For athletes and soldiers

To the martyr who survived his own execution.

A soldier in the Praetorian Guard, Sebastian was denounced as a Christian and shot through with arrows. He recovered, confronted the emperor, and was beaten to death. He is patron of athletes, soldiers, and those who have to go back and face something a second time.

The Prayer

St. Sebastian, soldier and martyr,
you were left for dead and got up again.

Pray for athletes, for soldiers and for police officers;
for all who put their bodies between danger and other people.

Give them courage, discipline and clear judgment,
and bring them home.

And pray for me when I must face again
something that has already defeated me once. Amen.

About This Devotion

His feast is 20 January. He was invoked against plague through the Middle Ages, and his image — a young man bound to a post, pierced with arrows — became one of the most painted subjects in Western art.