Ravenna, the mother of cities,
invites us today to honor the Martyr Bishop whose labors did more for
her lasting renown than did the favor of emperors and kings. From the midst of her ancient monuments, the rival of Rome,
though now fallen, points proudly to her unbroken chain of Pontiffs, which she can trace back to the Vicar of the Man-God
through St. Apollinaris. This great Saint has ben praised by Fathers and Doctors of the Universal Church,
his sons and successors. Would to God that the noble city had remembered what she owed to St. Peter! (Ravenna was made
the capital of the Western Empire in the 5th century. After the fall of the Roman Empire, those who ruled this city
had a history of rebellion against both the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy See.)
St. Apollinaris had left family and fatherland and all he possessed to follow the Prince of the Apostles,
St. Peter. One day the master said to the disciple: Why stayest thou here with us? Behold thou art instructed in
all that Jesus did; rise up, receive the Holy Ghost, and go to that city which knows Him not.
And blessing him,
he kissed him and sent him away (Passio S. Apollin. apud Bolland.) Such sublime scenes of separation,
often witnessed in those early days, and many a time since repeated, show by their heroic simplicity the
grandeur of the Church.
St. Apollinaris sped to the sacrifice. Christ, says St. Peter Chrysologus (Serm. 128), hastened to meet His Martyr; the Martyr pressed on towards His King; but the Church, anxious to keep this support of Her infancy, intervened to defer, not the struggle, but the crown; and for twenty-nine years, adds St. Peter Damian (Serm. 6 de S. Elecuchadio), his martyrdom was prolonged through such innumerable torments that the labors of St. Apollinaris alone were sufficient testimony of the Faith for those regions, which had not another witness unto blood. According to the traditions of the church he so powerfully established, the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove directly and visibly designated each ot the twelve successors of St. Apollinaris, up to the age of peace.
The holy Liturgy devotes the following lines to the history of this brave apostle:
St. Apollinaris came to Rome from Antioch with the Prince of the Apostles (St. Peter), by whom he was consecrated Bishop, and sent to Ravenna to preach the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He converted many to the Faith of Christ, for which reason he was seized by the priests of the idols and severely beaten. At his prayer, a nobleman named Boniface, who had long been dumb, recovered the power of speech, and his daughter was delivered from an unclean spirit; on this account a fresh sedition was raised against St. Apollinaris. He was beated with rods, and made to walk barefoot over burning coals; but as the fire did him no injury, he was driven from the city.
He lay hid some time in the house of certain Christians, and then went to Aemilia. Here he raised from the dead the daughter of Rufus, a patrician, whose whole family thereupon believed in Jesus Christ. The prefect was greatly angered by this conversion, and sending for St. Apollinaris he sternly commanded him to give up propagating the Faith of Christ in the city. But as St. Apollinaris paid no attention to his commands, he was tortured on the rack, boiling water was poured upon his wounds, and his mouth was bruised and broken with a stone; finally he was loaded with irons, and shut up in prison. Four days afterwards he was put on board ship and sent into exile; but the boat was wrecked, and St. Apollinaris arrived in Mysia, whence he passed to the banks of the Danube and into Thrace.
In the temple of Serapis the demon refused to utter his oracles so long as the disciple of the Apostle Peter remained there. Search was made for some time, and then St. Apollinaris was discovered and commanded to depart by sea. Thus he returned to Ravenna; but on the accusation of the same priests of the idols, he was placed in the custody of a centurion. As this man, however, worshipped Christ in secret, St. Apollinaris was allowed to escape by night. When this became known, he was pursued and overtaken by the guards, who loaded him with blows and left him, as they thought, dead. He was carried away by the Christians, and seven days after, while exhorting them to constancy in the Faith, he passed away from this life, to be crowned with the glory of martyrdom. His body was buried near the city walls.
