ROME LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, 10 December 1914, Page 53

ROME LETTER

(From our own correspondent.)

IN THE CATACOMB OF ST. SEBASTIAN.

What a good memory is that of the Church for the memory of her saints! It is a long cry from 1914 back to 288 A.D., but the memory of St. Sebastian is still as green in Rome as if he died for the faith only yesterday. In every Catholic heart the details of the soldier’s two-fold martyrdom are enshrined. How the young officer of the Pretorian Guard, on being denounced to the Emperor Diocletian as a Christian, was tied to a tree on the Palatine Hill to be slowly shot to death by the picked archers of Mauretania. How arrow after arrow was sent into - the non vital parts of his frame until, believing him dead, the marksmen turned laughingly away. And Irene, the pious Roman matron, took away the body for burial; but, on finding Sebastian still breathed, she nursed him back to strength in her humble home. Each of us knows how he disdained the advice to flee on recovering health and vigor. On the marble steps of Diocletian’s palace the young officer rebuked the tyrant for his cruelty to the Christians, and consequently earned’ the crown of martyrdom by being clubbed to death by the Emperor’s orders. And the body was laid in a catacomb beside the Appian Way by the widow, Lucina, and there St. Sebastian sleeps venerated by Christendom. Three miles from Rome he lies in the church bearing his name, the ancient edifice built over the catacomb, which is also called after him. From the earliest times of the ancient Church the Catacomb of, St. Sebastian was held in deep veneration, and this not only because of its sacred character, but because- the first corpses laid in its soil were those of SS. Peter and Paul. No 'sooner had news of the martyrdom of the Princes of the Church reached the East than the Oriental Christians despatched secret messengers to steal home the two bodies: they being fellow-countrymen of Peter and Paul had a right to the venerable remains prior to that of the Romans.

1 These,’ says Northcote, ‘ so far prospered in their mission as to gain a momentary possession of the sacred relics, which they carried off along the Appian Way, as far as the spot where the Church of St. Sebastian was afterwards built. Here they rested for a while, to make all things ready for their journey, or, according to another account, were detained by a thunderstorm of extraordinary violence,' which delay, however occasioned, was sufficient to enable the Christians of Rome to overtake them and recover their lost treasure. These Roman Christians then buried the bodies, with the utmost secrecy, in a deep pit, which they dug on the very spot where they were. Soon, indeed, they were restored to their original place of sepulture, as we know from contemporary authorities; and there seems reason to believe the old ecclesiastical tradition to be correct which states them to have only remained in this temporary abode for a year and seven months. The body of St. Peter, however, was destined to revisit it a second time, and for a longer period; for when, at the beginning of the third century, Heliogabulus made his circus at the Vatican, Calixtus, who was then Pope, removed the relics of the Apostle to their former temporary resting place, the pit on the Appian Way. But in A.D. 257, St. Stephen, the Pope, having been discovered in this very cemetery and having suffered martyrdom there, the body of St. Peter was once more removed and restored to its original tomb in the Vatican.’

This is no mere tradition. Pope St. Damasus mentions the fact. Pope St. Gregory does likewise in a letter to the Empress Constantia; and for seventeen centuries; the identical spot in which the two bodies lay, swathed in bands, as if they were mummies, is pointed out beneath the church, the spot called the * Platonia.’

How profound was the love the primitive Christians bore towards Peter and Paul. They loved them in life; they would be with them in death. When 1 a Pope came to die, his last, command was:, Bury me near Blessed Peter, whether the Apostle’ slept on the slope of the Vatican Hill or in the pit on the Appian Way. And therefore on descending, to the Platonia we do not feel surprised on reading the inscription on a slab of marble : ‘ln this thrice sacred place which is called “Ad Catacumbas,’’ the bodies of 174,000 holy martyrs and 46 Popes were buried. At the altar under which the body of Blessed Sebastian the athlete of Christ lies, the Sovereign Pontiff, Gregory the Great, saw an angel of God, whiter than snow, assisting him in the tremendous sacrifice and saying; “This is the thrice blessed place in which rests the divine promise and the remission of sins, splendor and eternal, light, unending joy, which Sebastian, a martyr for, Christ’s sake, merited to obtain.’ We feel we are standing here on holy soil. We disregard the damp clayey smell in the spiritual delight that overpowers the soil. As we examine the slabs covering niches in which the dead still lie undisturbed, we come upon the only representation of the Nativity which has yet been discovered in the catacombs. And in that corner Pope St. Stephen was beheaded, sitting in his chair of marble, by the satellites of Emperor Valerian. In the depths of this catacomb many of our modern saints loved to contemplate the glory of the Crucifix. Here St. Bridget of Sweden was often in ecstasy, and here our Lord in person revealed to her that angels kept continual guard over the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul during the period of their concealment in the Platonia. Down in these darksome passages St. Charles Borromeo loved to pour out his great soul in thanksgiving. And it was the custom of St. Philip Neri to frequently pass the whole night alone with the dead, and occasionally to remain three days and nights here without food or drink, even before he became a priest. And on the 20th of January each year, the Feast of St. Sebastian, every nation under heaven is represented to honor the spot where the tribune of the.first cohort lies.