St Mark, Pope & Confessor & SS Ergius, Bacchus, Marcellus, & Apuleius, Martyrs

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

Mark, successor to Sylvester the Pontiff of peace, has been honored on this day from time immemorial. According to the testimony of St. Damasus, his virtues no less than his name recalled St. Mark the Evangelist. (De Rossi. Inscript. Christ. ii. 108) He occupied the Supreme See only eight months; but in that short time, he followed up the recent triumph of the Church by wise organizations. He built two new sanctuaries in Rome. He gave the Pallium, of which this is the first mention in history, to the Bishop of Ostia, to enhance his high privilege of being the appointed consecrator of the Roman Pontiffs.

This Pontificate witnessed the awful death of Arius. Constantine had been deceived into ordering the reinstatement of this wicked man, who taught that the Word Incarnate was a mere creature. The heresiarch, followed by his partisans, was proceeding in triumph through the streets of Constantinople, intending to force open the doors of the Basilica, where the faithful, with their Bishop St. Alexander, were beseeching God with fasting and tears, to avert the profanation. Suddenly, seized with an ignominious trembling, Arius was obliged to retire to a secret place; where his flatterers soon afterwards found him stretched upon the floor with his bowels cast out. He had merited the death of a Judas for having delivered up the Son of God to the disputes of the people, to the mockeries of the proud, to the contradictions of the pretorium.

Among the martyrs annually commemorated on this day, the names of Marcellus and Apuleius carry back the mind to apostolic times. They had been the disciples of Simon Magus, but were convinced of his lying deceit by the miracles of St. Peter, and shed their blood in testimony of their faith in the true God.

St. Sergius is regarded in the east as one of the most glorious witnesses to our Lord. He suffered in the tenth and last persecution, with his companion St. Bacchus, a soldier like himself of the Roman army in Syria. So illustrious became his sepulcher, that a city sprung up around it, which was called Sergiopolis, and became a metropolitan See. The west soon joined the east in honoring these holy martyrs, and a church was dedicated to them in Rome. Saint-Serge at Angers, founded by Clovis II, testifies to the veneration in which they were held by the Franks.

PRAYER

Hear, O Lord, our prayers; and appeased by the intercession of blessed Mark, thy confessor and bishop, grant us pardon and peace. Through our Lord.

PRAYER

May the blessed merits of thy holy martyrs, Sergius, Bacchus, Marcellus, and Apuleius accompany us, O Lord, and make us ever fervent in thy love. Through our Lord.

“Memor ero tui, Justina virgo. I will ever bear thee, in mind, O virgin Justina.” This inscription Venice engraved on the coin of its republic, after the victory of Lepanto. On that day of triumph, the martyr, who had won her palm on October 7 fifteen centuries before, had united the power of her prayers with the strength of St. Mark’s lion; and the dukedom proclaimed Justina its second patron. But Lepanto is not her only claim upon the world’s gratitude. In her native city, the sons of St. Benedict had gathered round the tomb where lay her precious relics. The great movement initiated by the Venetial, Luigi Barbo (1408), began at St. Justina’s monastery in Padua: the Order was rescued from the disastrous consequences of having secular abbots in commendam; and thus Monte Cassino itself was restored to some part of its ancient splendor.

Honor, then, to this day of salvation! And glory to her, through whose intercession the heavens have rained down their dew of consolation upon the earth!

PRAYER

O God, who givest us joy by the annual solemnity of blessed Justina thy virgin and martyr; grant that we may follow the example of her pious life, whom we venerate by this Office. Through our Lord.