July 27th - St. Pantaleon By: John Mannikoikal

Pantaleon was born in northern Turkey near the Black Sea. His mother, Eubula, died while Pantaleon was still young and his father, Eustorgus, sent him to study under a famous physician. Eventually, he was appointed as the royal physician to the court of Emperor Maximian. During his work as a physician, he experienced miraculous healing of a child who was bitten by a viper and was meant to die. Needing no more proof of the power of the Lord, he was baptized and undertook a course to study his newly found faith. Later he cured a man of blindness and when his father died he liberated the slaves from his family’s estate. Then he sold all of his possessions and gave the money to the freed slaves. He cured other illnesses and soon became known throughout Nicomedia, attracting attention from competing physicians who reported him to the Emperor. Pantaleon was asked to make a sacrifice to the Roman gods but he refused he was sentenced to torture and death. Pantaleon became a martyr when he was beheaded in 303.

INTERCESSORY PRAYER

St. Pantaleon who during your life had great pity for the sick and with the help of God often relieved and cured them, I invoke your intercession with God, that I may obtain the grace to serve Him in good health by cheerfully fulfilling the duties of my state of life. But if it is God’s Holy Will to allow me illness, pain, and suffering, aid me with your powerful prayer to submit humbly to His trials and crosses, to accept sickness in the spirit of penance, and to bear all patiently according to His Holy Will. Amen.