Today the Church remembers St. Acacius of Apamea, Martyr.
Ora pro nobis.
In the year 321 AD, even after Constantine ended the official persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire in 313 AD, the elderly Acacius was brought to trial in the Syrian city of Apamea for his being a Christian and an evangelist. His evangelistic work was brought to the attention of the cities leaders as causing social unrest. The local officials, ignoring the imperial edict giving freedom of religion to Christians, attempted to compel him to offer sacrifice to idols after having illegally subjected him to fierce tortures (not uncommon in isolated pockets for many years following the Edict of Milan of 313 AD).
Licinius gave orders to rend the body of Acacius with instruments of torture. Acacius would not renounce the Faith or offer sacrifices to idols even under threat of further torture. Licinius then sent him to Terence, who gave orders to throw Acacius into a cauldron filled with boiling tar and tallow, but the martyr remained unharmed and resolute in the Faith.
Terence went to the cities of Apamea and Apollonia and gave orders to bring the martyr after him, depriving him of food and keeping him in chains. In one of these cities, Acacius was led into a pagan temple, but by his prayer all the idols there fell down. After their idols were destroyed, the people demanded his punishment and death, and so they beat the saint viciously and gave him over to be eaten by wild beasts. When they saw that he remained unharmed, they threw him into a red-hot furnace. Acacius also remained unharmed there. Terence, wanting to check whether the furnace was sufficiently hot, went near it and was burned himself.
Having failed to force Acacius to renounce the Faith, they then took him for torture to a certain Posidonius, who put heavy fetters on him and gave orders to take him to the city of Miletus. There also the saint, by his prayer, destroyed idols. Finally, the exhausted torturers, seeing that he would not renounce the Faith, beheaded him.
A priest by the name of Leontius buried his body in the city of Synados (Asia Minor).
Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyr Acacius triumphed over suffering and was faithful even to death: Grant us, who now remember him in thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to you in this world, that we may receive with him the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
