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Saint Theodoric of Mont d’Hor

Saint Theodoric of Mont d’Hor was born in the district of Rheims. He was a disciple of Saint Remigius who became abbot of Saint-Thierry Abbey.

He became a monk and was made superior of an abbey founded by St. Remigius. After he received holy orders, he became famous for the many extraordinary conversions he did and for converting the sinners to repent. He succeeded as well in converting an infamous house into a nunnery of pious virgins.

King Thierry, son of Clovis, is said to have been cured of ophthalmia by the saint touching his eyes with oil. It is said that King Thierri assisted at his funeral, and esteemed himself honoured in being one of his bearers to the grave. His relics, lest they should be exposed to the impiety of the Normans, were hidden underground, but discovered in 976, and are still preserved in a silver shrine.

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First Martyrs of the Church of Rome

The First Martyrs of the Church of Rome were Christians martyred in the city of Rome during Nero’s persecution in 64 AD. This feast first came into the General Roman Calendar in the 1969 calendar reforms. The intention of the feast is to give a general celebration of early Roman martyrs.

In July of 64 AD, Rome was devastated by fire. Largely made up of wooden tenements, fire was a frequent occurrence in the city. Rumor blamed the tragedy on the unpopular emperor Nero, who wanted to enlarge his palace. He accused the Christians. According to the historian Tacitus, many Christians were put to death “not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.”

This feast is a replacement for the many Roman martyr feasts, whose absence allowed for a less cluttered and more “dies natale” based sanctoral calendar of more major saints. It also permitted the greater celebration of ferias, partially enacting the Second Vatican Council’s call for the Proper of Time to take a greater precedence.

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Saints Peter and Paul

The feast day of Saints Peter and Paul is a liturgical feast in honor of their martyrdom in Rome. It is one of five additional feasts ranked as a great feast in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and is often celebrated with an all-night vigil starting the evening before.

The New Testament clearly shows Peter as the leader of the apostles, chosen by Jesus to have a special relationship with him. With James and John he was privileged to witness the Transfiguration, the raising of a dead child to life, and the agony in Gethsemane. His mother-in-law was cured by Jesus. He was sent with John to prepare for the last Passover before Jesus’ death. His name is first on every list of apostles.

And to Peter only did Jesus say, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17b-19).

But the Gospels prove their own trustworthiness by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus.

Peter is willing to accept Jesus’ doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus’ ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears. The Risen Jesus told Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (John 21:15-17).

Paul’s central conviction was simple and absolute: Only God can save humanity. No human effort—even the most scrupulous observance of law—can create a human good which we can bring to God as reparation for sin and payment for grace. To be saved from itself, from sin, from the devil, and from death, humanity must open itself completely to the saving power of Jesus.

Paul never lost his love for his Jewish family, though he carried on a lifelong debate with them about the uselessness of the Law without Christ. He reminded the Gentiles that they were grafted on the parent stock of the Jews, who were still God’s chosen people, the children of the promise.

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Saint Irenaeus

Saint Irenaeus was a Greek from Polycarp’s hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor, now İzmir, Turkey, born during the first half of the 2nd century. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was brought up in a Christian family rather than converting as an adult.

He was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by combating heterodox or Gnostic interpretations of Scripture as heresy and defining proto-orthodoxy.

During the persecution of Christians by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor from 161 to 180, Irenaeus was a priest of the Church of Lyon. The clergy of that city, many of whom were suffering imprisonment for the faith, sent him in 177 to Rome with a letter to Pope Eleutherius concerning the heresy of Montanism, and that occasion bore emphatic testimony to his merits. While Irenaeus was in Rome, a persecution took place in Lyon. Returning to Gaul, Irenaeus succeeded the martyr Saint Pothinus and became the second bishop of Lyon.

During the religious peace which followed the persecution by Marcus Aurelius, the new bishop divided his activities between the duties of a pastor and of a missionary (as to which we have but brief data, late and not very certain). Almost all his writings were directed against Gnosticism. His best-known work is Against Heresies, often cited as Adversus Haereses, a refutation of gnosticism, in particular that of Valentinus. To counter the doctrines of the gnostic sects claiming secret wisdom, he offered three pillars of orthodoxy: the scriptures, the tradition handed down from the apostles, and the teaching of the apostles’ successors

Nothing is known of the date of his death, which must have occurred at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. He is regarded as a martyr by the Catholic Church and by some within the Orthodox Church. He was buried under the Church of Saint John in Lyon, which was later renamed St Irenaeus in

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Psalm 147:3

Verse:

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” - Psalm 147:3

Prayer For Healing And Wholeness

Dear Lord, I know that You are a God Who heals all manner of sickness and illness through the power of Your Holy Spirit. I ask that by His power, You would send healing and wholeness to all who are afflicted at this time with illnesses and diseases.

