ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 14th 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.
ST ALBERT, PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM
Saint Albert was Patriarch of Jerusalem, one of the conspicuous ecclesiastics in the troubles between the Holy See and Frederick Barbarossa; his date of birth is uncertain; he died September 14, 1215.
He was in fact asked by both Pope and Emperor to act as umpire in their dispute and, as a reward, was made Prince of the Empire.
He was born in the diocese of Parma, became a canon regular in the Monastery of Mortara (not Mortura, as Butler has it) in the Milanese, and after being Bishop of Bobbio, for a short time, was translated to the see of Vercelli. This was about 1184.
ALBERT WAS ASKED TO ACCEPT THE SEE
At that time the Latins occupied Jerusalem and, the Patriarchate falling vacant, Albert was implored by the Christians of Palestine to accept the see.
As it implied persecution and a prospect of martyrdom, he accepted, and was appointed by Innocent III, who at the same time made him Papal Legate. His sanctity procured him the veneration of even the Muslims. It was while here that he undertook a work with which his name is particularly and peculiarly associated.
THE RULE FOR THE HERMITS
In Palestine, at that time, the hermits of Mount Carmel lived in separate cells. One of their number gathered them into a community, and in 1209 their superior, Brocard, requested the Patriarch, though not a Carmelite, to draw up a rule for them. He assented, and legislated in the most rigorous fashion, prescribing perpetual abstinence from flesh, protracted fasts, long silence, and extreme seclusion. It was so severe that mitigations had to be introduced by Innocent IV in 1246.
HE WAS ASSASSINATED
The end of this great prelate was most tragic. Summoned by Innocent III to take part in the General Council of the Lateran, in 1215, he was assassinated before he left Palestine, while taking part in a procession, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
He is honoured among the saints by the Carmelites, on April 8. The Bollandists call attention to this curious anomaly, that not at Vercelli, where he was Patriarch, not among the Canons Regular, to whom he properly belonged, but in the Order of the Carmelites, of which he was not a member, does he receive the honour of a saint.
THE CARMELITES HONOUR HIM AS A SAINT
"That holy Order could not and ought not to lose the memory of him by whom it was ranked among the Orders approved by the Roman Church; in saying which", adds the writer, "I in no way wish to impugn the Carmelite claim of descent from Elias." At Vercelli Albert does not even figure as Blessed, and the Canons Regular honour him as a saint, but pay him no public cult.
(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
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