ST LIVINUS - 12 NOVEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 12th 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 LIVINUS, BISHOP AND MARTYR

Saint Livinus was a learned and zealous Irish bishop, who went over into Flanders to preach the faith to the idolaters.

To enter upon that work by dedicating himself a holocaust to God, he spent thirty days in prayer at the tomb of St Bavo, at Ghent, and offered there every day the holy sacrifice. 

After this solemn consecration of himself to his Redeemer, he began to announce the word of life, and converted many about the country of Alost and Hautem.

Having cultivated the study of poetry in his youth, he composed an elegy on St Bavo, who died only six years before him.

THEY WANTED HIM TO STOP PREACHING THE GOSPEL

St Livinus was massacred by the pagans, at Esche, [the pagans tried to cut his tongue off to stop him preaching the Gospel] in the year 633, according to Colgan, who mentions him to have been bishop of Dublin before he went to the mission of Flanders. 

He was buried at Hautem, three miles from Ghent; and his relics were translated to the great monastery of St Peter’s at Ghent, in 1006. 

THE RELICS

In a shrine by that of St Livinus are preserved the relics of St Craphaildes, a lady in whose house St Livinus was martyred. She was murdered by the same barbarians, for lamenting his death, and her infant son Brictius, whom St Livinus had lately baptised. The infant martyr’s bones are kept in the same shrine with those of St Livinus. 

(Excerpts from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints) 

PRAYER:

O God,

Who has consecrated 

the merits of the holy martyrs 

by the Most Precious Blood of Thy Son ,

look down propitiously on those 

who honour the blessed Livinus,

Thy Bishop and Martyr;

and grant them safety, peace,

and finally the joy of Thy Countenance without end.

Through the same Christ our Lord.

Amen. 

(St Anthony’s Treasury 1916)