ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 10th of December
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.
SS. MENNAS, HERMOGENES, AND EUGRAPHUS, MARTYRS
St Mennas, a 4th century Athenian by birth, though a Christian, was chosen by Diocletian‘s colleague Galerius to take the command of an expedition sent to quell an insurrection in Egypt.
HE WAS PUT IN CHARGE
He performed his duty successfully; but afterwards, together with Eugraphus, his subordinate, set about spreading Christianity in Alexandria and its vicinity.
He made many converts, among them Hermogenes, the Imperial Prefect. Galerius probably had not known that Mennas was a Christian.
ALL THREE WERE MARTYRED
When he heard what was passing in Egypt (the Christian Religion being utterly proscribed at the time), he ordered Mennas, with Hermogenes and Eugraphus, to be arraigned as Christians before the Criminal Court of Alexandria. All three were in due course sentenced, tortured and beheaded.
(From The Lives of the Saints, 1921, by the Monks of Ramsgate)
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