Send comfort and strength at this time of difficulty. In Jesus' precious name,

Amen.

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Saint Cyril of Alexandria

Saint Cyril of Alexandria was born circa 376, in the town of Didouseya, Egypt, modern-day El-Mahalla El-Kubra. Little is known for certain about his early life. He received the formal Christian education standard for his day: he studied grammar from age twelve to fourteen (390–392), rhetoric and humanities from fifteen to twenty (393–397) and finally theology and biblical studies (398–402).

Saint Cyril is well known for his dispute with Nestorius and his supporter, Patriarch John of Antioch, whom Cyril excluded from the Council of Ephesus for arriving late. He is also known for his expulsion of Novatians and Jews from Alexandria and for inflaming tensions that led to the murder of the Hellenistic philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob. Historians disagree over the extent of his responsibility in this.

He tried to oblige the pious Christian emperor Theodosius II (AD 408–450) to himself by dedicating his Paschal table to him. Cyril’s Paschal table was provided with a Metonic basic structure in the form of a 19-year lunar cycle adopted by him around AD 425, which was very different from the first Metonic 19-year lunar cycle invented around AD 260 by Anatolius, but exactly equal to the lunar cycle which had been introduced around AD 412 by Annianus; the Julian equivalent of this Alexandrian cycle adopted by Cyril and nowadays referred to as the ‘classical (Alexandrian) 19-year lunar cycle’ would emerge a century later in Rome as the basic structure of Dionysius Exiguus’ Paschal table (AD 525).

Saint Cyril wrote extensively and was a major player in the Christological controversies of the late-4th and 5th centuries. He is counted among the Church Fathers and also as a Doctor of the Church, and his reputation within the Christian world has resulted in his titles Pillar of Faith and Seal of all the Fathers.

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Matthew 9:13

Verse:

“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” - Matthew 9:13

Prayer Declaring The Glory Of God

The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth unites with them in a magnificent chorus of worthy praise, to Your holy name. But there should be no greater proclamation of Your grace and glory, no more worthy declaration of Your wonder and praise, than the worship that falls from the lips of sinners, saved by grace, for You have redeemed us by Your blood and clothed us in You own garments of righteousness. You deserve our ceaseless praise and glory throughout time and into the eternal ages to come.

We praise and thank You for Your great and precious promises. That seedtime and harvest, day and night, summer and winter will never fail, for Your mercy endures forever. You make Your sun to rise on the wicked as well as those that are saved, and You send showers of refreshing rain on the unjust as well as the upright. But Lord, there is no greater testimony of Your loving-kindness and patient-endurance than the opportunity to be redeemed by the blood of Your only begotten Son. A gift of grace that You are extending to the world of fallen man. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might, be unto our God for ever and ever,

Amen.

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Saint Josemaria Escriva

Saint Josemaria Escriva was born on 9 January 1902, in the small town of Barbastro, in Huesca, Spain. When he was young, he saw footprints left in the snow by a monk walking barefoot and he felt that “he had been chosen for something”.

With his father’s blessing, Escrivá prepared to become a priest of the Catholic Church. He studied first in Logroño and then in Zaragoza, where he was ordained as deacon on Saturday, 20 December 1924. He was ordained a priest, also in Zaragoza, on Saturday, 28 March 1925. After a brief appointment to a rural parish in Perdiguera, he went to Madrid, the Spanish capital, in 1927 to study law at the Central University. In Madrid, Escrivá was employed as a private tutor and as a chaplain to the Foundation of Santa Isabel, which comprised the royal Convent of Santa Isabel and a school managed by the Little Sisters of the Assumption.

A prayerful retreat helped him to discern more definitely what he considered to be God’s will for him. In 1928, he founded “Opus Dei” which is a way by which Catholics might learn to sanctify themselves by their secular work. According to the decree of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which contains a condensed biography of Escrivá, “[t]o this mission he gave himself totally. From the beginning his was a very wide-ranging apostolate in social environments of all kinds. He worked especially among the poor and the sick languishing in the slums and hospitals of Madrid.”

In 1948 Escrivá founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Crucis (Roman College of the Holy Cross), Opus Dei’s educational center for men, in Rome. In 1950, Escrivá was appointed an Honorary Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius XII, which allowed him to use the title of Monsignor. In 1955, he received a doctorate of theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. In 1953 he founded the Collegium Romanum Sanctae Mariae (Roman College of Saint Mary) to serve the women’s section (these institutions are now joined into the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.) Escrivá also established the University of Navarre, in Pamplona, and the University of Piura (in Peru), as secular institutions affiliated with Opus Dei.

Saint Josemaria Escriva died of cardiac arrest on 26 June 1975, aged 73.

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