AUGUST 11 – SS. TIBURTIUS AND SUSANNA, MARTYRS.

GRESTIUS CHROMATIUS was vicar to the prefect of Rome, and had condemned several martyrs in the reign of Carinus; and in the first years of Diocletian, St. Tranquillinus, being brought before him, assured him that, having been afflicted with the gout, he had recovered a perfect state of health by being baptized. Chromatius was troubled with the same distemper, and being convinced by this miracle of the truth of the Gospel, sent for a priest, and, receiving the sacrament of baptism, was freed from that corporal infirmity. Chromatius’s son, Tiburtius, was ordained subdeacon, and was soon after betrayed to the persecutors, condemned to many torments, and at length beheaded on the Lavican Road, three miles from Rome, where a church was afterward built. His father, Chromatius, retiring into the country, lived there concealed, in the fervent practice of all Christian virtues.

ST. SUSANNA was nobly born in Rome, and is said to have been niece to Pope Caius. Having made a vow of virginity, she refused to marry, on which account she was impeached as a Christian, and suffered with heroic constancy a cruel martyrdom. St. Susanna suffered towards the beginning of Diocletian’s reign, about the year 295.

REFLECTION: Sufferings were to the martyrs the most distinguishing mercy, extraordinary graces, and sources of the greatest crowns and glory. All afflictions which God sends are in like manner the greatest mercies and blessings; they are the most precious talents to be improved by us to the increasing of our love and affection to God, and the exercise of the most heroic virtues of self-denial, patience, humility, resignation, and penance.

WORD OF THE DAY

RESISTING AGGRESSION. The right to use force against an unjust aggressor. This right is present when certain conditions are fulfilled, namely: 1. recourse to civil authority would be impossible. The common good demands that as a rule the State alone uses physical compulsion, for if any private citizen could at will employ force in defending his or her rights, the peace and order of the community would be disturbed; 2. the attack must be actual or immediately imminent; it is wrong to use deadly weapons before the attack, since there is grave danger that such force might be used against an innocent person; nor is it permissible to use such weapons after the attack is over, for then the defense is too late and the act of possible killing would constitute revenge; 3. the attack must be unjust, which really means that it is not provoked; aggression, therefore, is not justified; 4. the force employed must be proportionate to the loss threatened and must not exceed what is necessary; killing is not allowed if wounding would be sufficient for proper defense; wounding is not permitted if disarming the adversary or summoning help would be enough.

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

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