ST SIMON SALUS, HERMIT - 21 JULY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JULY

Saints celebrated on the 21st of July

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 SIMEON SALUS, HERMIT 

He was a native of Egypt, and born about the year 522. Having performed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he retired to a desert near the Red Sea, where he remained twenty-nine years in the constant practice of a most austere penitential life. 

WE MUST LOVE HUMILIATIONS IF WE WOULD BE TRULY HUMBLE

Here he was constantly revolving in mind that we must love humiliations if we would be truly humble; that at least we should receive those which God sends us with resignation, and own them exceedingly less than the measure of our demerits; that it is even sometimes our advantage to seek them; that human prudence should not always be our guide in this regard; and that there are circumstances where we ought to follow the impulse of the Holy Spirit, though not unless we have an assurance of his inspiration. 

HE PASSED FOR A FOOL

The servant of God, animated by an ardent desire to be contemptible among men, quitted the desert, and at Emesus succeeded to his wish; for by affecting the manners of those who want sense, he passed for a fool. He was then sixty years old, and lived six or seven years in that city, when it was destroyed by an earthquake in 588. 

HIS LOVE OF HUMILITY WAS NOT WITHOUT REWARD

His love for humility was not without reward, God having bestowed on him extraordinary graces, and even honoured him with the gift of miracles. The year of his death is unknown. Although we are not obliged in every instance to imitate Saint Simeon, and that it would be rash even to attempt it without a special call; yet his example ought to make us blush, when we consider with what an ill-will we suffer the least thing that hurts our pride. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)