ST POEMEN, DESERT FATHER - 27 AUGUST

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 27th 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 POEMEN, DESERT FATHER 

This great light among the ancient fathers of the desert forsook the world about the year 385, and retired into the great wilderness of Scete, in Egypt. 

He often passed several days, sometimes a whole week, without eating; but it was his constant advice to others that their fasts should be moderate, but constant, and that they should take some nourishment every day. It was a maxim with him, that no monk ought ever to taste wine, or to seek any superfluous gratification of the senses. 

THE BROTHERS RETIRED TO TERENUTHI

The barbarians ravaging Scete in 395, he and his brothers retired to Terenuthi, near an old temple of idols, and lived there for several years. Anubis, the eldest, and Poemen governed this little community by turns. Of the twelve hours of the night, they allotted four for work, four for singing psalms together, and four for taking their rest. In the day they worked till sext; then read till none, or three in the afternoon; after this they gathered a few herbs for their refection.

YEARNING FOR HOLY COMMUNION AS THE STAG PANTS AFTER THE COOL SPRING

St Poemen feared the least occasion that could interrupt his solitude, or make the distractions of the world break in upon him. He used strongly to exhort the faithful to the most frequent devout communion, and to a continual vehement thirst after that divine table, as the stag pants after the cool spring... souls, in the wilderness of this world always suck in something of its poison, and must languish perpetually to approach the body and blood of Jesus Christ, which powerfully fortifies them against, and expels all such venom, he said. He also said: "Evil cannot be cast out by evil; wherefore if any one doth evil to you, do good to him, that you may overcome his evil by your good." 

"EVIL CANNOT BE CAST OUT BY EVIL"

St Poemen died about the year 451, and is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology, and in the Menaea of the Greeks. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)