Cyriacus, Largus, and Smaragdus, MARTYRS, A.D. 203.
by VP
Posted on Friday August 08, 2025 at 12:00AM in Saints
St. Cyriacus, Terror of Hell
"ST. CYRIACUS was a holy deacon at Rome, under the popes Marcellinus and Marcellus. He was imprisoned under the Emperor Dioclesian; but being set at liberty, went into Persia, where having converted the Emperor, with several others, to the Christian faith, he returned to Rome. Being seized by order of Maximian, he was drawn in chains before his chariot, and after some days, having suffered the cruel torments of boiling pitch and the rack, was at length beheaded, in the year 303. With him suffered also Largus and Smarag dus, with twenty other Christians.
Admire the constancy of these primitive Christians; and having given God thanks for it, reproach yourself with your own impatience, who, in your ordinary trials, so very inconsiderable, if compared to theirs, shew so little courage in bearing them, and so little submission to the will of God, from whose hand they come. Do you not reflect that all your dejection and melancholy is want of courage, and your great uneasiness want of patience and submission? And how long are you to go on thus ? You often honour the martyrs; but what is this honour, if you do not imitate them, as your circumstances require ? You pray for heaven; but what will your prayers avail, if you do not make use of those means, which God sends you to fit you for salvation, and bring you to him? Do you expect to go to heaven by some extraordinary means, when you thus refuse to accept of the ordinary way of salvation, even that way by which Christ and all his saints have gone? A Christian must fight and labour, and ever proportion his diligence to the difficulties of his work, and to the opposition which he daily meets. Upon these terms he need not doubt of a powerful assistance from above, but may feel secure of having heaven on his side." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother
PRAYER IN HONOR OF ST. CYRIACUS:
GOD, who didst grant to St. Cyriacus the grace of heroic charity and trustful resignation to Thy holy will; bestow upon us, through his intercession, the grace to walk before Thee in self-denying charity and to know and fulfil Thy will in all things. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
INVOCATION OF ST. CYRIACU:
ST. CYRIACUS, great servant of God, loving Christ with all thy heart, thou didst for His sake also love thy fellow-men, and didst serve them even at the peril of thy life, for which charity God rewarded thee with the power to overcome Satan, the arch-enemy, and to deliver the poor obsessed from his dreadful tyranny; implore for me of God an effective, real, and true charity. Show thy power over Satan also in me; deliver me from his influence when he tries to tempt me. Help me to repel his assaults and to gain the victory over him in life and in death. Amen.
Source: Mary, help of Christians and the fourteen saints invoked as holy helpers 1909 Compiled by Rev. Bonaventure Hammer, OFM
