2 JUNE – SAINTS MARCELLINUS, PETER AND ERASMUS (Martyrs)

During the reign of Diocletian the exorcist Peter was imprisoned in Rome by the judge Serenus because he confessed the Christian faith. He there set free Paulina, the daughter of Artemius, the keeper of the prison, from an evil spirit which tormented her. Upon this, Artemius and his wife and all their house, with their neighbours who had run together to see the strange thing, would fain be attached to the service of Christ. Peter therefore brought them to the priest Marcellinus who baptised all of them. When Serenus heard of it, he called Peter and Marcellinus before him and sharply rebuked them, adding to his bitter words, threats and terrors, unless they would deny Christ. Marcellinus answered him with Christian boldness, for which he was buffeted, separated from Peter, and shut up naked in a prison strewn with broken glass without food or light. When Peter and Marcellinus were found to increase in faith and courage, they were beheaded.

The bishop Erasmus was, in Campania, beaten with clubs and whips loaded with lead, and afterwards plunged into resin, sulphur, melted lead, boiling pitch, wax and oil. But he emerged unscathed, whole and sound, and this wonder converted many to believe in Christ. He was remanded again to prison, and bound in iron fetters. But from these he was wondrously delivered by an Angel. Lastly, being taken to Formi, Maximian caused him to be subjected to various torments, and in the end, being clad in a coat of red-hot brass, the power of God made him be more than conqueror in all these things also. Afterwards, having converted to the faith and confirmed many in it, he obtained the palm of a glorious martyrdom.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The glory of martyrdom illumines this day with a profusion rarely met with in the Cycle, and already we seem to descry the rosy dawn of that glad day, excelling all the rest, on which Peter and Paul will consummate, in their blood, their own splendid confession. Italy and Gaul, Rome and Lyons concur in forming a legion of heroes in the service of Heaven. For today, Lyons, the illustrious daughter of Rome, is keeping the special festival of a whole phalanx of warriors headed by the veteran chief, Saint Pothinus, a disciple of Saint Polycarp, who in the second century levied the brave recruits of his battalion on the banks of the Rhone. But to the Mother Church are due the first honours. Turn we then to Marcellinus, hailing him who, begetting by his fruitful priesthood a numerous progeny, shares with them the honours of his triumph in which they had been rendered worthy by the Holy Ghost at once to partake. Let us hail, likewise, the Exorcist Peter, leading to the sacred font such a long line of pagans won over to Christ by witnessing at his hand how great is the weakness of the demons.

When Christianity appeared on earth Satan was indeed, and visibly so, the Prince of this world. To him was every altar reared. To his empire were all laws and customs subservient. From the depths of their famous temples, the demon chiefs directed the political affairs of the cities that came to consult their oracles. Under divers names, the frailest of the fallen angels found honour and influence at the domestic hearth. Others had posts assigned to them in forests, on mountains, at fountains, or on sea, occupying, in opposition to God, this world that had been created by Him for His glory, but which Satan through man’s complicity had conquered. [Thousands of] years of abandonment on the part of Heaven permitted the usurper to consolidate his conquest, and a well planned resistance was skilfully prepared against the day on which the lawful King should offer to re-enter on his rights.

The coming of the Word made Flesh was the grand signal for the asserting of the Divine Claim. The Prince of this world, personally vanquished by the Son of God, understood well enough that he must needs return to the depths of Hell. But the countless powers of darkness constituted by him would maintain the struggle through the length of ages and dispute their position inch by inch. Driven from towns by the abjurations of holy Church and the triumph of martyrs, the infernal legions would fain marshal their ranks in the wilderness. There, under the leadership of an Anthony or a Pachomius, the soldiers of Christ must wage against them ceaseless and terrific battle. In the West Benedict, the Patriarch of Monks, in his turn meets with altars to the demons, yes, with demons themselves on the heights of Cassino, as late as the sixth century. Even in the seventh, they are found contending against Saint Gall for holds on the woods, lakes and rocks of what we now call Switzerland. And at last they are heard uttering mournful complaint because, driven as they have been from the haunts of men, even such desolate spots as these are denied them. Verily, in the divine Mind, the vocation of a monk to the desert has for its end not alone flight of the world and its concerns, but likewise the pursuit of demons into their last entrenchments.

