The Word of God

Optional Memorial of Saint Fabian, Pope and Martyr

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Lectionary: 514

Below are the readings suggested for today’s Memorial. However, readings for the Memorial may also be taken fromthe Common of Martyrs, #713-718,
or the Common of Pastors: For a Pope, #719-724.

Reading 1 – 1 Pt 5:1-4

Beloved:
I exhort the presbyters among you,
as a fellow presbyter and witness to the sufferings of Christ
and one who has a share in the glory to be revealed.
Tend the flock of God in your midst,
overseeing it not by constraint but willingly,
as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.
Do not lord it over those assigned to you,
but be examples to the flock.
And when the chief Shepherd is revealed,
you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

Responsorial Psalm – Ps 40:2 and 4ab, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10

R.    (8A and 9A)  Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
I have waited, waited for the LORD,
and he stooped toward me and heard my cry.
And he put a new song into my mouth,
a hymn to our God.
R.    Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Burnt offerings or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, “Behold I come.”
R.    Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
“In the written scroll it is prescribed for me,
To do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!”
R.    Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
R.    Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.

Alleluia – Jn 10:14

R.    Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.
R.    Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel – Jn 21:15-17

After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples and
eaten breakfast with them, he said to Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”
He then said to Simon Peter a second time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.”
He said to him the third time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time,
“Do you love me?” and he said to him,
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

The popes of the third century knew how to die

In the present day suburbs of Rome, tour buses navigate winding, narrow, tree-lined roads to carry modern pilgrims to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus. The pilgrims descend a steep staircase until they find themselves in a vast, dark, underground space. The pilgrims slowly walk by early Christian graffiti blanketing the walls to their right and to their left. Marble scraps of early Christian tombstones have etched upon them Greek and Latin epigraphs briefly describing whom they honor. In 1850 an archaeologist working in the St. Callixtus catacombs discovered, incredibly, just such a small chunk of marble with the following simple epitaph etched in it: “Fabian, Bishop, Martyr.” The lifeless body of today’s saint was carried in procession to the Catacombs of St. Callixtus shortly after his death in 250 A.D. In the early 1700s, Pope Fabian’s relics were transferred to the nearby Church of Saint Sebastian, where they can be found today.

A third-century letter of St. Cyprian to the deacons and priests of Rome further confirms the virtuous life and courageous death of Pope Fabian. He reigned as Pope for fourteen years before being martyred in 250 A.D. The Roman Emperor Decius was his killer.  Decius’ persecution was vicious but not universal. He tried to kill the body of the Church by cutting off the head, and so sought the Pope’s blood. It didn’t work. About 65 years later, one of Decius’ successors as emperor, Constantine, would legalize Christianity, bringing to an end almost 300 years of on-again, off-again persecution.

We can only imagine what it would be like today if the Pope were to be imprisoned and killed by the Prime Minister of Italy. Imagine the outcry! A secular power actively persecuting a religious leader! Yet perhaps such events are not so unimaginable. Pope St. John Paul II was shot, and almost killed, in 1981, probably due to dark communist forces rooted in Eastern Europe. Assassins still exist, and popes are still their targets.

According to Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote a detailed history of the Church about fifty years after Pope Fabian’s time, Fabian was a layman who went to Rome after the prior Pope’s death. He was elected Bishop of Rome due to a miraculous sign. In other words, Fabian did not strive to his high office. He did not seek to be important. He accepted his role in the full knowledge that it could lead to big trouble for him. And that trouble eventually found him. Pope Fabian’s martyrdom shows why the Church survived its early and vicious persecutions—it had leaders who knew how to die. Great deaths don’t follow shallow lives. The early popes didn’t give up or give in. They didn’t renounce the faith. They were fearless. They felt the cold metal of a sharp knife against their neck and still persevered. A religious society with such models of courage in its highest ranks had to survive. And it did survive. We are living proof of that.

St. Fabian, your papal death proved to the faithful that their leaders personally accepted what they demanded of others. Slaves, prisoners, women, outcasts, and popes all died for the faith. Help us, Fabian, to be further links in the Church’s long chain of Christian witnesses.