St. Venantius Fortunatus, in his life of St. Martin, has taught us to salute from afar the glorious tomb of St. Apollinaris. The holy Martyr answers us as he did so often during the days of his mortal life: May the peace of Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, rest upon you! Peace, the perfect gift, the first greeting of an apostle, the consummation of all grace: how he appreciated it, how jealous of it for his spiritual sons he was, even after he had quitted this earth! By it he obtained from the God of peace and love that miraculous intervention which pointed out, for so long a time, the bishops who were to succeed him in his see. He himself appeared one day to the Roman Pontiff, showing him St. Peter Chrysologus as the one chosen by himself and St. Peter to be one of these successors in the see of Ravenna. And later on, knowing that the cloister was to be the home of the divine peace banished from the rest of the world, he came twice in person to bid St. Romuald to obey the call of grace to the religious and eremitical life.
How comes it that more than one of his successors, no longer designated by the divine dove,
should have become intoxicated with earthly favors, and so soon have forgotten the lessons left by him to his see?
Was it not sufficient honor for that church, the daughter of Rome, to occupy among her illustrious sisters the first
place at her mother's side? For surely the Gospel sung on this feast for so many centuries (Luke 22: 24-30),
ought to have been a safeguard against the deplorable excesses which hastened her fall.
Rome, warned by sinister indications, seems to have foreseen the sacrilegious ambition of Guibert
(the Archbishop of Ravenna, who was made antipope by Emperor Henry IV in 1084, after the latter had driven
Pope St. Gregory VII from Rome; Guibert died in 1100, still claiming to be Clement III
),
when she fixed her choice on this passage of the sacred text: There arose a dispute among (the disciples),
which of them was reputed to be the greatest. And what more significant, and at the same time more touching,
commentary could have been given to this Gospel than the words of St. Peter himself in the Epistle:
I exhort the presbyters (bishops) among you – I, your fellow-presbyter – ...tend the flock of God which is among you,
governing not under constraint, but willingly, according to God; nor yet for the sake of base gain, but eagerly;
nor yet as lording it over your charges (the clergy), but becoming from the heart a pattern to the flock...
And all of you practice humility towards one another; for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble
(1 Peter 5; 1-11).
Pray, O St. Apollinaris, that both pastor and flocks throughout the Church may, now at least, profit by these apostolic and divine teachings, so that we may all one day have a place at the eternal banquet, where Our Lord invites His own to sit down with St. Peter and thee in His Kingdom.
The same day – St. Liborius, Bishop († 397)While St. Apollinaris adorns Holy Mother Church with the bright purple of his martyrdom, another noble son crowns Her brow with the white wreath of a Confessor Bishop. St. Liborius, the heir of Julian, Thuribius, and Pavasius, was a brilliant link in the glorious chain connecting the church of Le Mans with St. Clement, the successor of St. Peter; he came to bring peace after the storm, and to restore to the earth a hundredfold fruitfulness after the ruin caused by the tempest. The fanatical disciples of Odin, invading the west of Gaul (France), committed more havoc in this part of Our Lord's vineyard than had the proconsuls with their cold legalism, or the ancient Druids with their fierce hatred. St. Liborius, defender of the earthly fatherland, and guide of souls to the heavenly one, brought the enemy to be citizen of both by making him Christian. As a bishop, he labored with purest zeal for the magnificence of divine worship, which renders homage to God, and gives health to the earth; as apostle, he took up again the work of evangelization begun by the first messengers of the Faith, driving idolatry from the strongholds it had reconquered, and from the country parts, where it had always reigned supreme: his friend St. Martin of Tours had not in this respect a more worthy rival. St. Liborius died in the arms of St. Martin, after having received the Last Sacraments from him – for this reason he is invoked as a patron for a good and holy death.
Five centuries after the close of his laborious life, his blessed body was removed from the sanctuary where it lay among his fellow-bishops, and scattering miracles all along the way, was carried to Paderborn; pagan barbarism once more fled at the approach of St. Liborius, and Westphalia was won to Christ. Le Mans and Paderborn, uniting in the veneration of their common apostle, had thus sealed a friendship which more than a thousand years did not destroy. A week-long festival is still held annually in Paderborn, after his Feast.
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