SAINTS OF THE DAY
TUESDAY, 13 AUGUST, 2024
1) SAINTS PONTIAN AND HIPPOLYTUS
2) SAINT CASSIAN OF IMOLA
3) THE HOLY “SLEEP” OF THE MOTHER OF GOD
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1) SAINTS PONTIAN AND HIPPOLYTUS
POPE AND MARTYR (PONTIAN) AND PRIEST AND MARTYR (HIPPOLYTUS)
(Late Second Century – c. 235)
St. Pontian succeeded St. Urban in the Pontifical See in 230. He is chiefly known for convening a Roman Synod which confirmed a prior condemnation of the Egyptian theologian Origen. Like so many other bishops of his era, Pontian also dealt with divergent positions over how the Church should re-integrate Christians who had abjured their faith during a persecution. Should they be re-baptized, do public penance, or be welcomed back privately? Tensions over this issue perdured for many decades and deeply wounded Church unity. After the assassination of Alexander Severus in 235, Pontian was exiled by the Emperor Maximus to the mines of Sardinia. But he first graciously resigned in 235 so that a successor pope could be elected. For this magnanimous act, he was remembered as “distinguished” in contemporary documents. He bore his suffering and persecution patiently for Christ and attained the crown of martyrdom in that same year.
Exiled together with St. Pontian was a priest named Hippolytus, one of the most important 3rd-century theologians of the Roman Church. Born about 170, he was already a priest and a personage of note when Origen heard him preach at Rome in 202. During the first part of his life he produced the Scriptural writings that constitute the best part of his works (he wrote the earliest commentary on Scripture, that of the Book Daniel), and defended the faith. He wrote on Scripture, dogma, law, apologetics, Christ, and also authored a comprehensive polemical work entitled A Refutation of All Heresies. About 215m he wrote the Apostolical Tradition (for which he is probably best known), which preserves some of the most ancient liturgical texts of the primitive church. The original of the Apostolic Tradition does not exist, and later translated fragments are of dubious provenance, making the work a fluid, composite text of different eras. Nevertheless, the core document is a one-of-a-kind artifact, allowing a modern Christian to peek through the keyhole into the liturgy of the early, praying Church. Hippolytus doesn't just describe the words and actions of the liturgy, as the earlier Didache and Saint Justin Martyr did. Instead, he writes down the actual prayers. The Apostolic Tradition contains the earliest known rite of ordination. The ordination rite of a bishop used today by the Catholic Church still largely adopts this ancient text. Hippolytus provides the first example of the Virgin Mary being invoked in liturgical prayer. And Hippolytus' prayers for the Eucharistic banquet include the third century words of consecration! This text is the source for a significant portion of today's Eucharistic Prayer II, perhaps the most commonly used Eucharistic prayer at Mass. When the faithful throughout the world hear the familiar cadence of Eucharistic Prayer II each Sunday, they are hearing the distant echo of priestly voices from the third century.
As he did on so many significant Roman tombs, Pope Damasus (366-384) wrote an inscription on the tomb of Hippolytus more than a century after the saint died. Part of it reads: “Wherever he was able to go, he had spoken of the Catholic faith so that all might follow it. Thus our martyr deserves to be acknowledged.” Indeed. And at the entrance of the forever-closed catacombs of Saint Hippolytus, a personalized graffiti from an ancient pilgrim is carved into the wall, the tender petition invoking today'saint: “Hippolytus, keep Peter the sinner in mind.” Saint Hippolytus, keep all of us in mind.
PATRON : Saint of Montaldo Scarampi, Italy (Pontian) and prison guards (Hippolytus).
PRAYER: Saints Pontian and Hippolytus, you lived at a time of exiles, persecution and martyrdom, a most crucial period in the history of the Church. Yet, you proclaimed and gave public witness to your faith, leading to exile and death. Your leadership of the Church led to your tragic ends. You were isolated, suffering for lack of essentials and died as a result. May we realize the extent of the hardships you endured for Christ's sake, thus helping us gain courage when under duress, in Jesus' Name. Amen.
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2) SAINT CASSIAN OF IMOLA
MARTYR
(4th Century)
St. Cassian was a schoolmaster at Imola in northeast Italy. He died a martyr during the Roman persecutions under Diocletian, probably in the third century.
Cassian had apparently been a schoolteacher for some time. Then a widespread persecution of Christians commenced. Roman officials arrested him because he was known, or at least suspected, to be a Christian. He was taken before the governor, and the governor demanded, as usual, that he offer sacrifice to the gods. Naturally, Cassian refused to perform this act of apostasy, so he was condemned to death.
Now, the Romans had many set types of execution to choose from, but sometimes they invented others. Knowing that Cassian was a schoolmaster, the governor decided that it would be a clever novelty to have him stabbed to death by his own pupils!
The schoolmaster was therefore stretched out on the ground and fixed down securely. Then Cassian's former students were brought in. They had not particularly liked their teacher because he had been strict with them. Given the signal, therefore, they set about with a fiendish joy to torment him. They broke their wooden writing tablets over his head, carved their initials carefully on his flesh, and finally stabbed him all over with their pens. Cassian meanwhile accepted their blows with much patience and no malice. He died bloodied with a thousand little wounds.
— Excerpted from Father Robert F. McNamara, Saints Alive
PATRON: Imola, Mexico City, schoolteachers, shorthand-writers, parish clerks.
St. Cassian of Imola: pray for us!
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3) THE HOLY “SLEEP” OF THE MOTHER OF GOD
Anticipating the feast of the Assumption of the Mother of God on the fifteenth of August, today, the thirteenth we celebrate her death or “dormition.” Dormition is a Latin word that means “sleep.”
