ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST
Saints celebrated on the 17th of August
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 HYACINTH OF SILESIA
St Hyacinth was of the ancient house of the counts of Oldrovans, one of the most illustrious of Silesia. His grandfather, the great general against the Tartars, left two sons. Yvo, the younger, was chancellor of Poland and bishop of Cracow. Eustachias, the elder, was count of Konski, the first fruit of whose virtuous marriage was St Hyacinth, born in 1185, in the castle of Saxony, in the diocese of Breslau in Silesia.
HE PRESERVED AN UNSPOTTED INNOCENCE OF MANNERS
His parents diligently cultivated his happy natural dispositions for virtue, and he preserved an unspotted innocence of manners through the slippery paths of youth during his studies at Cracow, Prague, and Bologna; in which last university he took the degree of doctor of the laws and divinity.
DOCTOR OF THE LAWS AND DIVINITY
Returning to the bishop of Cracow, predecessor to Yvo of Konski, that pious prelate gave him a prebend in his cathedral, and employed him as his assistant and counsellor in the administration of his diocess. Hyacinth showed great prudence, capacity, and zeal in the multiplicity of his exterior occupations; but never suffered them to be any impedient to his spirit of prayer and recollection. He practised uncommon mortifications, and was assiduous in prayer, fasting and alms-giving. Yvo of Konski, chancellor of Poland, was placed in that see, and went to Rome, whether to obtain the confirmation of his election, or for other affairs, is not mentioned. He took with him his two nephews, Hyacinth and Ceslas.
St Dominic was then at Rome; this happening in the year 1218. Yvo and the bishop of Prague, charmed with the sanctity of his life, the unction of his discourses, and the fruit of his sermons, and being eye-witnesses to some of his miracles, begged some of his preachers for their dioceses. Four of the domestic attendants of the bishop of Cracow desired to embrace his austere institute, namely, the bishop’s two nephews, Hyacinth and Ceslas, and two German gentlemen, Herman and Henry. They received the habit at the hands of St Dominic, in his convent of St Sabina, in March, 1218.
THEY RECEIVED THE HABIT AT THE HANDS OF ST DOMINIC
The perfect disengagement from all things in this world, the contempt of themselves, the universal mortification of their senses, the denial of their own will, the love of continual prayer, and an ardent zeal to glorify God in all their actions and sufferings, were the solid foundation which they laid of the spiritual edifice of their own perfection, by which they laboured in the first place to sanctify their own souls. They made their solemn vows by a dispensation, after a novitiate of about six months only; and Hyacinth, then thirty-three years old, was appointed superior of their mission. Yvo of Konski set out for Poland with a suitable equipage.
The missionaries took another road, that they might travel on foot, and without provisions, according to the spirit of their institute. Having passed through the Venetian territories they entered Upper Carinthia, where they staid six months, and Saint Hyacinth gave the habit to several of the clergymen and others, founded a convent, and left Herman to govern it. The apostolic men passed through Stiria, Austria, Moravia, and Silesia, announcing everywhere the word of God.
HE ANNOUNCED THE WORD OF GOD EVERYWHERE
In Poland they were received by all ranks with extraordinary marks of joy and honour. At Cracow the first sermons of Saint Hyacinth were attended with incredible success, and in a short time the infamous public vices which reigned in that capital were banished; the spirit of prayer and charity, the holy and frequent use of the sacraments, watching, and mortification were revived. He founded a numerous convent of his Order, called of the Holy Trinity, in Cracow; another at Sendomir, and a third at Plocsko upon the Vistula, in Moravia.
HE CROSSED THE VISTULA IN A MIRACULOUS MANNER
The bull of the canonisation of our saint, mentions a miracle in that country, attested by above four hundred witnesses, and an ancient history of it is kept in the treasury of the church of Cracow. St Hyacinth came with three companions to the banks of the Vistula, going to preach at Wisgrade; but the flood was so high, that none of the boats durst venture over. The disciple of Christ, having made the sign of the cross, walked upon the waters of that deep and rapid river as if it had been upon firm land, in the sight of a great multitude of people waiting for him on the opposite bank towards the town.
Having preached through the principal cities of Poland, he undertook to carry the gospel into the vast and savage countries of the North. His zeal was too active for him to allow himself any rest whilst he saw souls perishing eternally in the ignorance of the true God; and the length of the journeys over rocks, precipices, and vast deserts were not able to discourage his heroic soul.
