Your Daily Martyr

YOUR DAILY MARTYR
Living With The Daily Martyrology of the Church

“Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? … My chalice indeed you shall drink!” (Matthew 20:22-23).

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

"The Roman Martyrology is an official and accredited record, on the pages of which are set forth in simple and brief, but impressive words, the glorious deeds of the Soldiers of Christ in all ages of the Church ; of the illustrious Heroes and Heroines of the Cross, whom her solemn verdict has beatified or canonized" (Taken from the "Introduction" from The Roman Martyrology).

The Roman Martyrology is, like the Roman Missal and the Roman Breviary, an official liturgical book of the Catholic Church. It provides an extensive but not exhaustive list of the saints recognized by the Church. The Roman Martyrology was first published in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII, who in the year before had decreed the revision of the calendar that is called, after him, the Gregorian Calendar. A second edition was published in the same year. The third edition was made obligatory wherever the Roman Rite was in use.

In 1630 Pope Urban VIII ordered a new edition. 1748 saw the appearance of a revised edition by Pope Benedict XIV, who personally worked on the corrections: he suppressed some names, such as those of Clement of Alexandria and Sulpicius Severus, but kept others that had been objected to, such as that of Pope Siricius. Since then, the Martyrology has remained essentially unchanged, save for the addition of new saints canonized during the intervening years.

THE HONOR ROLL OF MARTYRS
for March 16th
taken from the entry for the day
from the Roman Martyrology

At Rome, the holy deacon St. Cyriacus. After long suffering in prison, he was covered with pitch, stretched upon a block, racked, and cudgeled, and at last beheaded along with St. Largus, St. Smaragdus and twenty others, by command of the Emperor Maximian.

Their feast is kept upon the 8th day of August, upon which day Pope St. Marcellus exhumed their bodies and buried them again with honor.

At Aquileia, the blessed martyrs St. Hilary, bishop of that see, and the deacon St. Tatian, who, after suffering the rack and other torments, were martyred, along with St. Felix, St. Largus, and St. Denis, under the governor Beronius, in the persecution under the Emperor Numerian.

In Lycaonia, in the fourth century, the holy martyr St. Papas, who for Christ’s Faith’s sake was beaten, torn with iron hooks, and made to walk in shoes with nails through them, and then tied up to a barren tree, which became fruitful when he passed away to be with the Lord.

At Anazarba, in Cilicia, during the persecution under Diocletian, the holy martyr St. Julian, who suffered a long course of torture under the governor Martian, and was at length put into a sack along with serpents and drowned in the sea.

At Ravenna, in the year 341, the holy confessor St. Agapitus, bishop of that see.

At Cologne, in the year 1021, St. Heribert, bishop of that see, famous for his holiness.

In Auvergne, holy bishop St. Patrick.

March 16th
The Martyr of the Day

ST. JULIAN OF CILICIA (ANTIOCH)

Martyred in the Fourth Century, around the year 305

St. Julian was a Cilician, also known as variously distinguished as Julian the Martyr, Julian of Antioch, Julian of Tarsus, Julian of Cilicia, and Julian of Anazarbus. He was of a senatorian family in Anazarbus, and a minister of the Gospel. In the persecution of Diocletian he fell into the hands of a judge, who, by his brutal behavior, resembled more a wild beast than a man. The president, seeing his constancy proof against the sharpest torments, hoped to overcome him by the long continuance of his martyrdom.

He caused him to be brought before his tribunal every day; sometimes he caressed him; at other times threatened him with a thousand tortures. For a whole year together he caused him to be dragged as a malefactor through all the towns of Cilicia, imagining that this shame and confusion might vanquish him: but it served only to increase the martyr’s glory, and gave him an opportunity of encouraging in the Faith all the Christians of Cilicia by his example and exhortations.

He suffered every kind of torture. The bloody executioners had torn his flesh, furrowed his sides, laid his bones bare, and exposed his very bowels to view. Scourges, fire, and the sword, were employed various ways to torment him with the utmost cruelty. The judge saw that to torment him longer was laboring to shake a rock, and was forced at length to own himself conquered by condemning him to death: in which, however, he studied to surpass his former cruelty.

He was then at Ægea, a town on the sea-coast; and he caused the martyr to be sewed up in a sack with scorpions, serpents, and vipers, and so thrown into the sea. This was the Roman punishment for parricides, the worst of malefactors, yet seldom executed on them. Eusebius mentions, that St. Ulpian of Tyre suffered a like martyrdom, being thrown into the sea in a leather sack, together with a dog and an aspic snake. The sea gave back the body of our holy martyr, which the faithful conveyed to Alexandria of Cilicia, and afterwards to Antioch, where Saint Chrysostom pronounced his panegyric before his shrine. He eloquently sets forth how much these sacred relics were honored; and affirms, that no devil could stand their presence, and that men by them found a remedy for their bodily distempers, and the cure of the evils of the soul.

The martyrs lost with joy their worldly honors, dignity, estates, friends, liberty, and lives, rather than forfeit for one moment their fidelity to God. They courageously bade defiance to pleasures and torments, to prosperity and adversity, to life and death, saying, with the Apostle St. Paul: “Who shall separate us from the love of Jesus Christ?” Crowns, scepters, worldly riches, and pleasures, you have no charms which shall ever tempt me to depart in the least tittle from the allegiance which I owe to God. Alarming fears of the most dreadful evils, prisons, racks, fire, and death, in every shape of cruelty, you shall never shake my constancy. Nothing shall ever separate me from the love of Christ. This must be the sincere disposition of every Christian. Lying protestations of fidelity to God cost us nothing: but he sounds the heart. Is our constancy such as to bear evidence to our sincerity, that rather than to fail in the least duty to God we are ready to resist to blood? And that we are always upon our guard to keep our ears shut to the voices of those sirens who never cease to lay snares to our senses?