ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 23rd 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 AMPHILOCHIUS, BISHOP OF ICONIUM, CONFESSOR
St Amphilochius was a learned and eminent father of the fourth age, an intimate friend of St Basil and St Gregory Nazianzen, though much younger than they were.
He was a native of Cappadocia, and of a noble family: in his youth he studied oratory and the law, afterwards pleaded at the bar. Amphilochius was yet young, when, by the advice of his friend St Gregory, he bid adieu to the world and its honours, in order to serve God in retirement, before the year 373, as appears from St Basil.
The place of his retreat was a solitary part of Cappadocia, called Ozizala, so barren that no corn grew in all that country. St Gregory Nazianzen supplied his friend with that commodity, who in return requited him with presents of fruits and legumes, the produce of a garden which he cultivated.
HE TOOK CARE OF HIS AGED AND INFIRM FATHER
Amphilochius’s aged and infirm father followed him into his retreat, and the saint acquitted himself of the obligations of a most dutiful son, by the tender care he took of him.
God called him to that charge which he dreaded and conducted him to it by means against which he never thought of taking any precautions. Divine Providence led him to Iconium, at a time when that Church was destitute of a pastor. This city was capital of the second Pisidia, otherwise called Lycaonia. Upon information that he was passing through the country, the clergy and people with one voice elected him bishop.
THEY ELECTED HIM BISHOP
Amphilochius, astonished at this accident, thought of nothing but betaking himself to flight; but God deprived him of the means of executing such a design.
His father also was extremely grieved at his promotion, which deprived him of the support of his old age; and he laid the blame on St Gregory Nazianzen, as if he had by some contrivance concurred to it.
St Amphilochius, immediately after his ordination, which was in 374, paid a visit to St Basil at Caesarea, and preached, as was usual for bishops who were strangers, before the people, who relished his sermons above those of any stranger they had heard.
HE OFTEN CONSULTED ST BASIL
St Amphilochius often consulted St Basil upon difficult points of doctrine and discipline, which the other answered with extraordinary modesty, showing that he rather sought an opportunity of receiving instructions himself.
He invited St Amphilochius to come again to Caesarea, for the festival of St Eupsychius, and our saint seems to have complied with his request: but was not able to do it again in 375, on account of sickness. Soon after this, St Basil, in a dangerous fit of illness, recommended to him the care of his own church of Caesarea, in case of death.
THE COUNCIL AT ICONIUM
In 376, St Amphilochius held a council at Iconium against the Macedonian heretics, who denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. He assisted at the general council of Constantinople against the same heretics in 381, and at another council in the same city in 383. In a law enacted by Theodosius in 381, he is regarded as one of the centres of the Catholic communion in the East.
THE MESSALIANS
Theodoret informs us, that St Amphilochius zealously opposed the rising heresy of the Messalians. These were a set of fanatics, who sprung up in Mesopotamia, and gave much disturbance to the Church; pretending to an extraordinary perfection, they placed the whole essence of religion in prayer alone, rejected the use of the sacraments, and all other practices of religion, even fasting.
THEY PRETENDED TO VISIONS AND WONDERFUL ILLUMINATIONS
They pretended to visions and wonderful illuminations, in which much is to be ascribed to a heated imagination, though it seems not to be doubted but, by the divine permission, they sometimes suffered extraordinary impulses and illusions from the devil; in which it is easy to discover in the imperfect relations which we have of them, an affinity with the modern fanatics of several sects, as those of the Cevennes amongst the Huguenots, the Convulsionarists among the Jansenists at Paris, and several English sects.
St Amphilochius procured the condemnation of the Messalians in the council of Sida in Pamphilia, wherein he presided, and he confuted them by several works. Of these and his other writings we have nothing extant except large fragments quoted by the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, by Theodoret, Facundus, St John Damascen, Photius, etc.
HE CURED THE SICK BY HIS PRAYERS
By the testimony of this father we are assured that St Amphilochius cured the sick by his prayers, the invocation of the Holy Trinity, and the oblation of the sacrifice.
We find no mention made of St Amphilochius beyond the year 394, about which time he seems to have died in a good old age. He is honoured in the Roman Martyrology, and by the Greeks, on November 23.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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