Our daily liturgy gives us scriptures to read and saints to celebrate. This week in our lectionary we continue to read from the Gospel of Mark and the 1st Book of Samuel. Today we remember Fabian, an early pope and  martyr, and Sebastian, a soldier saint and martyr.  Tomorrow we have Agnes, a young girl and early martyr. 

Our lectionary readings are not chosen haphazardly. After the feast of the Baptism we began reading each day from the Gospel of Mark, the first of the gospels to be written, an appropriate reading for following Jesus as he begins his ministry in Galilee. 

The saints point out how others have followed him. . The three martyrs we remember this week are examples of some who were put to death in persecutions that took place in the early church. Fabian was put to death at the beginning of the Decian persecution (250) because he was a church leader. The Roman strategy was to kill church leaders and their followers would scatter. 

Sebastian was a soldier saint martyred in the Diocletian persecution. From what we know, Christians were highly regard by the emperor when he first came to power, but then he turned against them,  especially the officer class. Like Sebastian, many of them holding influential positions in the empire were put to death for their supposed disloyalty. 

Agnes was not killed in a general persecution like Fabian and Sebastian.  She died because Christians were legally vulnerable in the centuries before Constantine. The Romans were suspicious of them. Agnes a victim of a powerful Roman man who used the Roman judicial system to punish a young Christian girl who  would not let him have his way with her.