Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian

I don't usually post every day as you know. However, upon reading about these saints, I felt compelled to enter facts concerning them. Both of these saints were converts, which I am always interested in, since I am one. Cornelius was a Roman by birth, and converted during the reign of terror of Gallus and Volusianus, who both hated the Christians, also called Nazareans. He was the one who, with the help of a lady named Lucina, found and moved the bodies of both St. Peter and St. Paul from the catacombs to a more honorable place of rest, where they are now presiding. The body of Peter was buried near the place of his execution. Then enters St. Cyprian. When he hears that Cornelius had been exiled to a place named Centucellae, he wrote to him to console him. Of course Cornelius ends up being martyred.

SAINT CYPRIAN
Doctor of the Church, Bishop of Carthage and Martyr
(†258)

Thascius Caecilianus Cyprianus (died 258) is known as St. Cyprian. As bishop of Carthage, he was the most prominent leader of Western, or Latin, Christianity in his time. He contributed to the development of thought on the nature and unity of the Church. He preceded Sts. Jerome and Augustine.

Saint Cyprian was an African of noble birth, the son of a Roman senator; he was a teacher of rhetoric in his youth, but still pagan and frivolous. In his vigorous mid-life he was converted to Christianity through the influence of a priest who was himself a convert to Christianity and was edifying all Carthage by his conversation and his virtues. A long combat followed for Cyprian, who although convinced of the truth of these excellent reasonings and the beauty of this doctrine, still had to overcome the pride of a philosopher and the worldly bent of his life of pleasure. Nonetheless, grace won out and he listened to the interior voice of conscience which constantly pressed him onward: "Courage, Cyprian! Whatever the cost, let us go to God." He sold his estates and gave the price to the poor; and it was not long after his baptism that he was ordained a priest, and then consecrated Bishop of Carthage notwithstanding his resistance. The Christian population rejoiced, sure that in him they would have a strong bulwark during persecution.

When the persecution of Decius broke out, he was the object of a search by the pagans wanting to disorganize the flock. He left his episcopal city, Carthage, and found a secure retreat, in order to continue to minister to their spiritual needs by letters and the administration of the sacraments. He went on seeing to the burial of the martyrs and the needs of those deprived of their possessions. When a pestilence broke out, he aided in the ministry to the dying. He consulted other ecclesiastical authorities as to whether he should return from his retreat; he was told to remain where he was. He maintained existing religious discipline which required penance of those who, under stress, apostatized by paying money to certain magistrates; these would write certificates saying that they had obeyed the Roman edicts. The prevaricators afterwards strove to escape the penalties and return into communion with the faithful. Saint Cyprian met much opposition by his firmness, but was sustained by Rome.

After a few years of peace under the emperor Valerian, he was finally banished and retired to a place about fifty miles from Carthage. There he learned by supernatural revelation that his future martyrdom was to occur the following year. He was discovered in a place near Carthage one day, and the sentence of death by decapitation was pronounced against him. He received it with the words, "Thanks be to God." His great desire was to die while preaching the faith of Christ, and he had the consolation of being surrounded at his martyrdom by crowds of his faithful children; there he paid the trembling executioner to encourage him in his task, and, preaching very effectively both by his words and his actions, was beheaded on the 14th of September, 258. In the brief ten years of his ministry, the Church was enriched through the fidelity of the martyrs he sustained, and by the many baptisms of pagans won over to his Christian flock. A considerable number of the spectators who were still pagan wept at his martyrdom. The holy bishop was buried publicly, with great solemnity.

St. Cyprian had made an error during his life concerning whether heretics' Baptism to people was valid or not. He didn't think so. He stuck to the fact that Peter had the Keys to the Kingdom; therefore, anyone not of this train of thought was wrong. This is true. (However, even you and I can baptize, and it is valid) Given this, they should always be subject to the Church's teaching and leadership. He was forgetting that although, through our Lord's merciful liberality, the most indispensable of the Sacraments does not lose its virtue when administered even by a stranger, or even by an enemy of the Church, nevertheless, it derives its seed from and through the Bride of Christ, the Church.

