ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 2nd of November
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 MARCIAN, ANCHORET AND CONFESSOR
The city of Cyrus, in Syria, was the birthplace of Saint Marcian; his father was of a patrician family, and enjoyed several honourable posts in the empire. Marcian himself was educated at the court; but, in the flower of his age, took a resolution to renounce the world, in which he saw nothing but emptiness, folly, and snares.
He considered that those who seem blessed with the greatest share of worldly enjoyments are strangers to true happiness, and by flying from object to object, and relieving the disappointment of success in one by the novelty of some other pursuit, as incapable of satisfying their hearts, or giving them true contentment or rest.
"STRANGERS TO TRUE HAPPINESS"
He retired secretly into the desert of Chalcis, in Syria, upon the borders of Arabia, and chose in it the most remote and secret part. Here he shut himself up in a small enclosure, which he never went out of, and in the midst of which he built himself a cell.
This solitude was to him a paradise, and he had in it no communication but with heaven. His whole employment was to sing psalms, read, pray, and work. Bread was all his subsistence, and this in a small quantity, that he might be always hungry: but he never fasted above a day without taking some food, lest he should not have strength to do what God required of him.
SUBLIME CONTEMPLATION
He received such a gift of sublime contemplation that, in this exercise, days seemed to him hours, and hours scarce more than minutes.
Notwithstanding the saint’s care to live unknown to men, the reputation of his sanctity discovered him, and he was prevailed upon to admit first two disciples, Eusebius and Agapetus, who lived in a cell near his, sang psalms with him in the day, and had frequent spiritual conferences with him.
THE MONASTERY
He afterwards suffered a numerous monastery to be erected near his enclosure, appointed Eusebius abbot, and himself gave the plan of the institute, and frequent instructions to the monks who resorted to him.
He died about the year 337. His tomb became a place of great devotion, and famed for miracles.
(Excerpts from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
Comments
Post a Comment