Augustine Sokolovski
The great righteous man of recent times, Saint John of Shanghai (1896-1866), was especially concerned about the revival of the veneration of ancient Orthodox saints of the Christian West. The name of Saint Saturninus, along with other ancient saints, was added to the liturgical calendar in March 2017 by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Church. There is a connection between the will of Saint John and the addition of the calendar. After all, since the time of his service in the Orthodox diaspora, work has been underway to study the lives of saints, ancient martyrs, ascetics and hierarchs, who were once not included in the calendar. The memory of Saint Saturninus in the Orthodox Church is now celebrated on December 12 (November 29).
According to the life, Saint Saturninus suffered for Christ during the cruel persecution of Emperor Decius (249-251). He was a wandering bishop, that is, according to the apostolic tradition, he moved from place to place to preach the gospel, and did not tie himself to any permanent place. This was due to the fact that in the places of his preaching, in the south of Gaul, there were no established Christian communities at that time. Where there were no Christians, there was no persecution. So Saturninus could well have hidden from the centralized persecution that had begun in the Roman Empire. However, he continued to preach. The life says that one day he became a witness to pagan sorcery in an idol temple. When he appeared, the idols fell silent. Then the wrath of the crowd fell upon the saint. They tied him to a bull and thus condemned him to torture. The essence of Saturninus' Christian testimony was revealed in the confession of faith in the One God in the face of idolatry and the readiness, like the Lord Jesus in the Gospel, to voluntarily suffer, not running away from death. In the Gospel, this voluntary action of the Lord Himself was revealed in the founding words of the Last Supper. The suffering of Saint Saturninus took place in the region of the ancient French metropolis of Toulouse. Tradition calls the martyr the first bishop of the city.
Like Saint Dionysius of Paris, Irenaeus of Lyons, Victor of Marseilles and other ancient saints, the martyr Saturninus was one of those, thanks to whose preaching the previously pagan Roman Empire, even in its remote regions, believed in Christ. So that already in the 4th century, Emperor Constantine the Great (+337) dared to proclaim Christianity the official confession of the Empire. Christians then made up no more than ten percent, but they were everywhere. The stages of this proclamation were: the Edict of Milan (313); the Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (325) and the foundation of Constantinople (330). The revival of Jerusalem as a biblical and Christian city became an important stage on this path, when in 335 the Church of the Resurrection of Christ was consecrated.
The idea of a Christian Orthodox Empire was subsequently adopted by Orthodox states, the family of which was headed by the Russian Empire for a long time. In its ideological part, it also relied on the idea of Orthodox Roman statehood, the personification of which was the motto: "Moscow is the Third Rome". Only thanks to the genuine Christian faith, the continuity of tradition was born between the ancient saints and us. But for faith this is not "archiving an archive", not just a glorious heritage. The example of Saint Saturninus teaches us to preserve and proclaim the Gospel, and, most importantly, not to hide this saving treasure from others.