Cyprian had said: "He that keeps not the unity of the Church, does he think to keep the Faith? He that abandons the See of Peter whereon the Church is founded, can he flatter himself that he is still in the Church?" (Boy, can this be said for these days also or what?)

Following is the story of his bravery in the face of death, one that includes NOT betraying the Faith of Christ. This taken from 'The Liturgical Year' by the Abbot Gueranger:

'(Even though) Cyprian was great in his life, He was still greater in death. Valerian had given orders for the extermination of the principal clergy; and in Rome, Sixtus II, followed by Laurence, had led the way to martyrdom. Galerius Maximus, proconsul of Africa, was then holding his assizes (courts), at Utica, and commanded Thascius Cyprian to be brought before him. But the Bishop would not allow the 'honor of his Church to be mutilated', by dying at a distance from his episcopal city. He therefore waited till the proconsul had returned to Carthage, and then delivered himself up by making a public entrance into the town.

In the house which served for a few hours as his prison, Cyprian, calm and unmoved, gathered his friends and family for the last time around his table. The Christians hastened from all parts to spend the night with their pastor and father. Thus, while he yet lived, they kept the first vigil of his future feast. When, in the morning, he was led before the proconsul, they offered him an armchair draped like a Bishop's seat. It was indeed the beginning of an episcopal function, the pontiff's own peculiar office being to give his life for the Church, in union with the eternal High Priest. The interrogatory was short, for there was no hope of shaking his constancy; and the judge pronounced sentence that Thascius Cyprian must die by the sword. On the way to the place of execution, the soldiers formed a guard of honor to the Bishop, who advanced calmly, surrounded by his clergy as on days of solemnity. Deep emotion stirred the immense crowd of friends and enemies who had assembled to assist at the sacrifice. The hour had come. The pontiff prayed prostrate upon the ground; then rising, he ordered twenty-five gold pieces to be given to the executioner, and, taking off his tunic, handed it to the deacons. He himself tied the bandage over his eyes; a priest, assisted by a subdeacon, bound his hands; while the people spread linen cloths around him to receive his blood. Not until the Bishop himself had given the word of command, did the trembling executioner lower his sword. In the evening, the Faithful came with torches and with hymns to bury Cyprian in the year 258.'

Cyprian was a mixture of kindness and courage, vigor and steadiness. He was cheerful and serious, so that people did not know whether to love or respect him more. He waxed warm during the baptismal controversy; his feelings must have concerned him, for it was at this time that he wrote his treatise on patience. St. Augustine remarks that Cyprian atoned for his anger by his glorious martyrdom.

Following is from a treatise he wrote, trying to strengthen his followers< and it could have been written yesterday, if you ask me. Even if you don't ask me. '...heresies not only have frequently been originated, but continue to be so; while the perverted mind has no peace--while a discordant faithlessness does not maintain unity. But the Lord permits and suffers these things to be, while the choice of one's own liberty remains,so that while the discrimination of truth is testing our hearts and our minds, the sound faith of those that are approved may shine forth with manifest light. The Holy Spirit forewarns and says by the apostle, "It is needful also that there should be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." Thus the faithful are approved, thus the perfidious are detected; thus even here, before the day of judgment,the souls of the righteous and of the unrighteous are already divided, and the chaff is separated from the wheat. These are they who of their own accord, without any divine arrangement, set themselves to preside among the daring strangers assembled, who appoint themselves prelates without any law of ordination, who assume to themselves the name of bishop, although no one gives them the episcopate; whom the Holy Spirit points out in the Psalms as sitting in the seat of pestilence, plagues, and spots of the faith,deceiving with serpent's tongue, and artful in corrupting the truth, vomiting forth deadly poisons from pestilential tongues; whose speech doth creep like a cancer, whose discourse forms a deadly poison in the heart and breast of every one.'


I wish we had someone who spoke like this today!