Our Lady of Africa in Ceuta

Ceuta city has a fascinating history as the crossroads between Europe and Africa, and it has come up a few times in the past week through reading a book about Al-Andalus and in current events. A small peninsula off the African coast that juts into the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Ceuta has had a presence since the time of the Phoenicians. It fell under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate in the 700s, when Muslims moved through North Africa and conquered a large portion of the Iberian peninsula. The division between Africa and Europe was less distinct. The Umayyads were known for their pluralist society of science of arts, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews intermingled freely. After the fall of the caliphate, it fell under various Muslim rulers who were more restrictive with the Christian and Jewish populations.

Then, in 1415, Portugal conquered Ceuta. King John I gave a statue of Our Lady holding the crucified Christ to the city. This statue became known as Our Lady of Africa or Our Lady of Ceuta. A few years later, Prince Henry the Navigator, who participated in the conquest, sent a sacred image/statue to the city to consecrate the continent to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Portuguese conquest shifted Ceuta’s position from a northern post for Muslim, African rulers to reach Europe to a southern port for Christian European rulers to stage further expansion into Africa.

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus

The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus were a group of youths in 250 who faced persecution. According to the legend, seven young men were accused of following Christianity. Instead of recanting the faith, and knowing they would face death, they gave away their possessions to the poor and went away to a cave to pray. The seven young men (and their dog) fell asleep. Rather than going in and pulling the men out, the emperor ordered the cave be sealed up, thus sealing the fate of the men inside.

However, almost 200 years later in 447, a local landowner opened up the sealed cave, hoping to use the space as a cattle pen. He found the young men inside, awake, and thinking only a day had passed. They sent of their number down into Ephesus to buy food. Upon entering the city, the man was surprised to see Christianity openly practiced, with crosses on buildings. In turn, the townspeople were surprised to find a man trying to buy food with coins from the reign of Decius.

The bishop summoned the men and questioned them, determining they instead were the men thought martyred two centuries earlier, miraculously spared.

St. Pantaleon

Pantaleon was born in 275 in Nicomedia, Turkey to a wealthy pagan father and Christian mother. Though his mother raised him in the faith, he fell away from the Church after she died. He studied medicine under Euphrosinos, who was widely well-known and was able to get Pantaleon a position as the emperor Maximian’s physician.

The bishop of Nicomedia, Hermolaus, met with Pantaleon and convinced him to come back to the Church after convincing him that Christ was the ultimate physician. Pantaleon realized that worldly knowledge did not compare to spiritual truth. Hermolaus supposedly asked him, “"But, my friend, of what use are all thy acquirements in this art [medicine], since thou art ignorant of the science of salvation?”

Upon his conversion, he freed his slaves and distributed his wealth to the poor. He not only continued his practice of medicine but also miraculously healed a blind man and paralytic.

Colleagues, jealous of Pantaleon’s position, turned him in during the Diocletian persecution. He refused to recant the faith and was sentenced to death. But killing him turned out to be a great task.