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 January 20th
taken from the entry for the day
from the Roman Martyrology

At Rome, the holy Pope St. Fabian, who suffered in the time of the Emperor Decius, and was buried in the cemetery of Callistus.

There also, at the Catacombs, the holy martyr St. Sebastian, commander of the first cohort under the Emperor Diocletian. Being convicted of Christianity, he was tied up in the midst of a field and shot at by the soldiers, but in the end he was beaten to death with cudgels.

At Nice, in Bithynia, in the fourth century, the holy martyr St. Neophitus, who in the fifteenth year of his age was flogged, cast into a furnace, and thrown to wild beasts, and for as much as he remained unhurt and constantly professed the Faith of Christ, he was at length beheaded.

At Caesena, in the tenth century, St. Maurus, Bishop of that see, famous for graces and miracles.

In Palestine, in the year 473, St. Euthymius, surnamed “the Great”, who was an abbot of a monastery near Jerusalem, and who flourished in the Church in the time of the Emperor Marcian, filled with zeal for catholic discipline, and marked by the power of working miracles.

JANUARY 20TH
The Martyr of the Day

ST. FABIAN

Martyred in the Third Century, around the year 250

Pope St. Fabian succeeded St. Anterus in the pontificate, in the year 236. Eusebius relates, that in an assembly of the people and clergy, held for the election of a pastor in his room, a dove, unexpectedly appearing, settled, to the great surprise of all present, on the head of St. Fabian; and that this miraculous sign united the votes of the clergy and people in promoting him, though not thought of before, as being a layman and a stranger. He governed the church sixteen years, sent St. Dionysius and other preachers into Gaul, and condemned Privatus, a broacher of a new heresy in Africa, as appears from St. Cyprian. St. Fabian died a glorious martyr in the persecution of Decius, in 250, as St. Cyprian and St. Jerome witness. The former, writing to his successor, St. Cornelius, calls him an incomparable man; and says, that the glory of his death had answered the purity and holiness of his life.

The saints made sure that God and the accomplishment of his holy will, was the great object of all their petitions in their prayers, and their only aim in all their actions. “God,” says Saint Augustine, “in his promises to hear our prayers is desirous to bestow himself upon us; if you find anything better than him, ask it, but if you ask any thing beneath him, you put an affront upon him, and hurt yourself by preferring to him a creature which he framed; pray in the spirit and sentiment of love, in which the royal prophet said to him: ‘Thou, O Lord, art my portion.’ Let others choose to themselves portions among creatures, for my part, Thou art my portion, Thee alone I have chosen for my whole inheritance.”