The Feast of St. Sebastian

Father Lawrence Lew, OP via Flickr, licensed cc.

Today is the feast of St. Sebastian, who is also the patron of the church I attend. In honor of our patron saint, our parish commissioned a hymn which premiered at mass last year. Afterall, it’s not like there are lots of St. Sebastian hymns to choose from!

A few years ago our parish’s contemporary music group sang a song about the saints and I wrote a verse specifically about St. Sebastian:

St. Sebastian was a guard at the time of Diocletian. He was responsible for converting many to Christianity and many miracles were attributed to the saint.

He is most often pictured bound with arrows poking out of his body.

He was seriously injured and left for dead. St. Irene found him barely alive and carefully tended him back to health, and I might add, without the help of antibiotics! She must have been extraordinarily gifted.

Nonetheless, he recovered his health and went back to persuade/confront Diocletian again – and was was successfully murdered for his trouble.  I often ponder how St. Irene must have felt about that!

Personally, I think I would have conked him over the head to keep him away from the evil emperor – which is probably why she is a great saint and I’m not.

He is the patron of soldiers, athletes, and police officers.

Usually, my parish hands out chocolate arrows to the school children and PSR students. But as a family, red velvet cake is always a nice way to celebrate a martyr.

My girls and I decided that Diocletian got too much mention in the parish hymn, so we came up with a verse to honor St. Irene

Mr. Pete scoffs at this – I challenged him to make up one of his own, which he has yet to do!  It’s not as easy as it seems.

More interesting files about St. Sebastian in my Diigo files!

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