ST POTAMON OF HERACLEA, BISHOP AND MARTYR - 18 MAY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MAY

Saints celebrated on the 18th of May

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 POTAMON OF HERACLEA, BISHOP AND MARTYR 

Saint Potamon was bishop of Heraclea in Egypt. St Athanasius says he was doubly a martyr, under the heathens and under the Arians. 

A DOUBLE MARTYR

When Maximinus Daia, or Daza, persecuted the Christians in 310, he gloriously confessed the faith, for which one of his eyes was bored out, and probably the sinews of one ham were cut, as in the case of St Paphnutius and others. 

THE COUNCIL OF NICE

The marks of his sufferings rendered him conspicuous in the council of Nice in 325, in which he exerted his zeal against the Arians. He accompanied and defended St Athanasius in the council of Tyre in 335, as was related in the life of that saint on May 2. 

HE WAS LEFT FOR DEAD

When the tyrant Gregory had usurped the patriarchal chair of St Athanasius, he, with Philagrius, prefect of Egypt, an apostate to Arianism under Constantius, travelled over all Egypt, tormenting and banishing the Catholics; and St Potamon, for his distinguished zeal, was by their order beaten on his back with clubs so long as to be left for dead. However, by the help of medicines, he came to himself, but died shortly after a martyr for the divinity of the Son of God in 341, as St Athanasius relates.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Potamon, your blessed bishop and martyr, may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.