Saint Cyril
Child Martyr
(Third century)

Saint Cyril, while still a boy at Caesarea in Cappadocia, suffered during the persecutions of the third century. He had been secretly instructed in Christianity and would repeat the name of Christ at all times, confessing that the mere utterance of this Name was beneficial. For this, his pagan father, plunged in the superstitions of paganism, made him suffer all kinds of bad treatment. But he bore all with joy, increasing in the strength of Christ who dwelt within him, and drawing many children of his own age to the imitation of his angelic life. When his father in fury put him out of the house, he said he would receive a great recompense in exchange.

The city's governor, when informed of what had occurred, asked that the young Cyril be brought to him. When he heard him confess the name of Jesus Christ, he was filled with wrath, but dissimulated it and tried to gain the youth by fine promises. He assured him he would pardon his fault, reconcile him with his father and guarantee his future inheritance. The boy replied that he would be poor on earth, in order to possess eternal riches in another world, and said he did not fear death. He was taken away as though to be tortured, but the governor told the executioners merely to frighten him.

He was taken to a blazing fire as if for execution, and then brought back and interrogated again; but he only protested against the cruel delay. He manifested the same heavenly desires to the end. Led out to die, he asked the executioners to make haste, gazed unmoved at the flames, this time truly kindled for him, and in which he expired, after saying to onlookers that they should be joyful, and that they were weeping only because they did not know his hope or the kingdom which he was about to enter.

Reflection. Ask Our Lord to make all earthly joy insipid, and to fill you with a constant desire for heaven. This desire will make labor easy and suffering light. It will make you fervent and detached, and bring you a foretaste of that eternal joy and peace to which you are hastening.

Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 5; Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler's Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894)