Stational Church: Thursday in the Third Week of Lent

Today's Stational Church is the Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian.  For information on this devotion, see the Stational Churches of Lent Homepage. I will post on each Stational Church for Lent. Information is from the Canon Regulars of St. John Cantius:

This church, made from two pagan temples, holds the bodies of the holy martyrs, Cosmas and Damian, who were put to death during the Diocletian persecution. The sick came in crowds to visit the tomb of these two brothers, doctors by profession, imploring them to restore their health.

The "unsalaried" physicians, Cosmas and Damian, devoted time and talents to the service of the poor and the sick, so that, by curing the infirmities of the body without renumeration, they might more easily win immortal souls for Christ.

Today, the Divine Physician will again come and refresh you. He carries with him the divine antidote, the Eucharistic medicine for the healing of our infirmities.

Let us pray: May the blessed solemnity of Thy saints, Cosmas and Damian, magnify Thee, O Lord, by which Thou hast both granted eternal glory to them and assistance to us by Thy ineffable providence. Through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

What is fascinating is that the Collect Prayer or today's Lenten feria Mass mentions the station of Ss. Cosmas and Damian.  There is only one other occasion, Sexagesima Sunday at St Paul Outside-the-Walls, on which the Collect mentions the Saint at whose church the station is held, even though it is not the feast of that Saint.

Dom Gueranger, in his "Liturgical Year," also insightfully notes the connection of today's station with Lenten fasting and abstinence:

At Rome, the Station is at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, in the forum. The Christians of the middle ages (as we learn from Durandus, in his Rational of the Divine Offices) were under the impression that this Station was chosen because these two saints were, by profession, physicians. The Church, according to this explanation, would not only offer up her prayers of this day for the souls, but also for the bodies of her children: she would draw down upon them—fatigued as she knew they must be by their observance of abstinence and fasting—the protection of these holy martyrs, who, whilst on earth, devoted their medical skill to relieving the corporal ailments of their brethren. The remarks made by the learned liturgiologist Gavantus, in reference to this interpretation, lead us to conclude that, although it may possibly not give us the real motive of the Church’s selecting this Station, yet it is not to be rejected. It will, at least, suggest to the faithful to recommend themselves to these saints, and to ask of God, through their intercession, that they may have the necessary courage and strength for persevering to the end of the holy season in what they have, so far, faithfully observed.

Today also marks the midpoint of Lent. See: Mid-Lent Thursday Exhortation from the Mozarabic Rite