english-history-trip:

dingusmcdougall:

scarlett-the-seachild:

think this has to be one of my favourite headlines of anything ever

The best thing about that article is that there gets to be a point where you’re like surely. Surely we can’t get sexier and less-martyr-y than this. And that point is about a 3rd of the way through the piece.

For my own amusement, I have included some even sluttier Sebastians found in the most cursory of Google searches:

“About the relics of St. Gervase and St. Protase, St. Ambrose relates how they were revealed to him. One night, two youths and an old man appeared to the wakeful Ambrose. He thought that the last was the Apostle Paul. While the young men kept silent, the old man told Ambrose that they were Christ’s martyrs, that their relics lay in the precise place in which Ambrose was at prayer, and that everything else about them could be learned from a little book that would be found in their grave. The next day, Ambrose recounted his vision, began to dig and indeed found the relics of two men, of whom it was learned from the discovered book that they were Gervase and Protase. In Ambrose’s presence, a blind man, Servirus, touched these holy relics and immediately received his sight.”

—The Prologue from Ochrid (A collection by St. Nikolai Velimirovic)

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

All jokes aside, let us remember Egypt, where ISIS bombings killed dozens of Christians worshiping on Palm Sunday.  We pray for the living, that God may grant them strength and courage.  We pray for the dead, that their souls will receive mercy and rest in peace.

Prayer in Honor of St. Anthony of Egypt

God our Father,
You gave St Anthony of Egypt
the courage and belief of an apostle
to give up his wealth,
living a life of poverty and solitude,
and to found monasteries.
Help us to be zealous in imitating his virtues
and to follow in the footsteps of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Grant this through the same Christ Our Lord
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

Saint Anthony of Egypt, pray for your homeland.

Martyrs (2015)

maertyrer:

El Greco - St. Sebastian

St. Magdalene of Nagasaki - Unknown (found here)

saemful:

Giovanni Baglione, a contemporary of Caravaggio, gives us this St. Sebastian.

Interestingly enough, Baglione was the one who started barking about Caravaggio being a sodomite and oddly enough became his first biographer.

necspenecmetu:

School of Caravaggio, Saint Sebastian, 1607

twohandedengine:

Triptych of St. Catherine - Fernando Gallego

John Everett Millais - Saint Stephen(1895)

hotsugars:

Martyrs (2008) dir. Pascal Laugier

“During a service, the priest does not only cense the icons of the Savior, the Mother of God, and the saints. He also censes the icon-people, the image of God in the people who are present. And as they leave the Church precincts, these people remain as much the images of God, worthy of being censed and venerated. Our relations with people should be an authentic and profound veneration… The churching of life is the sense of the whole world as one church, adorned with icons that should be venerated, that should be honored and loved, because these icons are true images of God that have the holiness of the Living God upon them.”
~ Mother Maria of Paris 

• On January 18, 2004, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul recognized Mother Maria Skobtsova as a saint along with her son Yuri, the priest who worked closely with her, Fr. Dimitri Klépinin, and her close friend and collaborator Ilya Fondaminsky. All four died in German concentration camps. More: https://incommunion.org/2004/10/18/saint-of-the-open-door/ 

traumacatholic:

Saint Polycarp of Smyrna’s Prayer at The Stake

Lord God almighty, Father of Jesus Christ, that dear Child of yours, through whom we have come to know you, God of the angels and powers, God of all creation, God of the race that lives in your presence, the race of the just.

I bless you because you have thought me worthy of this day and hour, worthy to be numbered among the martyrs and to drink out of the cup your Anointed has drunk from, so to rise and live for ever, body and soul, in the incorruptibility that is the Holy Spirit’s.

May I be admitted with them to your presence today, a satisfying, welcome sacrifice. You have made my life a preparation for this; you showed me that this was to be and now you have brought it about, like the veracious and truthful God that you are. For this and all your blessings I praise you and give you glory, through the eternal high priest, Jesus Christ the heavenly, your dear Child.

He is with you and the Holy Spirit. Through him may glory be given you now and in the ages to come. Amen. 

traumacatholic:

Prayer of Saint Afra of Augsburg at her martyrdom

Lord God almighty, Jesus Christ, you did not come to call the just; you came to call sinners to repentance.

Your promise is clear; it admits of no doubt. You were so good as to say that as soon as a sinner turned away from his evil deeds, you would say no more about his sins. Accept, then, as a sign of my repentance, the sufferings I am now undergoing, and by this fire that is waiting to burn my body for a time, deliver me from the eternal fire that burns body and soul alike.

Thanks be to you, Lord Jesus Christ: in your mercy you have chosen me to be a victim for the glory of your name – you who offered yourself on the cross as a victim for the salvation of the whole world, you the innocent for us the guilty, you the good for us the wicked, you the blessed for us the cursed, you the sinless for all us sinners.

To you I offer my sacrifice, to you who are one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, with whim you live and reign, as you always will, age after age. Amen.

ILLEGAL GALLERY PRESENTS: Blinged out Skulls

The collection, entitled “Heavenly Bodies,” explores a treasure trove of underground tombs, all thought to hold the remains of early Christian martyrs.

“Skeletons of these supposed saints were subsequently sent to Catholic churches and religious houses in German-speaking Europe to replace holy relics that had been destroyed in the wake of the Protestant Reformation,“ explains Koudounaris’ book of the same name. Basically, after much of the religious art was destroyed by Protestants, the 16th century church decided to treat selected skeletons as if they were saints. The lucky skeletons were then blinged out from skull to toe, drenched in wigs, crowns, jewels, furs and armor.

Koudounaris’ photographs allow a glimpse into the Baroque corners of the most glamorous human remains we could ever imagine, traversing burial grounds from Bolivia to Switzerland to Indonesia. The stunning photographs capture a dark and decadent ritual just on the heels of Dia de los Muertos. We haven’t been so entranced and creeped out at the same time since riding Pirates of the Caribbean.

(Source)

Two years after a devastating earthquake destroyed the city of L'Aquila and Onna, rubble still lines the street.  We were in the courtroom in L'Aquila today when six seismic scientists and one civil protection authority began their trial for manslaughter for not doing a better job warning citizens. The courtroom was filled with members of the “309 Martyrs” support group who want these scientists to be held accountable. Six days before the 2009 disaster, these seven authorities on earthquakes were asked to evaluate L'Aquila’s extraordinary seismic activity – 400 events in all in just a few months – to advise the citizens of L'Aquila if they should evacuate or stay put.  The scientists told them to stay put.  Six days later their town and lives were destroyed.  We did this storyon the day of the earthquake in 2009. We will be following this trial which reconvenes October 1.