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Dear Alice,
Yes, St Pontian and Hippolytus.
Today marks the memorial of two relatively unknown saints, one a Pope and
one a priest (of Rome) who, although unknown, have made a mark in the history
of the Church as well as have a great lesson for us today.
The early 200's was a time of tremendous expansion (in
numbers and in geography) for the Church as well as persecution. It was
also a time of great cultural change in and around Rome. In the Western
part of the Empire, believe it or not, up until this period of time, the
common language was Greek, but the culture was changing drastically and
the language was changing to Latin in the West.
Pope Zephyrin was
the first Pope to celebrate a Mass in Latin but his successor Pope
St Callistus instituted it, promulgated it, and all hell broke loose
in the Church. Some thought the end of the Church was upon them. They stated
Callistus had gone too far.
They felt Callistus had liberalized the Church too far and
the world was taking the Church away.
Around this time, these forces of opposition elected for themselves their
own pope an
anti-pope, the priest Hippolytus (the
y is a short "i"). He set himself up to rule the faction that
wanted to preserve Greek in Rome in the Liturgy. He wrote many
commentaries on Scripture but perhaps the best known work of his
is the Apostolic Constitution, in which he set down for posterity the form
of the Liturgy, including what we know as the Eucharistic Prayer (Anaphora) all in Greek. We now know of it as Eucharistic Prayer II.
Not long after, Pope
St Callistus was martyred.
Note: If you were born on a different day and wish to know if your birthday falls on the feast day of a saint in the Church, go to the:
Thanks for writing,
Fr. Francis
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