ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 19th 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. THEA AND MEURIS, MARTYRS
[A. D. 307] Saints Meuris and Thea, two holy women at Gaza in Palestine, when the persecution of Christians raged in that city under the successors of Diocletian, bore up bravely against all the cruelty of men, and malice of the devil, and triumphed over both to the last moment.
A DREADFUL VARIETY OF TORMENTS
Meuris died under the hands of the persecutors: but Thea languished some time after she had passed through a dreadful variety of exquisite torments, as we learn from the author of the life of St Porphyrius of Gaza, written about the close of the fourth century.
THEIR RELICS
Their relics were deposited in a church which bore the name of St Timothy.
Can we call to mind the fervour of the saints in labouring and suffering cheerfully for God, and not feel a holy ardour glow in our own breasts, and our souls strongly affected with their heroic sentiments of virtue?
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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