Live to Die another day- Feast of Noble St. Sebastian (HT To the Awesome St. Irene)

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 pastor wrote some lyrics to go to the tune of O God Beyond All Praising. After all, 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:

Who is St. Sebastian?

St. Sebastian was born in Gaul (a piece of land near modern-day France and Belgium).  He traveled to Rome to be a soldier and became a captain under Emperor Diocletian.  But Diocletian is famous for persecuting and executing Christians. Despite his position with the Roman Army serving the emperor, Sebastian was responsible for converting many to Christianity and many miracles were attributed to the saint.

Sebastian is most often pictured bound with arrows poking out of his body. This is because his pro-Christian activities were discovered and he was condemned to be executed by arrow. He was seriously injured and left for dead. However, I heard the reason he wasn’t killed was that his fellow soldiers couldn’t bring themselves to make an absolute kill shot on a fellow soldier. 

Who is St. Irene?

Nonetheless, 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.

Sebastian recovered his health and went back to persuade/confront Diocletian again – and was successfully murdered for his trouble.  I often ponder how St. Irene must have felt about that! Personally, I think I would have knocked 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, the dying, and police officers. He is also the patron against the Plague

Usually, my parish hands out chocolate arrows to the school children and PSR students. I don’t see that happening with COVID restrictions this year. 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.

The artwork above was commissioned by my parish and is displayed for St. Sebastian’s feast day every year.  Our pastor explains each of the commissioned pieces here:

The Basilica of St. Sebastian on the Apian Way. 
Images of St. Sebastian in art and iconography.