ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 27th 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 ESSO, ABBOT
Saint Esso is also known as Hesso, and was most probably originally called Johannes [John]. He flourished towards the end of the 11th and first half of the 12th centuries as the founder and first abbot of the Beinwill Benedictine monastery not far from Basel in Switzerland.
The yearbooks of the Beinwill [Beinwil] monastery (now Mariastein) - as well as those of the Hirschau [Hirsau] monastery - contain the following information about him:
HOLY PERFECTION
Esso was the main waiter in the Hirschau monastery under the then famous abbot Wilhelm [William] for several years and performed this position with a holy perfection such as only saints are able to perform, for which he was already highly regarded by his superiors and confreres as well as by others. Incessantly busy - like Martha - for the corporal well-being in this house of God, he at the same time listened with Mary to the Beloved's sweet words at the feet of the Master.
THE NEW PROJECT
About the year 1085 the Counts of Sogern asked the abbot Wilhelm of Hirschau to bring some clergymen to the newly-founded Benedictine monastery of Beinwill. Wilhelm could not think of anyone better suited to help build up the nascent community but his pupil and waiter, who was distinguished with all virtues. He sent him there with eight other friars and appointed him as the first abbot of this foundation.
THE CLUNIAC REFORMS
There he led the monastic discipline according to the rule of the holy father Benedict, with much attention to detail. God was pleased with this project and favoured this new place both on temporal and on spiritual terms during Esso's 49 years of government.
THE MONASTERY FLOURISHED
It progressed to a prosperous state, as can be seen from the letters issued to his successors by the Roman popes. Esso had the monastery church dedicated in honour of the Blessed Virgin and of the holy martyr St Vincent.
THE MONASTERY CHURCH WAS DEDICATED TO OUR LADY AND ST VINCENT
Trithemius gives this servant of God great praise and expressly says that after his translation from Hirschau to Beinwill he did not decrease in sanctity of life, but rather grew and shone with miracles up to his blissful passing around 1133.
HE DID NOT DECREASE IN SANCTITY OF LIFE
His name has always been mentioned on 27 December among the saints in the martyrology of the Hirschau Abbey and that of the Beinwill (now Mariastein) monastery. On the day of his death the following words are entered: Sanctus Esso in Monasterium Beinvillarense Abbas ascitus. The keys that the artists give him on old paintings and statues, on which he is depicted as a saint, point to his large cellar office in Hirschau.
In an old document of Beinwill there is an indication that Esso was a distant relative of St. Pope Leo IX.
(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, 1858 - 📷 Hirsau Abbey)
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