Saint Servulus
Servolo the Paralysed
December 23
Saint Servulus exemplifies our Lord’s teaching regarding Lazarus, the poor man full of sores, who lay before the gate of the rich man’s house. Servulus was a beggar, and had been afflicted with the palsy from infancy. He was never able to stand or sit upright, lift his hand to his mouth, or turn himself from one side to the other.
His mother and brother carried him into the porch of St. Clement’s Church, at Rome, where he lived on the alms of those that passed by. Whatever he could spare from his own subsistence he distributed among needy.
The sufferings and humiliations of his condition were a means of which he made the most excellent use for the sanctification of his own soul, by the constant exercise of humility, patience, meekness, resignation and penance.
He used to entreat devout persons to read the holy scriptures, and heard them with such attention as to learn them by heart. His time he consecrated by assiduously singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God, and his continual pains were so far from dejecting or distracting him, that they proved a most pressing motive for raising his mind to God with greater ardour.
After spending several years in this condition, distemper seized his vitals and realized that his end was near. In his last moments he desired the poor and pilgrims, who had often shared in his charity, to sing sacred hymns and psalms by him. While he joined his voice with theirs, he all of a sudden cried out, “Silence! do you not hear the sweet melody and praises which resound in the heavens?” Soon after he spoke those words he expired, and his soul was carried by the angels into everlasting bliss about the year 599.
The body of Saint Servulus was buried in St. Clement’s Church and honored with miracles, according t the Roman Martyrology.
Saint Gregory the Great, concludes the account he gives of him in a sermon to his people, by observing that the whole behavior of this poor sick beggar loudly condemns those who, when blessed with good health and a plentiful fortune, neither do good works, nor suffer the least cross with tolerable patience.
December 23 2008 | The Other Saints | No Comments »
Saint Barbara
virgin and martyr
December 4
This virgin and martyr is honored with particular devotion in the Latin, Greek, Muscovite, and Syriac calendars. St. Barbara’s history by some accounts is quite obscure.
Baronius tells us that Barbara was a scholar of Origen, and suffered martyrdom at Nicomedia, in the reign of Maximinus the First, who raised the sixth general persecution after the murder of Alexander Severus, in 235.
But by all accounts, Joseph Assemani provides the most exact and sincere accounts of Saint Barbara’s life in Metaphrates and Mombritius. These we are informed that Saint Barbara suffered at Heliopolis, in Egypt, in the reign of Galerius, about the year 306. This account agrees with the Emperor Basil’s Menology, and the Greek Synaxary.
Her name was given to an old monastery near Edesau, a city of Mesopotamia, famous as the residence of Aborgarus, a monarch to whom our Savior is reported to have written a letter, of which, numerous copies still exist.
This account of her life comes from Butler’s Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Saints. Below is a different story of her life, which is more legend than fact:
A beautiful maiden imprisoned in a high tower by her father Dioscorus for disobedience. While there, she was tutored by philosophers, orators and poets. From them she learned to think, and decided that polytheism was nonsense. With the help of Origen and Valentinian, she converted to Christianity.
Her father denounced her to the local authorities for her faith, and they ordered him to kill her. She escaped, but he caught her, dragged her home by her hair, tortured her, and killed her. He was immediately struck by lightning, or according to some sources, fire from heaven.
Her imprisonment led to her association with towers, then the construction and maintenance of them, then to their military uses. The lightning that avenged her murder led to asking her protection against fire and lightning, and her patronage of firefighters, etc. Her association with things military and with death that falls from the sky led to her patronage of all things related to artillery, and her image graced powder magazines and arsenals for years. One of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
While there were undoubtedly beautiful converts named Barbara, this saint is legend, and her cultus developed when pious fiction was mistaken for history.
December 04 2008 | The Other Saints | No Comments »