A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.
Read the essentials →A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.
January 23
Not verified yet
Bishop
Martyrs
Clement, bishop of Ancyra, suffered under Dioclesian and is ranked by the Greeks among the great martyrs. Butler says the later Greek acts, which stretch his torments over twenty-eight years, are of no authority.
Two churches at Constantinople were dedicated in his name. His fellow martyr Agathangelus lay with him there, and his skull was later given by Queen Anne of Austria to the abbey of Val de Grace.
Thin entry · the 1914 book gives only 202 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
S. Clement, Bishop of Ancyra, was the son of a heathen father and a Christian mother. When Clement was ten years old, his mother died. Being possessed of private means, on coming of age, he adopted a number of poor boys, and educated them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Stay faithful when it costs you. This account is about holding firm under pressure.
Make time for silence. Solitude and withdrawal to pray shape this life.
Give to people in need. The account records care for the poor.
Learn from the kind of life it was. A whole community that stayed faithful to Christ when it cost everything.
S. Clement, Bishop of Ancyra, was the son of a heathen father and a Christian mother. When Clement was ten years old, his mother died. Before her death, she summoned him to her side, and urged him not to desert Christ, whatever sufferings he might be called on to endure for His sake. Being possessed of private means, on coming of age, he adopted a number of poor boys, and educated them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. He was at length ordained Bishop of Ancyra, his native city. In the persecution of Diocletian [Roman emperor 284–305, who began the ‘Great Persecution’ of Christians in 303], he was taken and brought before the governor. He was treated with great barbarity, being torn with hooks, and his teeth and jaw broken with a large stone. As he lay among other prisoners that night in the jail, a bright light filled it, and the prisoners saw a man enter in dazzling garments, who held in his hand the Holy Eucharist, and therewith he communicated the bishop. But whether he were mortal priest, or an angel of God, no man knows. Along with Clement, one Agathangelus and many others, men, women, and boys suffered for Christ, whose names are written in the Book of Life.
Feast: January 23
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Clement of Ancyra…'s story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.
