SAINT FEAST DAY 21 MARCH: ST ENDA

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 21st March

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.

One of the most significant of the early Irish saints, St Enda of Aran was a warrior who was converted by his sister, the abbess St Fanchea. Born in 484 or thereabouts, he established Ireland’s first monastery on the Aran Islands.

VIEWING A CORPSE

He was the son of a leading Ulster warlord. When his father died he had to fight his clan enemies, but his sister pacified him, on condition she find him a wife. His fiancee died before he could get married. To teach him about death and judgment, Fanchea forced her brother to view the girl’s corpse.

Enda at this point decided to study for the priesthood, heading to south-western Scotland, where he took vows, returning to found a monastery at Innish.

A GRUELLING LIFE

Enda and his monks were inspired by the asceticism of the Egyptian desert hermits. The religious lived hard, gruelling lives of labour, fasting and prayer, and they had no fires in their stone cells. Enda lived on the island until his death as an old man, around 530. The monastery survived the Vikings, but alas, not the Cromwellites. It was ransacked in the 1650s.”

(This article was published in the Catholic Herald magazine, paper edition, March 20, 2015)