20 January: Saint Sebastian, Martyr
He did not fear those who can kill the body but not the soul
We do not have much information about the life of Saint Sebastian. According to the Passio Santi Sebastiani Martyris, a text long attributed to Saint Ambrose of Milan (340-397), he was born around 250 A.D., and raised in Milan by his father from Narbonne and his mother from Milan. Educated in the Christian faith, he moved to Rome in 270 A.D., enlisted sometime around 283 A.D., and eventually became a tribune of the first cohort of the imperial guard. Unaware of his faith, Emperors Maximian and Diocletian entrusted him with important responsibilities.
As a member of the imperial guard, he had the opportunity to discreetly help Christians who had been imprisoned, to take care of their burial, and to convert soldiers and noblemen of the court. He intervened when twin brothers, Marcellino and Marco, yielding to the pleas of their parents, wives and children, were about to make sacrifices to the idols, thus renouncing their faith. Struck by the Saint’s words, they instead accepted their martyrdom. Their parents immediately converted, as did their jailer Nicostratus, whose mute wife, Zoe, had been healed by the Saint's intercession.
When the Prefect of Rome, Chromatius, who was very ill, heard about this miracle, he called for Saint Sebastian to come to his bedside. He was healed, and converted to Christianity, along with his son, Tiburtius, and their entire household.
According to tradition, he was arrested while burying the holy martyrs, Claudius, Castorius, Symphorian and Nicostratus, known as the Four Crowned Martyrs, on the Lavican Way. He was brought before Maximian and Diocletian, who was furious by rumors he had heard, claiming that there were Christians in the imperial palace, some of whom were even Praetorians.
The Prefect Fabian had all the new converts, who had been baptized by the priest Polycarp, immediately executed, and denounced Sebastian as a Christian to Diocletian. The Emperor was enraged by what he considered a betrayal, and had him tied to a pole and pierced with arrows by his own soldiers in an area of the Palatine Hill known as the “campus”. Believing he was dead, the soldiers left him to be devoured by wild animals. However, although he was covered in wounds, he did not die, and a pious Christian widow, Saint Irene, cared for him and healed him.
Sebastian went to the palace and reproached the two Emperors for the injustice and cruelty of their persecution of Christians. He was arrested and beaten to death. His body was thrown into Rome’s main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, but, alerted by a vision, Saint Lucina found his body and laid it to rest in the catacombs along the Appian Way. In 680 AD, his intercession was credited with ending a severe epidemic of the plague in Rome.
Saint Sebastian is celebrated on 20 January. He is the Patron Saint of many cities in Europe, and because he had been a soldier, he is also the Patron Saint of soldiers and archery fraternities, and is invoked against plagues and epidemics.