During difficult and trying times, as we are all experiencing now, it is natural to look for almost any sign of hope, inspiration, or strength. When my family and I came across the following story from the Lives of the Saints, our spirits were immediately lifted and filled with prayerful hope in God and in the grace of His Saints. The story we read was the following:
“Saints Victor and Corona contested in Damascus in the year 160 AD, during the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius. The pagans arrested Saint Victor as a Christian and cut off his fingers, put out his eyes, and beheaded him. As Saint Corona, the wife of a certain Christian soldier, saw Victor’s nobility in his sufferings, she loudly cried out to call him blessed and to say that she saw two crowns prepared, one for him, and one for herself. She also was taken, and was tied to two palm trees which had been bowed down; when they were released, she was torn asunder.”
These two martyrs bear significant and meaningful names. Victor means victory and Corona means crown, and one cannot but help to find meaning in these Saints’ names and lives relevant to our current predicament. Moreover, some say that Saint Corona is a patron saint for pestilences and epidemics, the coronavirus being the pathogen we are currently plagued with in our world.
So let us add entreaties to these holy martyrs to our daily prayers, as we invoke also the Most Holy Mother of God and Saint Haralambos, for deliverance from and victory over the plague which is upon us, and that they may intercede on our and the world’s behalf before the throne of our merciful God.
Saints Victor and Corona, pray for us!