Pope Saint Zephyrinus (202‒219 AD) entrusted his deacon Callixtus with the government of the clergy and the administration of the papal catacombs (the Catacombs of Saint Callixtus). When Pope Saint Zephyrinus died Callixtus succeeded him as Bishop of Rome. Pope Callixtus is credited with the institution of Ember Days of abstinence, fasting and prayer. He built the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere and enlarged the Catacombs which bear his name. The body of the blessed Calepodius, priest and martyr, having been thrown into the Tiber, Callixtus in his piety caused it to be diligently sought for, and when found to be honourably buried. He baptised Palmatius, Simplioius, Felix and Blanda, the first of whom was of consular rank, and the others of senatorial rank, and who all afterwards suffered martyrdom. For this he was cast into prison where he miraculously cured a soldier named Privatus, who was covered with ulcers, and in consequence of which converted to Christianity. Though so recently converted, Privatus died for the faith, being beaten to death with scourges tipped with lead. Callixtus was Pope 5 years, 1 month and 12 days. He held five ordinations in the month of December in which he ordained 16 priests, 4 deacons and 8 bishops. He was tortured for a long while by starvation and frequent scourgings, and finally, he was thrown out of a window of his house in the Trastevere and, tied to an anchor, his body was cast into a well. It was later recovered and initially interred in the Catacombs of Octavilla on the Via Aurelia, but later his body was translated back to the Trastevere and interred in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Pope Saint Callixtus is the patron of cemetery workers.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
He was a sign of contradiction in Israel. In his own time, Christians were ranged either around him or against him. The trouble excited by his mere name [seventeen] hundred years ago was renewed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the discovery of a famous book which gave an occasion to the sectaries of our own days to stand with those of old against Callixtus and the Church. The book, entitled LOSOPHUMENA or refutation of heresies, was composed in the third century. It represented Callixtus, whose life and charaoter were painted in the darkest colours, as one of the worst corrupters of doctrine. In that third century, however, the author of the Philosophumena, attacking the Pontiff he wished to supplant, and setting up in Rome, as he himself acknowledges, Chair against Chair, did but publish to the Church his own shame by ranging himself among those very dissenters of whom his book professed to be the refutation and the history. The name of this first Antipope has not come down to us. But behold his punishment! The work of his envious pen, despised by his contemporaries, was to reappear at the right moment to awaken the slumbering attention of a far-off posterity.
The impartial criticism of these latter ages, setting aside the insinuations, took up the facts brought forward by the accuser, and with the aid of science, disentangling the truth from among his falsehoods, rendered the most unexpected testimony to his hated rival. Thus once more iniquity lied to itself (Psalm xxvi. 12) and this word of today’s Gospel was verified: “Nothing is covered that will not be revealed; nor hid that will not be known” (Matthew x. 26).
Let us listen to the greatest of Christian archaeologists whose mind, so sure and so reserved, was overcome with enthusiasm on finding so much light springing from such a source. “All this,” said the Commandant de Rossi on studying the odious document, “gives me clearly to understand why the accuser said ironically of Callixtus that he was reputed most admirable; why, though all knowledge of his acts was lost, his name has come down to us with such great veneration; and lastly, why, in the third and fourth centuries when the memory of his government was still fresh, he was honoured more than any of his predecessor, or of his successors, since the ages of persecution. Callixtus ruled the Church when she was at the term of the first stage in her career, and was marching forward to new and greater triumphs. The Christian faith hitherto embraced only by individuals, had then become the faith of families, and fathers made profession of it in their own and their children’s name. These families already formed almost the majority in every town. The religion of Christ was on the eve of becoming the public religion of the nation and the empire. How many new problems concerning Christian social rights, ecclesiastical law, and moral discipline, must have daily arisen in the Church, considering the greatness of her situation at the time, and the still greater future that was opening before her! Callixtus solved all these doubts. He drew up regulations concerning the deposition of clerics, took the necessary measures against the deterring of catechumens from Baptism, and of sinners from repentance, and defined the notion of the Church which St. Augustine was afterwards to develop. In opposition to the civil laws, he asserted the Christian’s right over his own conscience and the Church’s authority with regard to the marriage of the faithful. He knew no distinction of slave and freeman, great and lowly, noble and plebeian, in that spiritual brotherhood that was undermining Roman society and softening its inhuman manners. For this reason his name is so great at the present day. For this reason, the voice of the envious, or of those who measured the times by the narrowness of their own proud mind, was lost in the cries of admiration, and was utterly despised.”