We have dwelt thus on the foregoing considerations because their importance is extreme, and is equalled only by depth of systematic ignorance persisted in on this subject. True Christians of course firmly believe, now as formerly, in the secret and wholly spiritual combat which the soul has to sustain against Hell in the privacy of one’s own conscience, but too many have no scruple in rejecting, as if belonging to the domain of imagination, whatever is related of those other combats maintained by our fathers against the demons in an exterior and more public manner. The excuse for such Christians is no doubt in the fact that they live in a land where centuries ago this war in its external phases was ended by the social victory of Christendom. But the Holy Ghost has declared that the old serpent, bound up for a thousand years, is at last to be again unchained for a while (Apocalypse xx. 2, 3). If, perchance, we be nearing this fatal epoch, it is high time to look about us: ill prepared will we be for the waging again of the old battles, by such ignorance as ours, in which we are maintained by that habit of abandoning to the conceited impertinence of the shallow science that rules the day, facts (under the name of legend), the best attested in the history of our ancestors. Yes, after all, what is History, even since the revolt of Lucifer, but the picture of the war that is being waged between God and Satan? Now if, as we have said, Satan has by divine permission invaded the exterior world as well as that of souls, must it not be needful, in order (as our Lord expresses it), to cast him out (John xii. 21) that the struggle with him be breast to breast and foot to foot, inasmuch as it has assumed an exterior and visible character?

“The Word,” says Saint Justin, “was made Flesh for two ends: to save believers, and to drive away demons.” So also the expulsion of demons from the places they occupy in this material world, and specially the bodies of men, the noblest part thereof, would appear in the Gospel to have been one of the chief characteristics of our Saviour’s power. Again, when on quitting the Earth He sent His Apostles to continue His work amid the nations, this is the very thing He singles out as a primary sign of the mission they are to fulfil (Mark xvi. 17). The world of that day made no mistake about it. Soon enough had the pagans to state the cessation of the ancient oracles, in every place the cause of a phenomenon of such import to the ancient religion was evident to all: the very demons themselves were not backward in ascribing to the Christians this their enforced silence. As regards this power of Christianity against Hell, the Apologists of the second and third centuries appeal on the subject to public testimony without fear of a contradicting voice. “Before the eyes of everyone,” says Saint Justin to the emperors, “the Christians drive out demons in the Name of Jesus Christ, not only in Rome, but in the whole universe.” The gods of Olympus beheld themselves shamefully unmasked in the presence of their confused adorers, and Tertullian might well challenge thus the magistrates of the Empire: “Let one of those men who declare themselves to be under the power of the gods be brought before your tribunals: at the commanding word of the first comer among us, the spirit by which they are possessed will be constrained to confess what he is. if he avow not himself a demon and no god, fearing to lie to a Christian, at once shed the blood of this Christian blasphemer. But no, the terror they have of Christ is the reason why the mere touch, or even breathing of one of His servants, forces them to take to flight!”

So then, we see, Baptism sufficed to give to man such power as this, and verily this was the real meaning of our Lord’s promise when speaking of those who would believe in Him, and not alone of the heads of the Church, He said: “In my name they will cast out devils” (Mark xvi. 17). At an early date, however, the Church organising the holy war, constituted among her Sons one special Order having for its direct mission the pursuit of Satan on every point of this visible world. The Exorcists were by this delegation invested with a power that must needs accelerate the downfall of the prince of this world. And, what would be all the more odious and humiliating in this defeat, the Church raised no higher than to the rank of inferior clergy, an order so terrible, nevertheless, unto Hell. Lucifer had aimed at being equal to the Most High (Isaias xiv. 12-15). Hurled down from Heaven, he at least flattered himself in his folly to be able to supplant God on Earth and lo! the charge of defeating him here is confided not to Angels indeed, his equals by nature, but to men, yes, to the least and lowest of this race so easily tricked, that for long ages he had seen men prostrate before him! The hand of flesh constrains him, spirit though he be, to come off his throne. At their word he must needs cast away his vain adornments, he must unmask himself. The water they bless rekindles within him his eternal tortures. Of the prince of this world and his pomps, nothing remains but mere Satan, the ugly faced apostate, the condemned criminal wincing in the dust at the feet of the sons of men, or fleeing like a dry leaf at the breath of their mouth.

The Archangel Michael recognises in these sons of Adam the worthy allies of the faithful Angels he led forward to victory. But amid these continuators of the mighty battle begun on the heights of Heaven (Apocalypse xii. 7-9), the Exorcist Peter comes before us today radiant with matchless splendour. The triumph of martyrdom has been added to his victories won over Satan’s cohorts. None better than he drove Hell backwards, for, chasing the demons out of men’s bodies, he moreover made conquest of their souls. The Priest Marcellinus, his companion in martyrdom as he had been in victory, is likewise his associate in glory. The Church wishes that these two names of theirs so redoubtable to the spirits of darkness, should shine in one same aureola here below as in Heaven. Daily does she render them the most solemn homage in her power by naming them both on the diptych of the Holy Sacrifice together with the Apostles and the first of her sons. Such was the importance of the mission they fulfilled and the renown of their final combat, that their bodies translated to the Via Latina became the nucleus of an illustrious cemetery. The Christians of the Age of Peace that came soon after their glorious confession, vied with one another in obtaining sepulture near these soldiers of Christ whose protection they craved: Constantine the Great, the vanquisher of idolatry, deposited at their sacred feet the remains of his mother, Saint Helena, who had herself become a terror to the demons by her discovering the True Cross. A celebrated inscription was composed in their honour by Saint Damasus, who in childhood had learned the details of their martyrdom from the very executioner himself, afterwards converted. This inscription hard by their tomb completed the monuments of that catacomb in which Christian art had multiplied its richest teachings.

