ST DIONYSIUS, POPE - 26 DECEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 26th 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.

ST DIONYSIUS, POPE AND CONFESSOR

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Saint Dionysius [St Denis] was a priest of the church of Rome, under the pontificates of Stephen and Sixtus II. The latter having received the crown of martyrdom under Valerian, on August 6, 258, through the violence of the persecution, the holy see continued vacant almost a year, till our saint was chosen pope on July 2, 259.

"AN ADMIRABLE MAN"

St Dionysius of Alexandria styles him an admirable man, and a person eminently learned. St Basil wonderfully extols his charity, which he extended to the most remote provinces of the empire. 

HE WROTE A LETTER OF COMFORT TO THEM

When the Goths had plundered Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, and carried away most of its inhabitants into captivity, the good pope wrote to that city a letter of comfort, and sent messengers with large sums of money to ransom the captives. 

Our saint condemned Sabellius, etc., in a council at Rome, and afterwards confuted the blasphemies of Paul of Samosata. 

HIS ELEGANT WRITINGS

St Athanasius and St Basil made use of his elegant writings to prove the divinity of the Son, and the latter also that of the Holy Ghost. 

St Athanasius testifies, that the three hundred fathers at Nice, in defending the Catholic faith used no new expressions, but those which they received from the foregoing pastors of God’s church, copying particularly those of Dionysius of Rome, and his namesake of Alexandria. This holy pope died on December 26, 269.  

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)