ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 5th 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 BERTIN, ABBOT
This illustrious saint was nobly born in the territory of Constance, in Switzerland, about the year 597. He learned from his infancy to love and esteem only virtue, and to contemn the world, and whatever did not directly tend to unite his heart more perfectly to God. Excited by the example of his kinsman, St Omer, who embraced the monastic state in the great abbey of Luxeuil, in Burgundy, he and two individual companions, named Mommolin and Ebertran, or Bertran, consecrated themselves to God in the same house.
THE FERVENT EXERCISE OF ALL VIRTUES
Bertin was then very young, but he distinguished himself in the fervent exercise of all virtues among five hundred religious brethren, under the direction of the holy abbot Walbert, who governed that monastery with great reputation after the death of St Eustachius, the immediate successor of St Columban.
St Omer being made bishop of Tarvanna, the ancient metropolis of the Morini, in Artois, about the year 637, laboured with wonderful success in cultivating a vineyard which had long lain wild. The abbot of Luxeuil, understanding how much he stood in need of assistants endowed with the spirit of apostles, sent to him, about the year 639, St Bertin, St Mommolin, and Ebertran.
POWERFUL IN WORKS AND WORDS
The country of the Morini had formerly received the seed of divine faith, but only superficially and imperfectly, and had then for almost a whole century been as it were an abandoned field. Incredible were the fatigues, persecutions, and sufferings of these holy men in rooting out vice and idolatry, and in civilising a people who were at that time in a great measure barbarians. Powerful in words and works, they reaped, by the divine blessing, a most abundant harvest.
St Mommolin, St Bertin, and Ebartran, built their first small monastery on a hill on the banks of the river Aa, a league from Sithiu, being half way to Watten. This church is still a place of great devotion, and is still called St Mommolin’s or the Old Monastery.
THE PLACE SOON GREW TOO SMALL
This place being very narrow, confined by the river and marshy grounds, soon grew too narrow for the numbers that flocked thither to take the religious habit.
Whereupon the holy founders, mounting the river in a boat, came a league higher, to the place where now St Bertin’s monastery stands. The ground, which was part of the estate of Sithiu, St Omer bestowed on them, being larger than Saint Mommolin’s-Hill, and then encompassed with marshes.
HE BECAME ABBOT OF SITHIU
After some time Bertin became abbot of Sithiu. Under his government the reputation of this monastery seemed to equal, if not to surpass, that of Luxeuil. Rigorous abstinence and fasting was one of the first articles of the discipline established in this house; the subsistence of one hundred and fifty monks who were here assembled, consisted chiefly of roots, herbs, bread and water. Their prayer was almost continual; and they were taught to sanctify by it all their exterior employments; the singing of the divine praises was never interrupted in their choir either day or night, the monks therein succeeding each other in different companies; the most painful labour never excused any from this duty, or from any part of their nocturnal watchings. The number of the monks increasing, St Bertin obtained of St Omer the church of our Lady, which the bishop had built on a hill at a little distance from the first monastery; this second abbey was called New Sithiu.
HE RESIGNED HIS DIGNITY
St Bertin, finding himself sinking under the weight of decrepit old age, resigned his dignity in the year 700 in favour of Rigobert. From that time he shut himself up in a little hermitage dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, near the cemetery of his monks, in which place he passed the nights and days in almost perpetual prayer, observing all the exercises of regular discipline with the fidelity and humility of the most fervent novice.
HIS RELICS
He died at the age of one hundred and twelve, on September 5, 709. He was buried in the chapel of St Martin which Rigobert had built by his directions, though it was not completely finished till after his death. His relics are exposed in a silver shrine, enriched with gold and precious stones.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
Comments
Post a Comment