SAINT FEAST DAY 21 NOVEMBER: ST GELASIUS I., POPE

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER 

Saints celebrated on the 21st of November

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SAINT GELASIUS I., POPE AND CONFESSOR

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Following Pope Felix's death on February 25, 492, Saint Gelasius, of an African family, but a native of Rome, governed the church four years, eight months, and eighteen days. 

This pope was a very learned man, and very skilful and knowing in the customs and usages of the church; and is extolled for the purity of his manners, his extraordinary humility, temperance, austerity of life, and liberality to the poor, for whose sake he kept himself always poor. 

FOR THE POOR HE KEPT HIMSELF POOR

Pope Gelasius in several epistles, and in his Roman council, strenuously asserts the supremacy of his see, founded in the words of Christ to St Peter, which see from the beginning has had the care of all the churches over the world, and from which lies no appeal to any other church.

Amongst many rules which he lays down for the ministers of the church, he declares that its revenues are to be exactly divided into four parts, whereof one is for the bishop, another for his clergy, the third for the poor, and the fourth for the fabric. 

HE STOOD HIS GROUND

Andromachus, a Roman senator, and many others attempted to restore the Lupercalia, which were riotous feasts and diversions in honour of the god Pan, which Gelasius had abolished. He enforced his prohibition by a treatise on that subject, entitled, against Andromachus. 

This holy pope laboured with great zeal to extirpate the Pelagian heresy, and several abuses which prevailed in the Marca of Ancona, especially simony: and he severely forbade ecclesiastics to traffic.

The Manichees who concealed themselves in Rome, he detected by commanding all to receive the communion in both kinds, because those heretics abstained from the cup, reputing wine impure. This their affectation was a long time unobserved, and they received the sacrament from the Catholics, as we learn from St Leo, in the year 443. They continued this practice until the prohibition of Gelasius, in 496, who justly calls the division which they made upon a superstitious motive, sacrilegious. His very prohibition (which ceased by disuse when that heresy was abolished) suffices to demonstrate that the use of one or both kinds was then promiscuous and at discretion, which many instances of that and preceding ages demonstrate.

SACRED HYMNS

Gennadius informs us, that Pope Gelasius composed sacred hymns in imitation of St Ambrose; but these are now lost. It is manifest from the letters of St Innocent I., St Celestine and St Leo, that the Church of Rome had a written Order of the Mass before Gelasius. 

This doubtless was the basis of his Sacramentary, which was printed at Rome in 1680, from a manuscript copy nine hundred years old, by the care of Thomasi, a Theatin, afterwards cardinal. In it occur the solemn veneration of the cross on Good Friday, and the reservation of the particle of the eucharist offered the foregoing day for the communion that day; the blessing of the holy oils, the anointing and other ceremonies used at baptism; blessing of holy water; prayers for entering new houses, etc., several masses for the feasts of saints, expressing their invocation, and the veneration of their relics; votive masses for travellers, for obtaining charity and other virtues; for marriage with the nuptial benediction, for birthdays, for the sick, for the dead, etc. 

THE CANON

In 494, Pope Gelasius held at Rome a council of seventy bishops, in which he published his famous decree, containing a list of the canonical books of scripture then universally received; another of orthodox fathers; and a third of apocryphal books, which are of two classes: some forgeries, as the Acts of St George, etc. others genuine and useful in many things, but containing some falsity or error, and to be read with caution, or at least excluded the canon of scriptures. 

This great pope’s manner of writing is elegant and noble; but sometimes obscure and perplexed. He died in 496, on November 21, on which day his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology.

Excerpts from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that the venerable feast of Saint Gelasius may increase our devotion and promote our salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.