Several places in holy scripture death is referred to as “a sleep”. Jesus Himself spoke of the death of His friend Lazarus as a sleep. “Lazarus our friend sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11). When He went to the home of Jairus, a ruler of a synagogue, to cure his daughter, who had died before he arrived, Our Lord told the mourners to “Weep not; the maid is not dead, but sleepeth” (Luke 8:52). Saint Paul, likewise, in his First Letter to the Thessalonians wrote of those “who sleep in death” and have “fallen asleep” who await the resurrection of the dead (4:13ff).
Interesting, too, is that our word “cemetery” is originally from the Greek word koimeterion, which means a “sleeping place.”
So, the question arises: Was Our Lady “sleeping” the moment before she was resurrected and assumed body and soul into heaven? Or, had she actually died?
Remember, Our Blessed Mother had no original sin, therefore, she was exempt from the penalty of death due to that sin. This, however, does not mean that her body was immortal by nature, but it would have been by privilege. A fortiori, Jesus had no sin, nevertheless, to redeem us and save us, He suffered and died. Such was the will of the Father. Mary, on the other hand, is not God, nor our Savior. She is, however, our co-redemptrix, and, as such, she chose to experience death herself, both to be one with us, as our Mother, and to imitate — or shall I say, participate in — the death and burial of her Son. “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35). Mary, too, in union with her Son, would spend, just as did Jesus, forty hours in the tomb, from which place (in the Garden of Gethsemani near the tomb of Saint Joseph her spouse) her soul went forth for three days to comfort the souls in purgatory.
Mary's Heart was one with Jesus' Heart. She willed to be like Him in all things, even in death, although her death was from an overabundance of love, not from any sickness or bodily affliction. Jesus surrendered to death because it was His will to do so in obedience to His Father. “No man taketh it away from me,” Jesus said to the Pharisees, “but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10:18).
There is nothing contrary to the Faith to hold the minority opinion that the Blessed Virgin did not die, but was merely asleep before her Assumption. And I will refrain from providing all the testimony from tradition and the fathers and doctors, affirming that the Mother of God did die. Suffice it to say that this far more common belief was held from the early centuries; Saints John Chrysostom and Ephrem in the East believed she died and most of the Latin doctors also did right up and including Saint Alphonsus. However, we must distinguish in the early western Church between the more common belief concerning Our Lady's true death and the less common belief concerning her Assumption. Saints Ambrose, Epiphanius, and Isidore of Seville, for example, offered their opinions as to the location of Our Lady's tomb, but they are surprisingly silent concerning her bodily Assumption.
In defining the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul, Pope Pius XII phrased the dogma succinctly: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Munificentissimus Deus on Nov. 1, 1950). With these words he avoided any censoring of those fathers who piously assumed that the Savior would have exempted the spotless soul of His Mother from ever exiting her most pure body.
Before I close, I would like to add a word about Saint Thomas the Apostle. There has always been a tradition in the universal Church that the Apostles and Saint Paul were summoned, by Saint John no doubt, to come home from their labors, and be present in Jerusalem for the “dormition” of their Mother. It has even been held that some of them were miraculously transported. Be that as it may, one of the Apostles was not miraculously transported, arriving late, after the Holy Virgin had been placed in her tomb. This tradition, which is found in a collection from pious apocryphal sources called Transitus Mariae (The Passage of Mary), attributed to Bishop St. Melito of Sardis (circa 180), enjoyed popularity by the fifth century. In fact, Saint John Damascene (d. 749) recorded this story: “St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, at the Council of Chalcedon (451), made known to the Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria [Saint Pulcheria], who wished to possess the body of the Mother of God, that Mary died in the presence of all the Apostles, but that her tomb, when opened, upon the request of Saint Thomas, was found empty; wherefrom (sic) the Apostles concluded that the body was taken up to heaven.” (Father William Saunders, Dormition of Mary, Catholic Education Resource Center)
The year of Our Lady's Dormition was 58. She was seventy-two years old. At that time all of the Apostles were engaged in bringing the gospel to the nations. Saint James the Greater had been martyred sixteen years before by Herod Antipas. My opinion, concerning Saint Thomas, is this: He who, to his great sadness, did not accept the testimony of his fellow Apostles concerning the Resurrection of Christ, was chosen to be the first one to “see” the empty tomb of the Mother of God and, thereby, to be the first evangelist of her resurrection and Assumption. It was on account of Saint Thomas' request to see his Mother Mary's body that the Apostles went to the tomb and removed the stone cover. The fact that he did not arrive in Jerusalem until the third day after Mary's death also supports the tradition that “the Doubter” was far far away on the east coast of India preaching the Faith there in the year 58. His journey back to Jerusalem, with whatever notice he was sent of the Virgin Mother's approaching death, would be more difficult than the other Apostles because of the remoteness of his field of labor. Hence, in the providence of God, he was meant to arrive late, so that the Church would know that the body of the Mother of God, just as that of Christ her Son, was not to see corruption.
Finally, in regard to Our Lady's bodily Assumption, if, after Our Lord's Resurrection, “the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many” (Matt. 27:53, my emphasis), it would be inconceivable that she who bore the Holy One who saw no corruption should herself see corruption: “Thou shalt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption” (Acts 13:35).
The Eastern Church celebrates the Dormition of Mary together with the feast of the Assumption on August 15th. The Western Church does not have a Mass in her liturgy today (August 13) specifically for the “Dormition,” but, in honoring Mary's actual death on her calendar, she awaits the major feast on the fifteenth by anticipation.
https://catholicism.org/the-holy-sleep-of-the-mother-of-god-august-thirteen.html