A great pilgrimage like pin to a month dedicated to the Holy Martyrs. For four years, the Santos Mártires de Córdoba Diocesan Foundation has been inviting all its educational centers to this tour through the streets of November 17, accompanied by the passage with the images of San Acisclo and Santa Victoria.
The image of Saint Pelagiuscarried on a stretcher by the seminarians, joined this Sunday in the celebration of the patron saints of Cordoba because it is a jubilee year dedicated to him.
This experience of faith that lives throughout educational community of the Foundationfrom students to teachers, staff and families, delves in prayer, reflection and joy into the legacy and current example of life of those who died for their faith. The blood shed germinates in new Christians.
And he transmitted to the streets what had been worked on in the classrooms and during training activities in previous weeks. THE Christ of Love Group He performed the march “Virgen de los Estudiantes”, by Abel Moreno, when San Acisclo and Santa Victoria, with their usual red floral decoration, left the cathedral.
Here fourth edition The procession ended at the San Pelagius Seminary, the training place for new priests. Catechesis, the family and the Catholic school are also, after all, nurseries of vocations.
During the previous mass in the Cathedral, the Bishop of Cordoba, Démetrio Fernándezindicated this Sunday that “today is a very great celebration, with rank of solemnity in Cordoba”. The prelate welcomed the members of the schools present.
He began by recalling that in the time of Diocletian, when Saint Acisclus and Saint Victoria were assassinated, “the entire Iberian Peninsula was dyed red”, and he assured that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of new Christians” .
He exalted Saint Pelagius, in the 1100th anniversary of his martyrdom. “He preferred martyrdom to the seductions or flatteries of Abd al-Rahman III,” he summarized. He also encouraged the work of schools, “which offer children a Christian climate, at a time when being a Christian is not at all easy.”
He stressed that “it is a catholic school in which you breathe God and the love of Jesus Christ, with a vision of the world, of history and of the Christian faith”, he summarized.
Persecuted Christians
For him, martyrdom “is not an ancient thing that has been captured in pretty images, but it is still relevant today because there are 300 million persecuted Christians in the world. We are counting on them and on their testimony which gives life to the Church”, he declared, before discussing how the redthe liturgical color of the martyrs, “is that of forgiveness, of love, of coexistence, which builds and invites this love which springs from the Holy Spirit”.
And this must be made visible in the Christian charitya day when the World Day of the Poor is celebrated. “Isn’t Spain a Catholic nation?” There should be no poor people, or those who are poor should not be taken care of,” he shouted.
Present at the Eucharist were the mayor of Cordoba, Jose Maria Bellidoand the director of the Santos Mártires de Córdoba Foundation, Rocío Asensio.
