Description

St. Vitus Healing Oil (Holy Helper)

St. Vitus Healing is one of the 14 Holy Helpers of the Roman Catholic Faith, a group of Saints whose intercessions are thought to be especially powerful against the ravages of disease. Born during the Roman era, he converted to Christianity by his caretakers and soon began performing miraculous cures.  After casting a demon out of the son of the Emperor Diocletian, St. Vitus Healing tormented with a vat of boiling lead and thrown into the den of a lion, who affectionately licked him.

St. Vitus Healing commonly depicted with a metal vat or roosters because of his torture and his miraculous ability with domestic animals.

St. Vitus Healing Feast Day occurs on June 15th. He is the patron saint for epileptics and people with Sydenham’s chorea, commonly known as St. Vitus’ Dance. Dancers, actors, and young people pray to him. Dog owners invoke his help and he asked for protection during fierce storms.

Unreliable legend has Vitus, the only son of a senator in Sicily, become a Christian when he was twelve. When his conversions and miracles became widely known to the administrator of Sicily, Valerian. He had Vitus brought before him, to shake his faith.

He was unsuccessful, but Vitus with his tutor, Modestus, and servant, Crescentia, fled to Lucania and then to Rome, where he freed Emperor Diocletian’s son of an evil spirit. When Vitus would not sacrifice to the gods, his cure was attributed to sorcery. He, Modestus, and Crescentia were subjected to various tortures from which they emerged unscathed, and were freed when during a storm, temples were destroyed and an angel guided them back to Lucania, where they eventually died.