St. Dorothy's Day

Saint Dorothy and the Infant Christ, Francesco di Giorgio

Dorothy was born in Caesarea, where her Christian parents had fled to escape the persecutions taking place in Rome. The Roman emperor Diocletian stepped up his harassment of the Christian communities around the time that Dorothy was a young woman of marriageable age. When marriage to the roman prefect Fabricius was arranged for her, Dorothy refused, saying that she wanted to remain a virgin. To compound her insults to the Roman authorities, she also refused to take part in the ceremonies to the old gods. She was thrown into prison [where she was was tortured]...

Along the route to her place of execution, Dorothy met a young clerk in the legal network, named Theophilus, who made fun of her belief that when she was dead, she would be transported to a heavenly garden filled with flowers and fruit. "Send me fruit and flowers, then, when you are dead," he mocked. In one version, the young man watched Dorothy kneel down before she was executed, and while she was praying there, an angel appeared to him carrying three roses and three apples. In another version, after her death a strange boy appeared at Theophilus's door in the dead of winter, carring a basket with three red roses and three red apples.

Theophilus was converted and later martyred by being beheaded, after which his body was thrown to wild animals...

DEVOTIONAL PRACTICE

During the winter months, place on your altar or in a special area in your home three apples and three roses., See them as reminders of the eternal garden that exists within you even in the dead of winter. Thank God for allowing you to have faith in this vision.

The Way of the Saints by Tom Cowan

St. Dorothy is Rose's patron saint and after she moved out on her own we let the devotional practice drop. However, for anyone who is interested here's what we did.

We put the apples and roses on the "Mary" table. This is an end table in our living room where we have a cross, a statue of Mary, a statue of the holy family, and a little jar containing the dried rose petals from our "miraculous rose." Why? Because of those dried rose petals. They are our physical evidence of the miraculous and it is only right for this memorial to Dorothy to be placed there alongside them.