Sacred Calendar

Fourth Lesson

Apollinaris came from Antioch to Rome with the Prince of the Apostles, and was by him ordained a Bishop, and sent to Ravenna to preach the Gospel of the Lord Christ. He had already converted a great number of persons to the Christian Faith, when the idolatrous priests caught him and gave him a sharp flogging.

A second riot was got up against him on account of one Boniface, a nobleman who had long been dumb, speaking, and his daughter being delivered from an unclean spirit. On this occasion Apollinaris was flogged again, and made to walk barefoot over hot embers. The fire did him no harm, and he was expelled from the city.

Fifth Lesson

Apollinaris lay hid for a while with certain Christians. Thence he went to Emilia, where he restored to life the dead daughter of the Patrician Rufinus, so that the whole household of Rufinus might believe in JESUS Christ. This affair greatly incensed the Prefect, who sent for Apollinaris, and earnestly dealt with him to induce him to cease spreading the Christian Faith in that city.

As Apollinaris paid no heed to the Prefect's orders, he was tortured on the rack, boiling water poured on his wounds, and his mouth bruised with a stone, after which he was ironed and cast into prison. On the fourth day he was put on board a ship and sent into banishment. The ship was wrecked, and he so came to Mysia, thence to the shores of the Danube, and afterwards into Thrace.

Sixth Lesson

However, the devil in the temple of Serapis declared that he could not give oracles, while the disciple of the Apostle Peter abode in these parts, and after a long search Apollinaris was found and commanded again to take ship. Thus he went back to Ravenna, where he was denounced by the same idolatrous priests as before, and given into the keeping of a centurion.

This centurion was a secret worshipper of Christ, and in the night he let Apollinaris go. When it became known some of the officers of justice followed after him, caught him on the road, beat him till they thought he was dead, and left him. Some Christians took him up, but on the seventh day, still exhorting them to stand firm in the Faith, he departed this life with the glorious splendour of martyrdom. His body was buried hard by the wall of the city.

Seventh Lesson, St. Ambrose on Luke 22

"My kingdom," our God hath said, "is not of this world." Man, then, must strive, not to be equal with God, but to be like unto God. Christ alone is the full image of God, as being the brightness of His Father's glory, and the express image of His Person.

But the righteous man is made after the image of God, in so far as, for the sake of following the example of his God, he, through knowledge of God, setteth no esteem upon this world, and looketh down upon all carnal motions of the will, through having taken in that Word whereby we are fed unto life everlasting; and this is the end whereto we eat the Body of Christ, namely, that we may have eternal life.

Eighth Lesson

The reward which is promised unto us is not meat and drink, but a part in that grace and that life which come down from heaven. Neither are the twelve thrones to be understood as meaning chairs for bodies to sit in, but as meaning a dignity like that of God Himself, wherein they that have left all and followed Christ shall judge as Christ doth, not by dint of cross-examinations, but by simple knowledge of the heart, rewarding the good, and condemning the evil.

Thus are the Apostles erected into a ghostly tribunal, for the rewarding of faith and the cursing of unbelief, by their might breaking back errors, and laying upon blasphemers the just punishment of hatred.

Ninth Lesson

Let us, then, turn about, and look well to it that there be no strife among us, which of us shall be accounted the greatest. That this strife arose among the Apostles, is not an excuse but a caution for us.

If it was only after a while that Peter was converted, Peter, who had started up at the first command of the Lord, who can promise himself to be converted forthwith? Have a care, then, of boasting; have a care of the world. He who was commanded to strengthen his brethren was he who was able to say, "Behold, we have forsaken all, and have followed Thee."