St. Sebastian (SNV 24) Key Ring

St. Sebastian (3rd century), patron of soldiers, was a career military man in the Roman army... and a Christian. If you ask most people how he died, they’d say that he was shot to death with arrows. They’d be wrong. Though left for dead on an archery practice range, thanks to the ministrations of St. Irene, he survived that “first” martyrdom. The “second”, however, proved fatal: he was beaten to death with clubs, his body thrown in a sewer. Because of his physical resilience, dogged determination, and capacity for endurance, St. Sebastian is also patron of athletes. + Image Credit: Antique image of St. Sebastian from a late 19th-century chromoxylographic devotional print published by St. Norbertus Verlag, Vienna, Austria, in the designer’s collection of religious ephemera. + Feast: January 20