCELLINUS, POPES AND MARTYRS 

⬅️ Saintly Popes - Index

ST CLETUS

Saint Cletus was the third bishop of Rome, and succeeded St Linus, which circumstance alone shows his eminent virtue among the first disciples of St Peter in the West. He sat twelve years, from 76 to 89. The canon of the Roman Mass, (which Bossuet and all others agree to be of primitive antiquity,) Bede, and other martyrologists, style him a martyr. He was buried near St Linus, on the Vatican, and his relics still remain in that church. 

ST MARCELLINUS

St Marcellinus succeeded St Caius in the bishopric of Rome, in 296, about the time that Diocletian set himself up for a deity, and impiously claimed divine honours. Theodoret says, that in those stormy times of persecution, Marcellinus acquired great glory. He sat in St Peter’s chair eight years, three months, and twenty-five days, dying in 304, a year after the cruel persecution broke out, in which he gained much honour. He has been styled a martyr, though his blood was not shed in the cause of religion, as appears from the Liberian Calendar, which places him among those popes that were not put to death for the faith. 

THE CROSS IS THE ROAD TO ETERNAL BLISS

It is a fundamental maxim of the Christian morality, and a truth which Christ has established in the clearest terms, and in innumerable passages of the gospel,  that the cross, or sufferings and mortification, are the road to eternal bliss. They, therefore, who lead not here a crucified and mortified life, are unworthy ever to possess the unspeakable joys of his kingdom. 

Our Lord himself, our model and our head, walked in this path, and his great apostle puts us in mind that he entered into bliss only by his blood and by the cross. 

Nevertheless, this is a truth which the world can never understand, how clearly soever it be preached by Christ, and recommended by his powerful example, and that of his martyrs and of all the saints. Christians still pretend, by the joys and pleasures of this world, to attain to the bliss of heaven, and shudder at the very mention of mortification, penance, or sufferings. So prevalent is this fatal error, which self-love and the example and false maxims of the world strongly fortify in the minds of many, that those who have given themselves to God with the greatest fervour, are bound always to stand upon their guard against it, and daily to renew their fervour in the love and practice of penance, and to arm themselves with patience against sufferings, lest the weight of the corruption of our nature, the pleasures of sense, and flattering blandishments of the world, draw them aside, and make them leave the path of mortification, or lose courage under its labours, and under the afflictions with which God is pleased to purify them, and afford them means of sanctifying themselves.   

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

ST CLETUS' ENTRY IN THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

At Rome, the birthday of blessed Cletus, Pope who governed the Church the second after the Apostle Saint Peter, and was crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Domitian.

ST MARCELLINUS' ENTRY IN THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

In the same city, in the time of Maximian, Saint Marcellinus, Pope and martyr, who was beheaded for the faith of Christ, with Claudius, Cyrinus, and Antoninus. So great was the persecution at this time that within a month seventeen thousand Christians were crowned with martyrdom.