St. Anastasia

Who they were

Anastasia was a Roman widow martyred at Sirmium in the Diocletianic persecution, venerated so early and so intensely that her name entered the Roman Canon, where it is still spoken, and her basilica beneath the Palatine became one of Rome's great station churches.

The tradition around that core is of a wealthy widow who spent her freedom ministering to imprisoned Christians, among them the companions of her spiritual guide Chrysogonus, feeding them, bribing her way in, dressing wounds, until the ministry cost her what such ministries usually cost. The East titles her Pharmakolytria, the Deliverer from Potions, and invokes her against poisons, which serves the literally endangered and, by a short extension, anyone praying to be free of what has turned toxic in their life. Her liturgical singularity is that her feast is 25 December itself, and the ancient second Mass of Christmas, the Mass at Dawn, was celebrated at her basilica. She is the saint the Church remembers while the sky is lightening on Christmas morning.

Why people turn to St. Anastasia

Prison ministry, with St. Leonard of Noblac, St. Dismas, St. Joseph Cafasso and St. Maximilian Kolbe. Widows whose grief turned into service, with St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Marguerite d'Youville. And the Christmas dawn belongs to her alone.

How to ask their intercession

Name the poison, whether it is literal or not, and ask once for deliverance from it. Her feast is the Nativity, so the honest time to remember her is early on Christmas morning, before the house wakes up.