SAINT FEAST DAY 16 FEBRUARY: ST ONESIMUS

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

Saints celebrated on the 16th of February

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST ONESIMUS, DISCIPLE OF ST PAUL, BISHOP

St Onesimus was a Phrygian by birth, slave to Philemon, a person of note of the city of Colossae, converted to the faith by St Paul. 

HE HAD TO FLEE BECAUSE OF HIS DODGY DEED

Having robbed his master, and being obliged to fly, he providentially met with St Paul, then a prisoner for the faith at Rome, who there converted and baptised him, and sent him with his canonical letter of recommendation to Philemon, by whom he was pardoned, set at liberty, and sent back to his spiritual father, whom he afterwards faithfully served.

AFTER HIS CONVERSION, HE LED AN EXEMPLARY LIFE AND BECAME A BISHOP

That apostle made him, with Tychicus, the bearer of his epistle to the Colossians, and afterwards, as St Jerome and other fathers witness, a preacher of the gospel, and a bishop. 

The Greeks say, he was crowned with martyrdom under Domitian, in the year 95. Bede, Ado, Usuard, the Roman and other Latin martyrologists mention him on the February 16.

Baronius and some others confound him with St Onesimus, the third bishop of Ephesus, after St Timothy, who was succeeded first by John, then by Caius. This Onesimus showed great respect and charity to St Ignatius, when on his journey to Rome, in 107, and is highly commended by him. 

DIVINE MERCY

When a sinner, by the light and power of an extraordinary grace, is snatched like a firebrand out of the fire, and rescued from the gates of hell, we cannot wonder if he be swallowed up by the deepest and most lively sense of his own guilt, and of the divine mercy; if such a one love much, because much has been forgiven him; if he endeavour to repair his past crimes by heroic acts of penance and all virtues, and if he make haste to redeem his lost time by a zeal and vigilance hard to be imitated by others. Hence we read of the first love of the church of Ephesus as more perfect. 

The ardour of the compunction and love of a true penitent, is compared to the unparalleled love of Judah in the day of her espousal. This ardour is not to be understood as a passing sally of the purest passions, as a short-lived fit of fervour, or desire of perfection, as a transient taste or sudden transport of the soul: it must be sincere and constant.

WHAT A PROFUSION OF GRACES!

With what excess of goodness does not God communicate himself to souls which thus open themselves to him! With what caresses does he not often visit them! With what a profusion of graces does he not enrich and strengthen them! It often happens that, in the beginning, God, either to allure the frailty of a new convert, or to fortify his resolution against hazardous trials, favours him with more than usual communications of the sweetness of his love, and ravishes him by some glances, as it were, of the beatific vision. His tenderness was not less, when, for their spiritual advancement, their exercise in heroic virtues, and the increase of their victories and glory, he conducted them through severe trials. 

On the other side, with what fidelity and ardour did these holy penitents improve themselves daily in divine love and all virtues! Alas! our coldness and insensibility, since our pretended conversion from the world and sin, is a far greater subject of amazement than the extraordinary fervour of the saints in the divine service. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)