Saints of the Day & More

A Turkish widow, Julitta and her very young baby son, Cyriacus, moved to tarsus to escape persecution of Christians in Turkey. She was denounced to a ruling governor there, who questioned her while he played with Cyriacus. When she refused to give up her faith, she was given a death sentence. her son told the governor he was also Christian, the man was so enraged he threw the Cyriacus down the stairs, killing him before his mother. His dead corpse landed in front of his mother was about to be killed. When she saw her baby she was grieved but full of joy that her son had received the crown of martyrdom. Then she died by being beheaded.They died 304 AD. Julitta's body, along with that of Cyriacus, was flung outside the city, on the heap of bodies belonging to criminals, but two maids rescued the corpses of the mother and child and buried them in a nearby field. Their relics are at Nevers and in the monastery of Saint-Amand, Tournai. Centuries later, Cyriacus appeared to the Emperor C...

St. Nicholas, called "of Bari", Bishop of Myra (Fourth Century) 6 Dec. Feast day. The great veneration with which this saint has been honored for many ages and the number of altars and churches which have been everywhere dedicated in his memory are testimonials to his holiness and of the glory which he enjoys with God. He is said to have been born at Patara in Lycia, a province of Asia Minor. Myra, the capital, not far from the sea, was an episcopal see, and this church falling vacant, the holy Nicholas was chosen bishop, and in that station became famous by his extraordinary piety and zeal and many astonishing miracles. The Greek histories of his life agree that he suffered imprisonment of the faith and made a glorious confession in the latter part of the persecution raised by Dioletian, and that he was present at the Council of Nicaea and there condemned Arianism. The silence of other authors makes many justly suspect these circumstances. He died at Myra, and was buried in ...