HE FORETOLD THAT A GREAT CITY WOULD BE BUILT
He banished, in many places superstition, vice, and idolatry, and built convents of his institute in Prussia, Pomerania, and other countries lying near the Baltic, as at Camyn upon the Oder, at Premislau, Culm, Elbin, Konigsberg, in the isle of Rugen, and the peninsula of Gedan. In this last place, then a wilderness, he foretold a great city would be built; and in the same age, in 1295, Primislas, king of Poland, laid there the foundation of the famous city of Danzig, capital of Regal Prussia; and though the Lutheran heresy in the sixteenth age destroyed or profaned all the other churches, that founded by St Hyacinth still remains in the hands of the Catholics, is their parish church, and is served by Dominican friars.
HE WENT TO DENMARK AND FURTHER NORTH
The saint left Prussia and Pomerania to preach in Denmark, Swedeland, Gothia, and Norway; in all which countries there still remained many idolaters. Lest the devil should shortly destroy the fruits of his labours, he every where founded monasteries, and left disciples to preserve and extend them.
Notwithstanding his fatigues and hardships amidst barbarous nations, in excessive cold climates, far from allowing himself any dispensation in the perpetual abstinence and other severities of his rule, he continually added to them new austerities. His fasts were almost perpetual and on all Fridays and vigils on bread and water; the bare ground was his bed.
HE WENT INTO LESSER RUSSIA
After the above-said missions he went into Lesser Russia. He there built the flourishing convents of Lemburg, and of Halitz upon the Niester; from thence he penetrated as far as the Black Sea, and into the isles of the Archipelago. Thence returning towards the north, he entered the great dukedom of Muscovy, called also Great Russia. He no sooner began to announce the gospel, confirming his doctrine by miracles, but Mahometans, heathens, and schismatics flocked to hear him, and in great multitudes became docile to the truth. St Hyacinth founded a great convent at Kiow, then the capital of both Russias.
HE WALKED OVER THE WATER TO THEM
Seeing one day an assembly of idolaters on their knees before a great tree in an island in the river Boristhenes, commonly called the Nieper, he walked over the water to them, and easily prevailed with them, after the sight of such a miracle, to destroy their idols, fell the great oak, and embrace the faith. All these conversions gave no small uneasiness to the duke, who hereupon began by threats and by overt acts to persecute the Catholics; by which he drew down the vengeance of heaven; for the Tartars, so formidable to all Europe in the thirteenth age, after a most bloody and obstinate siege, took Kiev by assault, sacked it, and setting it on fire reduced it to a heap of ashes.
St Hyacinth, in the midst of this desolation, whilst the streets ran in streams of blood, and many parts of the city were on fire, carrying the holy ciborium in one hand, and an image of our Lady in the other, passed through the flames and over the river Nieper.
HE RETURNED TO CRACOW
The saint returned to Cracow, upon this accident, in 1231, being then fifty-six years old; and enjoyed some repose in his house of the Holy Trinity the two following years, still continuing to preach and instruct both in the city and the country. After two years he made the painful visitation of his convents and communities among the Danes, Swedes, Prussians, Muscovites, and other nations; and penetrated among the Tartars. To preach in Cumania, a country inhabited by the Jazyges, on the Danube, had been the object of the zealous desires of St Dominic, this being regarded as the most barbarous and obstinate of all infidel nations. Some Dominican preachers had entered this province in the year 1228.
St Hyacinth came into their ungrateful vineyard, and, in consequence of his preaching, in a short time several thousands received the sacrament of baptism, and among them a prince of the Tartars, who went with several lords of his nation to the first general council of Lateran in 1245.
SEVERAL THOUSANDS RECEIVED BAPTISM
Though Great Tartary be a vast wild tract of land, St Hyacinth travelled quite through it, announcing Christ everywhere, penetrating into Thibet, near the East-Indies, and into Catay, which is the most northern province of China. The missionaries who in the last age visited these parts, found in them many remains of Christianity once planted there.
THE CONVENT AT VILNA
St Hyacinth returning into Poland, entered again Red Russia, Podolia, Volhinia, and Lithuania were exceedingly animated by his zealous sermons to the practice of penance, and to a change of manners. The great convent he founded at Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, is the mother-house of a large province of this religious Order.
After having travelled above four thousand leagues, he arrived at Cracow in the year 1257, which was the seventy-second and last of his life.
MEEKNESS AND HUMILITY OF HEART
In his last sickness he was forewarned by God on August 14, that he should leave this world on the next day, the feast of the Assumption of our Lady, his great patroness. He exhorted his religious brethren, recommending to them especially meekness and humility of heart, and to have great care always to preserve mutual love and charity, and to esteem poverty as men who have renounced all things of the earth. "For this," said he, "is the testament or authentic instrument by which we claim eternal life." The next morning he assisted at matins and mass; after which he received the viaticum and extreme unction at the steps of the altar; and expired a few hours after in fervent prayer on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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