We have not space to develop, as it deserves, this masterly exposition. We have already seen how, when the virgin martyr Caecilia yielded to the Popes the place of her first sepulture, Callixtus, then deacon of Zephyrinus, arranged the catacomb of the Caecilii for its new destiny. Venerable crypt, in which the State for the first time recognised the Church’s right to earthly possessions: sanctuary, no less than necropolis in which, before the triumph of the Cross, Christian Rome laid up her treasures for the resurrection day. Our great martyr-Pontiff was deemed the most worthy to give his name to this the principal cemetery although Providenoe had disposed that he should never rest in it. Under the benevolent reign of Alexander Severus, he met his death in the Trastevere in a sedition raised against him by the pagans. The cause of the tumult appears to have been his having obtained possession of the famous Taberna meritoria from the floor of which, in the days of Augustus, a fountain of oil had sprung up and had flowed for a whole day. The Pontiff built a church on the spot and dedicated it to the Mother of God. It is the basilica of Santan Maria in Trastevere. Its ownership was contended for, and the case was referred to the emperor, who decided in favour of the Christians. We may attribute to the vengeance of his adversaries the Saint’s violent death which took place close to the edifice his firmness had secured to the Church. The mob threw him into a well which is still to be seen in the church of San Callisto, a few paces from the Santa Maria basilica. For fear of the sedition, the martyr’s body was not carried to the Via Appia, but was laid in a cemetery already opened on the Via Aurelia, where his tomb originated a new historic centre of subterranean Rome.
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THE Holy Ghost, the protector of the Church, prepared you, by suffering and humiliation, to become His chosen auxiliary. You were born a slave. While still young you were condemned to the mines of Sardinia for the Name o£ our Lord. You were a bond-slave, it is true, but not now for your former master. And when delivered from the mines at the time appointed by Him who regulates circumstances according to His good pleasure, you were ennobled by the title of Confessor, which recommended you to the maternal attention of the Church. Such were your merits and virtues, that Zephyrinus, entering upon the longest pontificate of the persecution period, chose you for the counsellor, support and coadjutor of his old age. And after the experience of those eighteen years, the Church elected you for her supreme Pastor. At the hour of your death, how prosperous did you leave this Bride of Our Lord! All the nobility of ancient days, all the moral worth and intellectual eminence of the human race seemed to be centred in her. Where was then the contempt of old, where the calumnies of a while ago. The world began to recognise in the Church the queen of the future. If the pagan state was yet to inflict cruel persecutions on her, it would be from the conviction that it must struggle desperately for its very existence. It even hesitated, and seemed, for ·the moment, more inclined to make a compact with the Christians.
You opened to the Church new paths, full of peril, but also of grandeur. From the absolute and brutal Non licet vos esse (“It is not lawful for you to exist”) of the lawyer-executioners, you were the first to bring the empire to recognise officially, to a certain extent, the rights of the Christian community. Through you Caecilia assured to them the power of assembling together and making collections to honour their dead. You consecrated to Mary, fons olei, the first sanctuary legally acquired by the Christians in Rome, and you were rewarded for the act by martyrdom. Now, far from compromising the least of God’s rights in coming to terms with Caesar, you did, at that very time, oppose the latter, asserting as no other had yet done the absolute independence of the Church with regard to marriage which Christ had withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the civil power. Already, would not one be inclined to say that we have a nation within the nation? Yes. And it will continue to be so until the whole nation itself have passed into the ranks of this new people.
Within the bosom of the Church, you had other cares. Doctrinal contests were at their height, and attacked the first of our mysteries: Sabellius condemned for his audacity in declaring that the real distinction of Persons in the most Holy Trinity is incompatible with the unity of God, left the field open to another sect, who so separated the Three Divine Persons as to make them three Gods. Again, there was Montanus whose disciples, enemies of the Sabellian theories even before Sabellius appeared, courted the favour of the Holy See for their system of false mysticism and extravagant reformation. But as an experienced pilot avoids the rocks and shoals, between the subtilities of dogmatisers, the pretensions of rigorists and the utopias of politicians, you, under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, did, with a sure hand, steer the barque of Peter towards its glorious destination. The more Satan hates you and pursues you even to the present day, the more may you be glorified forever. Give your blessing to us, who are your sons and your disciples.Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
At Caesarea in Palestine, St. Fortunata, virgin and martyr, during the persecution of Diocletian. After having been subjected to the rack, to fire, to the teeth of beasts and other torments, she gave up her soul to God. Her body was afterwards conveyed to Naples in Campania.
Also the Saints Carponius, Evaristus and Priscian, brothers of the said blessed Fortunata, who having their throats cut, obtained likewise the crown of martyrdom.
Also the Saints Saturninus and Lupus.
At Rimini, St. Gaudentius, bishop and martyr.
At Todi, St. Fortunatus, bishop, who, as mentioned by Pope St. Gregory, was endowed with an extraordinary gift for casting out unclean spirits.
At Wurtzburg, St. Burchard, first bishop of that city.
At Bruges in Belgium, St. Donatian, bishop of Rheims.
At Treves, St. Rusticus, bishop.
The same day, the departure out of this world of St. Dominic Loricatus.
In Italy, St. Bernard, confessor.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
