Happy Feast Day, Sebastianites
Dear Family,
This weekend - the 20th to be precise, we celebrate the feast of St. Sebastian, our patron. Until I came here in 2010, I really did not know very much about him at all. I remember seeing statues and images, usually with a lot of arrows. As a kid I think the few times I saw Sebastian portrayed, I thought it was a little weird. But I wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.
If you want an interesting little adventure, ‘google’ “St Sebastian Catholic.org” There’s a short video from the Catholic Online people that I think does a nice job of piecing together Sebastian’s story. Sometimes separating the fable from the fact is hard. The bottom line is Sebastian’s heroism in the face of the emperor Diocletian’s evil, not once but twice. His martyrdom is dated to 288 and it didn’t take long for his fame to spread. Less than 100 years later, in Milan, St. Ambrose speaks of Sebastian and what a great example of faith we can find in his life.