Dom Prosper Guéranger's Prayer to Ss Gervase and Protase for France

From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:

Though short is the account of your combat, O holy Martyrs, because few are the details handed down to us concerning you, still may we cry out with Saint Ambrose when he first presented you to the populace: “That eloquence is best that springs from blood; for blood is a voice of thunder, re-echoing from earth to heaven.” (Epist. xxii.) Oh! make us to understand its potent accents! Ever must the veins of a Christian be ready to pour forth testimony to God, our Redeemer! Say, is there no blood left in our impoverished veins? Oh! cure our generation of such a hopeless state of lingering decline; what physicians may not, Jesus Christ can always do!

Up then, glorious Brethren; teach us the royal road of devotedness and suffering! Surely not in vain have our feeble eyes been granted to contemplate you in these our days even as did Ambrose; if God, after the lapse of so many ages, has once more revealed the sight of you, he must therein have intentions not unlike those he had in by gone times! Therefore, dear Saints, may he perchance vouchsafe to raise up, through your intercession, mankind and our present society from the degradation of a fatal servility; to banish error, to save the Church who cannot indeed perish, but whom he loves to deliver by means of her Saints. Doth it not behoove you, generous Martyrs, to recognize by signal favors, the protection lavished by the successor of Peter on your relics, despite his own captivity? Be Milan worthy of you and of her Ambrose! Deign lovingly to visit the various lands both near and afar, formerly enriched with the blood found near your tomb. France was especially devout to you, placing no fewer than five of her cathedrals under your glorious invocation; may she not look for particular help at your hands? Oh! rouse up once more her piety of by-gone days; free her from false sects, from traitors! Let the day soon come when she may step forth once again the soldier of God!