ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 7th of September
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.
SAINT CLOUD, PRINCE AND PRIEST
Saint Cloud, called in Latin Chlodoardus, is the first and most illustrious saint among the princes of the royal family of the first race in France. He was son of Chlodomir, king of Orleans, the eldest son of St Clotilda, and was born in 522.
HIS FATHER WAS KILLED
He was scarcely three years old when his father was killed in Burgundy in 524; but his grandmother, Clotilda, brought up him and his two brothers, Theobald and Gunthaire, at Paris, and loved them extremely.
Their ambitious uncles, Childebert, king of Paris, and Clotaire, king of Soissons, divided the kingdom of Orleans between them, and stabbed with their own hands the two eldest of their nephews, Theobald and Gunthaire, the former being ten, the latter seven years old. Cloud, by a special providence, was saved from the massacre, and cut off his hair with his own hands, by that ceremony renouncing the world, and devoting himself to the service of God in a monastic state.
HUMILITY, MEEKNESS, AND PATIENCE
He had many fair opportunities of recovering his father’s kingdom; but, young as he was, he saw by the light of grace that all that appears most dazzling in worldly greatness is no better than smoke, and that a Christian gains infinitely more by losing than by possessing it.
The pious prince constantly maintained by humility, meekness, and patience, by austerity of life, watchfulness, assiduous prayer, and holy contemplation. By this means he enjoyed in a little cell a peace which was never interrupted by scenes of ambition or vanity.
HE DAILY THANKED GOD WHO HAD DRAWN HIM OUT OF BABYLON
Coarse clothing gave him more satisfaction than the richest purple could have done; he enjoyed in his own breast and in his cell all he desired to possess in this world, and he daily thanked God who had drawn him out of Babylon before he was infected with its corruption and intoxicating Circean wine. His contempt of all earthly things increased in proportion as he advanced in virtue and heavenly light.
HE WAS ORDAINED PRIEST BY EUSEBIUS
After some time he removed from his first abode to put himself under the discipline of St Severinus, a holy recluse who lived near Paris, from whose hands he received the monastic habit. He was ordained priest by Eusebius, bishop of Paris, in 551, and served that church some time in the functions of the sacred ministry.
HE EXHORTED THEM ALL TO VIRTUE
He afterwards retired to Nogent, on the Seine, now called St Cloud, two leagues below Paris, where he built a monastery dependent on the church of Paris. In this monastery he assembled many pious men, who fled out of the world for fear of losing their souls in it. St Cloud was regarded by them as their superior, and he animated them to all virtue both by word and example. All his inheritance he bestowed on churches, or distributed among the poor.
HIS HOLY DEATH
St Cloud was indefatigable in instructing and exhorting the people of the neighbouring country, and piously ended his days at Nogent about the year 560. He is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on September 7, which seems to have been the day of his death.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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