11 December Saint Damasus short movie

Pope Damasus I had a deep devotion to the martyrs of the early Church. He saw them as examples of the total and loving offering that we are called to make and which we renew each day with our Daily Offering. Let us renew it now as we reflect on part of a treatise by St. Augustine which appears in the Office of Readings for todays feast.

We, the Christian community, assemble to celebrate the memory of the martyrs with ritual solemnity because we want to be inspired to follow their example, share in their merits, and be helped by their prayers. Yet we erect no altars to any of the martyrs, even in the martyrs burial chapels themselves. No bishop, when celebrating at an altar where these holy bodies rest, has ever said, Peter, we make this offering to you, or Paul, to you, or Cyprian, to you. No, what is offered is offered always to God, who crowned the martyrs. We offer in the chapels where the bodies of those he crowned rest, so the memories that cling to those places will stir our emotions and encourage us to greater love both for the martyrs whom we can imitate and for God whose grace enables us to do so.