To the memory of Saints Marcellinus and Peter is joined in the Liturgy of today the name of a holy Bishop and Martyr, formerly well known to the faithful. If the Acts of his life that have reached us are not free from all reproach in a critical point of view, the favours obtained by the intercession of this Saint Erasmus, or Elmo, wafted his name over the whole of Christendom, as is attested by the numberless forms this name assumed in various countries of the West during the Middle Ages. He holds a place in the group of Saints styled auxiliatores or Helpers, whose cultus is widespread in Germany and Italy more particularly. Mariners look on him as their patron because of a certain miraculous voyage related in his life. One of the tortures to which he was subjected during his martyrdom has made him be invoked for the cholic. Nor should we forget to mention here how great a veneration Saint Benedict, the Patriarch of Western Monks, had for Saint Erasmus. When he quitted the Campagna for his solitude on the banks of the Anio, he marked his principal station between Subiaco and Monte Cassino by building a Church and Monastery at Veroli under the invocation of this holy martyr, and another was dedicated by him in Rome, likewise, to Saint Erasmus.

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YOU three holy Martyrs all confessed Jesus Christ in the midst of the most terrific storm ever raised by the demon against the Church. Though all three, in different grades of the hierarchy, you were alike guides of the Christian people, drawing them by thousands in your train, into the arena of martyrdom, and by still more numerous conversions, filling up the void made in Earth’s chosen band by the departure of your victorious companions to Heaven. Wherefore the Church this day joins her grateful homage here below with the silvery shouts of glad congratulation that ring through the Church Triumphant. Be you propitious, as of yore, in alleviating the ills that overwhelm mankind in this vale of tears. The excess of man’s misery is that he seems to have forgotten how to call on such powerful protectors in his hour of need. Revive your memory, in our midst, by new benefits to our race. As you, Erasmus, was formerly protected by Heaven, do now, in your turn, succour those who are a prey to the tempest-tossed sea. In your last hour of bitter anguish you suffered your executioners to tear your very bowels. Lend then a kindly aid to such as call on your name when racked by pains which bear some resemblance, though but faint, to what you endured for Christ. Peter and Marcellinus, linked one to another both in toil and in glory, cast gentle eyes on us: one glance of yours would make all Hell to tremble, would drive far from us its darksome cohorts.

But how much is your aid needed in society at large in the whole visible world! The foe you so mightily thrust backwards into the fiery pit is once more master. Alas, have we come to the time in which, again taking up war against the Saints, it will be granted him to overcome them? (Apocalypse xiii. 7) Scarce does he even hide himself nowadays. Not only does he lead the world by a thousand springs ostensibly put in his hands by Societies formerly secret, but he may be seen trying to push his way into gatherings of all sorts, into the very bosom of homes as a family guest, as a comrade in diversion or in business, with table-turning and all those processes for divination such as Tertullian denounced in your early day. The expulsion of demons by Christianity had been so absolute that up to more recent times such fatal practices had fallen into utter oblivion among us. If at first, in Christian families, the warning voice of the pastors of God’s Church has prevailed over the incitements of an unhealthy curiosity, still a sect has since been formed in which Satan is sole guide and oracle. The Spiritists, as they are called, in concert with Freemasonry, are preparing the way for the final invasion of the exterior world by infernal bands. Antichrist, with his usurped power and vain prestige, will be but the common product of political lodges and of this sect in which the task is proposed of bringing back, under a new form, the ancient mysteries of paganism. Valiant Soldiers of the Church, make us, we beseech you, worthy of our forefathers. If the Christian army must needs decrease in numbers, let faith all the more wax strong in it. Let courage neither lack nor go astray. May its ranks be seen facing the foe, at that last hour in which the Lord Jesus will slay, with the breath of His Mouth, the man of sin (2 Thessalonians ii. 8), and plunge once again and forever, the whole of Satan’s crew down into the lowest depths of the bottomless pit.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Lyons, many holy martyrs (Photinus, bishop, Sanctus, deacon, Vetius, Epagathus, Maturus, Ponticus, Biblis, Attalus, Alexander and Blandina, with many others), whose many valiant combats, in the time of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus, are recorded in a letter from the church at Lyons to the churches of Asia and Phrygia. St. Blandina, one of these martyrs, though weaker on account of her sex and frame, and of her lower condition in life, encountered longer and more terrible trials. But remaining unshaken, she was put to the sword and followed those whom she had exhorted to win the palm of martyrdom.

At Rome, St. Eugenius, pope and confessor.

At Tarni in Terra-di-Bari, St. Nicholas Peregrinus, confessor, whose miracles were related in the Roman Council under Pope Urban II.

And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.

Thanks be to God.