ST SUSANNA OF ROME, VIRGIN AND MARTYR - 11 AUGUST

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 11th 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 SUSANNA OF ROME, VIRGIN AND MARTYR 

Saint Susanna was nobly born in Rome, and is said to have been niece to Pope Caius. Having made a vow of virginity, she refused to marry; on which account she was impeached as a Christian, and suffered with heroic constancy a cruel martyrdom. 

SHE SUFFERED WITH HEROIC CONSTANCY

No genuine acts of her life are now extant; but she is commemorated in many ancient Martyrologies. St Susanna suffered towards the beginning of Diocletian’s reign, about the year 295.   

Sufferings were to the martyrs the most distinguishing mercy, extraordinary graces, and sources of the greatest crowns and glory. 

AFFLICTIONS

All afflictions which God sends are in like manner the greatest mercies and blessings; they are the most precious talents to be improved by us to the increasing of our love and affection to God, and the exercise of the most heroic virtues of self-denial, patience, humility, resignation, and penance. They are also most useful and necessary to bring us to the knowledge of ourselves and our Creator, which we are too apt to forget without them. 

A PATIENT RESIGNATION TO THE DIVINE WILL

Wherefore whatever crosses or calamities befall us, we must be prepared to bear them with a patient resignation to the divine will; we ought to learn from the martyrs to comfort ourselves, and to rejoice in them, as the greatest blessings. 

WE MAKE THE MOST PRECIOUS MERCIES OUR CURSE!

How base is our cowardice, and how criminal our folly, if, by neglecting to improve these advantageous talents of sickness, losses, and other afflictions, we make the most precious mercies our heaviest curse! 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)