St. Praxedes

According to legend, Saint Praxedis (whose name means 'one who does well'), was a 2nd-century daughter of a disciple of St Paul living in Rome, and sister of Saint Pudentiana. When the Emperor Marcus Antoninus was hunting down Christians, Saint Praxedis sought them out to relieve them with money, care and comfort. Some she hid in her house, others she encouraged to keep firm in the faith. She likewise cared for the severed bodies of those martyred for their faith.

Saint Praxedis was at first venerated as a martyr in connection with the Ecclesia Pudentiana, but afterwards a separate church was built in her honor, on the alleged site of her house, to which, when it was rebuilt by Pope Saint Paschal I (the present Santa Prassede), her relics were taken.
By the late 16th century she was especially revered by the Jesuits, an order which lived next door to Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, along the Oude Langendijk in Delft.
In the two paintings by Vermeer and Ficherelli, Saint Praxedis is shown kneeling in front of an ornate twin-handed jug into which she is squeezing a sponge soaked full with blood of a decapitated martyr.
Her effigy appears on a mosaic of the Catholic Church of Saint Praxedis in Rome (see image above).

Praxedes according to her legend was a Roman maiden, the sister of St. Pudentiana, who, when the Emperor Marcus Antoninus was hunting down Christians, sought them out to relieve them with money, care, comfort and every charitable aid. Some she hid in her house, others she encouraged to keep firm in the faith, and of yet others she buried the bodies; and she allowed those who were in prison or toiling in slavery to lack nothing. At last, being unable any longer to bear the cruelties inflicted on Christians, she prayed to God that, if it were expedient for her to die, she might be released from beholding such sufferings. And so on July 21 she was called to the reward of her goodness in Heaven. Her body was laid by the priest Pastor in the tomb of her father, Pudens, and her sister Pudentiana, which was in the cemetery of Priscilla on the Salarian Way. (From Butler’s Lives of the Saints, revised by Herbert Thurston S.J. and Donald Attwater; 1956)

Saint Praxedes is depicted in art squeezing the blood of the martyrs which she has collected from a sponge into a vessel. (Her name means 'One who does well'). In her basilica in Rome, a part of the floor in the central nave is marked as the place where their relics were laid to rest within the building that was once her house.

Especially on this day, let us remember and pray for all persecuted Christians in every part of the world.