ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 6th 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.
ALL SAINTS OF IRELAND
Feast in Ireland
ENTRANCE ANTIPHON
Let the peoples proclaim the wisdom of the saints: Let the assembly announce their praises: their name shall be remembered for ever.
Holy Mass readings: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15; Psalm 14, response: "Happy the man who has placed his trust in the Lord"; Gospel: Luke 6:17-23
HE WAS NOT CANONISED
Fr John Murphy who in 1798 was martyred and buried in Ferns and many other Irish martyrs and saintly Christians were not canonised. A great part of the answer may lie in the fact that the canonisation process is so long and complex that only a very small percentage of saintly people are canonised.
GOOD AND SAINTLY LIVES
In canonising this relatively small number the Church is not saying that these are the holiest or only holy people in the world. Over the centuries a countless number of people have lead good and saintly lives, their faith and love known only to the small Christian community of which they were members. We ourselves may have encountered them in our own lives and indeed been influenced by their faith and the evident goodness of their lives.
The Church has always been aware of the many martyrs and saintly people who were never canonised and in an effort to remedy this to some small extent, representative groups in different parts of the world have been beatified. One such representative group was the seventeen Irish martyrs from the 16th and 17th centuries. They were beatified by Pope John Paul II. The amount of information we know about these seventeen varies. About some, such as Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley of Cashel, we know quite a lot; about others, such as the Wexford Martyrs, we know little more than their names and the fact of their death. These Wexford Martyrs were named as Matthew Lambert and sailors – Robert Tyler, Edward Cheevers and Patrick Cavanagh who died in Wexford 1581.
(This article was published in “Saint Martin Magazine”, paper edition, issue May 2014 - 📷 Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland, c. 1918)
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