Sixtus
Pope Sixtus II is mentioned in the Roman Canon. I used to find the lists of saints in the Canon dull. Others must have felt the same, else the Missal would not have given the option of cutting them. As the years passed, though, the names came alive, each redolent with a personal story, a presence. The lists are now very dear to me. I feel a stab of pain when they are shorn. Pope Sixtus II was pope for less than a year in 257-8, a generation after the death of St Cecilia. He was St Lawrence’s bishop. Both were killed on the orders of Valerian, the emperor, four days apart. Sixtus was preaching to the people when soldiers came and dragged him away to be beheaded. A century later Pope Damasus placed an epitaph on his tomb. It begins: Tempore quo gladius secuit pia viscera Matris hic positus Rector caelestia iussa docebam, ‘At the time when the sword pierced the Mother’s pious bowels I, the [people’s] guide, lying here, was expounding the divine commandments.’ His feast invites us to remember thankfully all those bishops of Rome who have stood firm when impious arms have sought to molest Mother Church. They instantiate Christ’s promise to Peter, showing that the Church is built on Rock and that ‘the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.’
