Saint of the Day – 17 February – St Theodulus (Died 309) Martyr of Caesarea in Palestine. He confessed Christ with great constancy and love and was granted the grace of dying as his Master had done.
The Roman Martyrology reads today: “At Caesarea in Palestine, Theodulus, an aged man in the service of the Governor, Firmilian, Moved by the example of the Martyrs, he confessed Christ with constancy, was fastened to a cross and thus by a noble victory, merited the Palm of Martyrdom.”
Gero Cross, late 10th Century, Cologne Cathedral, Germany
Theodulus was a member of the household of the governor of Palestine. When the governor learned of Theodulus’s Christianity, he ordered his execution.
In the 19th Century Jesus expressed His wishes to Sister Mary of St Peter (1816-1848), a Carmelite Nun in Tours, France, that there be an actual Devotion to his Holy Face. Our Lord wanted this in reparation for blasphemies against Himself and His Holy Name as well, as for the profanation of Sunday (when people engage unnecessarily in commerce and other such labours and chores on Sunday, a day meant for rest and reflection on God). In August of 1843 He dictated to her the well-known Golden Arrow Prayer. He also gave her Promises for those who would honour His Holy Face. The first Holy Medal of the Holy Face was given to Ven Pope Pius XII, who approved the Devotion and the Medal. In 1958 he formally declared the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus as Shrove Tuesday for all Catholics in perpetuity. https://anastpaul.com/2022/03/01/feast-of-the-holy-face/
Shrove Tuesday: Shrove is the past tense of the word Shrive, which means “to hear a confession, assign penance and absolve from sin.” In the Middle Ages, especially in Northern Europe and England, it became the custom to confess one’s sins on the day before Lent began in order to enter the penitential season in a repentant spirit.
The Flight into Egypt (Year 1)- 17 February:
It was on the seventeenth of February, fifty five days after the Nativity of Jesus, when King Herod’s soldiers — sent to slaughter all little boys in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood who were two years old or under, in order to destroy a rival King, Jesus — were getting perilously near the cave at Bethlehem, where at first they little expected Our Lord to be. Saint Joseph received a message from God through an Angel, whereupon he took Our Lady and the Divine Infant and set off leaving the land of the Jews to travel to a land of the Gentiles. They took no-one with them, by way of servants or friends, as Saint Peter Chrysologus tells us.
The Town to which the Holy Family fled was called Fostat. It was three hundred miles from Bethlehem. A Church has been erected there, on the site of the house where the Holy Family lived during their exile. The little Town where the Holy Family lived in Egypt was not far from Heliopolis, a City in which — when Jesus, Mary and Joseph passed through it — statues of pagan gods crashed to the ground. Both Fostat and Heliopolis are not far from Cairo in Egypt.
St Lupiano St Mesrop the Teacher St Polychronius of Babylon St Romulus the Martyr St Secundian the Martyr
St Silvinus (c650-c717) Bishop, Missionary evangeliser in north-eastern pagain regions of France, gifted with miracles. Born of Celtic origins and died on 15 February c717 at the Abbey of Auchy-les-Moines, Artois, in Belgium. The Roman Martyrology reads today: “In the territory of Thérouanne, St Silvinus, Bishop of Toulouse.” His Holy Life: https://anastpaul.com/2025/02/17/saint-of-the-day-17-february-saint-silvinus-c650-c717-bishop/
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