Saints celebrated on the 28th of June
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 PONTAMIANA AND BASILIDES, MARTYRS
Potamiana was by condition a slave, but had the happiness to be educated in the faith by a pious mother, whose name was Marcella, and seeking the ablest master of piety, applied herself to Origen. She was young, and of amazing beauty, and her heathen master conceived a brutish desire to abuse her; but finding her resolution and virtue invincible, and all his artifices, threats, and promises in vain, he delivered her to the prefect Aquila, entreating him not to hurt her if she could be prevailed upon to consent to his passion, and on that condition promising him a considerable sum of money.
HER TORMENTS
The prefect not being able to persuade her, made her undergo several torments, and at length caused a caldron of boiling pitch to be prepared, and then said to her: “Go, obey your master, or you shall be thrown into this caldron.”
She answered, “I conjure you by the life of the emperor whom you respect, that you do not let me appear uncovered; command me rather to be let down by degrees into the caldron with my clothes on, that you may see the patience with which Jesus Christ, of whom you are ignorant, endues those who trust in him.”
The prefect granted this request, and delivered her to Basilides, one of her guards, to carry her to execution. Basilides treated her with mildness and civility, and kept off the people, who pressed on to insult her modesty, with lewd and opprobrious speeches, all the way she went. The martyr, by way of requital, bade him be of good courage; and promised, that “after her death she would obtain of God his salvation,” as Eusebius expresses it.
When she had spoken thus, the executioners put her feet into the boiling pitch, and dipped her in by degrees to the very top of her head; and thus she finished her martyrdom. Her mother, Marcella, was burnt at the same time.
MANY WERE CALLED TO THE FAITH
Tertullian and Origen testify that many were then called to the faith by visions and apparitions. By such a favour was the conversion of the soldier Basilides wrought through the prayers of St Potamiana, who whilst alive had promised he should feel the effects of her gratitude when she should be gone to Christ. A little after her martyrdom, the soldiers who were his comrades, being about to make him swear by their false gods, he declared that he was a Christian, and could by no means do it.
They at first thought he jested; but finding him to persist in his resolution, they carried him to the prefect, who caused him to be put in prison. The Christians who came to visit him there, asked him the cause of his sudden change. He answered them, that Potamiana had appeared to him on the night after the third day from her martyrdom, and had placed a crown on his head, saying, that she had besought the Lord to give him the grace of salvation, and had obtained her request; and that he should shortly be called by Him to glory. After this, having received from the brethren the seal of the Lord (that is, baptism), he made the next day, a second time, a glorious confession of the faith before the tribunal of the prefect, and sentence of death being passed upon him, his head was cut off with an axe. St Potamiana appeared to several others in dreams, and they were converted to the faith.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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