ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 7th 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 FARA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS
Agneric, one of the principal officers of the court of Theodebert II. king of Austrasia, had by his wife Leodegonda, four children: St Cagnoald, who took the monastic habit under St Columban at Luxeu [Luxeuil], about the year 594; St Faro, who became bishop of Meaux; St Fara, and Agnetrudis.
In 610, St Columban being banished from Luxeuil, in his flight lodged at the house of Agneric, called Pipimisium, two leagues from Meaux. St Cagnoald, who accompanied this abbot in his exile into Switzerland, probably introduced him to his father, and St Columban gave his blessing to all the family; and when he came to Fara, consecrated her to God in a particular manner.
SHE BECAME SICK
When she had attained the age of puberty, her father proposed to her an honourable match. The holy virgin did every thing that lay in her power to prevent it and fell into a lingering sickness, which brought her life in danger.
St Eustasius, St Columban’s successor, when that holy man went to Bobio in Italy, made a journey thither, by order of Clotaire II. in order to persuade him to return, taking with St Cagnoald, who had returned to Luxeu when St Columban left Switzerland. St Eustasius, after he came back, repaired to the court of Clotaire II. to give him an account of his embassy, and in his way lodged at Agneric’s.
SHE WANTED TO CONSECRATE HERSELF TO THE HEAVENLY SPOUSE
Fara discovered to him her earnest desire of consecrating her virginity to her heavenly spouse.
The holy man told her father, that God had visited her with a dangerous illness which threatened certain death, only because he opposed her pious inclinations, and after praying some time prostrate on the ground, he arose, and made the sign of the cross upon her eyes; whereupon she was forthwith restored to her health.
The saint recommended her to her mother, that she might be prepared to receive the veil at the time he should come back from court. No sooner was he gone out of doors, but Agneric began again to persecute his daughter, in order to extort her consent to marry the young nobleman to whom he had promised her.
FARA FLED
Fara fled to the church, and when she was told that, unless she complied with her father’s desire, she would be murdered; she resolutely answered: Do you think I am afraid of death? To lose my life for the sake of virtue, and fidelity to the promise I have made to God, would be a great happiness."
St Eustasius speedily returned, and easily reconciled her father to her, and engaged Gondoald, bishop of Meux, to give her the religious veil. This happened in the year 614.
SHE RECEIVED THE VEIL
The foundation of the famous monastery of Faremoutier, is dated a year or two after this, Agneric having given his pious daughter a competent portion of land, and raised a building proper for this purpose.
The abbey was originally called Brige, from the Celtic word which signifies a bridge. The Latin name Eboriacas or Evoriacas, which in the seventh age was given to this monastery, seems to have been derived from the Celtic; and from this monastery and forest a district of the country on the south of the Marne took the same name, and is now called Brie.
This monastery was founded double, and St Eustasius sent thither from Luxeu St Cagnoald, who, in 620, was made bishop of Laon, and St Walbert, who being born of an illustrious family in Ponthieu, and having served some time in the army, had retired to Luxeu.
He afterwards succeeded St Eustasius in that abbacy in 625. Jonas was also a monk at Faremoutier, soon after the foundation of that house, and an eye-witness to the eminent virtues of the holy persons who inhabited it, and of which he has left us an edifying account.
ST FARA WAS APPOINTED ABBESS OF THE NUNNERY
St Fara, though very young, was appointed abbess of the nunnery, and, assisted with the councils of St Cagnoald and St Walbert, settled there the rule of St Columban, in its greatest severity.
We find that the use of wine was there forbidden, and also that of milk, at least in Lent and Advent, and the religious made three confessions a day, as is mentioned in the life of St Fara; that is, thrice every day they made a strict examination of their consciences, and made a confession or manifestation of what passed in their souls to their superior.
RIGOROUS SELF-EXAMINATION
This practice of rigorous self-examination and confession or manifestation is most strenuously recommended and ordered in all the ancient rules of a monastic life, as a most important and useful means of attaining purity of heart, a perfect government of the affections, an habitual Christian watchfulness, and true perfection.
Under the direction of guides perfectly disengaged from all earthly things, and enlightened in the paths of virtue, many heroic souls at the same time filled this monastery and all France with the odour of their sanctity.
THE ODOUR OF THEIR SANCTITY
Among these, several are honoured in the calendars of the saints, as St Sisetrudis, St Gibitrudis, St Hercantrudis, and others. From the life of St Gibitrudis, it appears, that in this monastery it was customary to say a trental of masses for every one that died in the house, during thirty days after their decease.
St Fara was the directress of so many saints, and walked at their head in the perfect observance of all the rules which she prescribed to others.
