July 21, Feast of St. Praxedes, Adapted from Dom
Gueranger’s Liturgical Year
On this day,
the angelic St. Praxedes obtained from her Spouse release from bondage, and
from the burden of exile that weighed so heavily on this last scion of a holy
and illustrious stock. Her family received the noble title of Host of the
Prince of the Apostles, as her grandfather had hailed as his guest St. Peter,
and her family had continued the noble tradition of sheltering Christians and
encouraging them to remain faithful in persecution. In the time of Pius I, the
grandfather’s house was still the shelter of the Vicar of Christ. Left the sole heiress of such traditions,
Praxedes, after the death of her beloved sister, converted her palaces into
Churches, which resounded day and night with divine praises, and where pagans
hastened in crowds to be baptized. The policy of Antoninus respected the
dwelling of a descendant of the Cornelii ; but his adopted son, Marcus
Aurelius, would make no such exception.
New races, unknown to her fathers when they
laid the world at the feet of Rome, now governed the Eternal City. Nero and
Domitian had been actuated by a tyrannical spirit; but the philosophical
Caesars showed how absolutely they misconceived the destinies of the great
city. An assault was made upon the
title of Praxedes, and many Christians were taken and put to the sword. When
the Emperor Marcus Antoninus persecuted the Christians, she devoted both her
time and her wealth to consoling them, and doing them every charitable service
in her power. Some she concealed in her house: others she encouraged to firmness
of faith. She buried the dead, and saw that those who were imprisoned wanted
for nothing. But at length being unable to bear the grief caused by such a
wholesale butchery of the Christians, she prayed God, that if it were expedient
for her to die he would take her away from so much evil. Her prayer was heard,
and on the 21st of July, she was called to heaven, to receive the
reward of her charity. Her body was buried by the priest Pastor in the tomb
where lay her father and her sister Pudentiana, in the cemetery of Priscilla,
on the Salarian Way.
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