[Officium]
Ss. Marius, Martha, Audifax, and Abachum, Martyrs

[Oratio]
Graciously hear, O Lord, the prayers of thy people who draw near unto thee under the protection of thy blessed Saints, granting us in this world thy peace, and in that which is to come life everlasting.
$Per Dominum

[Lectio93]
Maris was a Persian of high rank, who came to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, with his wife Martha, who was equally noble, and their two sons Audifax and Abachum, to pray at the graves of the Martyrs. Here they comforted the Christians who were in prison, and whom they relieved by their ministrations and alms, and buried the bodies of the Saints. For these acts they were all arrested, but no threats or terrors could move them to sacrifice to idols. They were accordingly mangled with clubs, and drawn with ropes, after which they were burnt by applying plates of red-hot metal to their bodies, and their flesh partly torn off with metal hooks. Lastly their hands were all cut off, and they were fastened together by the neck, in which state they were driven through the city to the thirteenth mile-stone on the Cornelian Way, a place now called Santa Ninfa, where they were to die. Martha addressed a moving exhortation to her husband and sons to hold out bravely to the last, for the love of Jesus Christ; and was then herself drowned. The other three martyrs were next beheaded in the same sand-pit. Their bodies were thrown into a fire. The lady Felicity of Rome collected the half-burnt remains, and caused them to be buried at her own farm.
&teDeum