HER YOUNGER BROTHER WAS MOVED BY HER HEAVENLY DISCOURSES
Her younger brother St Faro was so moved by her heavenly discourses one day when he came to pay her a visit, that he resigned the great offices which he held at court, persuaded a young lady to whom he had promised marriage to become a nun, and took the clerical tonsure. In 626, he succeeded Gondoald in the episcopal chair of Meaux, died in 672, and was buried in the monastery of the Holy Cross, which he founded, and which bears his name.
His protection and holy counsels were a support and comfort to St Fara, under the assaults which she had to sustain.
Agrestes, a turbulent monk, pretending to correct the rule of St Columban in several points, drew over St Romaric, founder of the abbey of Remiremont, and St Amatus, first abbot of that house: though they afterwards discovered the snare, and repented of their fault.
SHE PREVENTED THE RULE FROM BEING UNDERMINED
St Fara was upon her guard, and constantly opposed all attempts to undermine the severity of the holy rule which she had professed.
Ega, mayor of the palace of Clovis II. raised a troublesome persecution against her, which she bore with patience and constancy to his death, in 641.
On the other side, the reputation of her virtue reached the remotest parts. Several English princesses crossed the seas, to sacrifice at the foot of the altars the pomp and riches which waited for them on thrones. The glittering splendour of the purple and courts appeared in their eyes an empty seducing phantom: they trampled it under their feet, and preferred the humility of a cloister to worldly greatness.
THEY PREFERRED THE HUMILITY OF THE CLOISTER TO WORLDLY GREATNESS
Sedrido, the first of these princesses, was daughter of Hereswith, whose father Hereric, was brother to St Edwin, the glorious king of the Northumbers. St Hereswith had her by a first husband, whose name has not reached us. Her second husband was Annas, king of the East-Angles, with whose consent she renounced the world, and died a nun at Chelles. Her daughter Sedrido passed into France in 644 or 646, about two years after Annas, her father-in-law, had ascended the throne, and embracing the humble state of a crucified life at Faremoutier, served God with joy, in sackcloth and ashes, in the heroic practice of all Christian virtues. Though a stranger, she was chosen to succeed St Fara, and governed this flourishing colony of saints from 655 till her happy death.
Her mother Hereswith, her sister Edelburge, (daughter of Hereswith and King Annas,) and her niece Erkengota, daughter of her sister Sexburga, and of Ercombert king of Kent, passed at the same time into France, hoping in this exile more perfectly to forget and be forgotten by the world, which they renounced.
ST EDELBURGA
St Edelburge, called by the French St Aubierge, is called by Bede the natural daughter of Annas; whence many have inferred that she was illegitimate. But the word natural child seems never to have been anciently taken in that sense, but in opposition to an adoptive child. It is at least visible that Bede here uses it to distinguish her birth from that of Sedrido, who was only step-daughter to Annas.
St Edelburge was chosen third abbess of Faremoutier, upon the death of Sedrido, and is honoured among the saints in the diocess of Meaux.
THE CROWN OF ETERNAL GLORY
St Fara, after having been purified by a painful lingering illness, and made worthy of the crown of eternal glory, was called to receive it on April 3, about the year 655. By her last will she gave part of her estates to her brothers and sister, but the principal part to her monastery; and in these latter, mentions her lands at Champeaux.
The relics of St Fara were enshrined in 695, and a great number of miracles has been wrought through her intercession.
MIRACLES
Dame Charlotte le Bret, daughter to the first president and treasurer-general of the finances in the generality or district of Paris, who was born in 1595, lost her left eye at seven years of age, was received a nun at Faremoutier in 1609, and in 1617 lost her right eye, and became quite blind. She went twice out of her monastery to consult the most famous oculists at Paris, who unanimously agreed that an essential part of the organ of her eyes was destroyed, and her sight irrecoverably lost; and, to remove the pain which she frequently felt, they by remedies extinguished all feeling in the eye-balls and adjacent nerves, insomuch that she could not feel the application of vinegar, salt, or the strongest aromatic; and if ever she wept, she only perceived it by feeling the tears trickle down her cheeks. Four years after this, in 1622, the relics of St Fara being taken out of the shrine, she kissed one of the bones, and then applied it to both her eyes. She immediately felt a pain in them, though they had been four years and a half without sensation, and the lids had been immovably closed; and she had scarcely removed the relics from her eyes, than a humour distilled from them. She cried out, begging that the relics might be applied a second and a third time; which being done, at the third touch she cried out, that she saw. In that instant her sight was perfectly restored to her, and she distinguished all the objects about her. Then, prostrate on the ground, she gave thanks to the author of her recovery, and the whole assembly joined their voices in glorifying God. The certificates and affidavits of the surgeons and physicians who had treated her, and the affidavits of the eye-witnesses of the fact were juridically taken by the bishop of Meaux, (John de Vieupont,) who, by a judicial sentence, given on December 9, 1622, declared, that the cure of the said blindness was the miraculous work of God.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 📷 1. St Fara, 2. Faremoutier)
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