SAINT FEAST DAY 14 NOVEMBER: ST SERAPION OF ALGIERS

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER 

Saints celebrated on the 14th 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 SERAPION OF ALGIERS, RELIGIOUS

Saint Serapion was a zealous Englishman, whom St Peter Nolasco received into his Order at Barcelona. 

He made two journeys among the Moors for the ransom of captives, in 1240. The first was to Murcia, in which he purchased the liberty of ninety-eight slaves: the second to Algiers, in which he redeemed eighty-seven, but remained himself a hostage for the full payment of the money. 

HE FREED CHRISTIAN SLAVES

He boldly preached Christ to the Mahometans, and baptised several: for which he was cruelly tortured, scourged, cut and mangled, at length, fastened to a cross, and was thereon stabbed and quartered alive in the same year, 1240.

Pope Benedict XIII declared him a martyr, and approved his immemorial veneration in his Order, by a decree in 1728, as Benedict XIV relates. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)