ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 16th 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 EDITHA, VIRGIN
St Editha (Eadgith) was born in 961, being natural daughter of King Edgar, by Wulfrida, a noble lady whom that prince had ravished; for which he underwent a penance of seven years, as hath been related in the life of St Dunstan.
Edgar, after the death of his wife, endeavoured with great importunity to marry Wulfrida; but she constantly rejected his solicitations, and took the religious veil in the monastery of Wilton, of which house she was shortly after chosen abbess.
SHE WAS RESCUED FROM THE CORRUPTION OF THE WORLD
Her daughter Editha was brought up by her in this religious community, and thus rescued from the corruption of the world before she had any taste for its deceitful pleasures. Ignorance of vice being the most perfect fence of innocence, the Roman Martyrology draws from this circumstance the eulogium of St Editha, that, "being from her tender years dedicated to God in a monastery, she may be said rather not to have known the world, than to have left it." She never knew the enchantments of sin, or the allurements and snares of the world, which she only feared at a distance; and her tender heart was always open to God, because always a stranger to any other love.
LESSONS OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION
Wulfrida took a particular care to improve her religious sentiments by repeating constantly to her lessons of Christian perfection. Editha was admitted very young to her religious profession, for which the consent of the king, her father, was obtained with much difficulty.
SHE COMBINED ACTIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE
She united the active life of Martha with the contemplation of Mary, and though it was her greatest delight to hear the voice of her heavenly spouse speak to her heart in silence and retirement, she frequently deprived herself of that celestial pleasure, that she might attend and serve him in his distressed members. She fed the poor, took care of the sick, and dressed their most foul and loathsome sores, preferring the leprous to the king’s children. Her abstinence and other austerities were wonderful, and she wore a hair cloth next her skin. She had a great devotion to the memory of her crucified spouse, which she expressed by the constant use of the sign of the cross.
SHE BUILT THE CHURCH OF ST DENIS
Edgar died, and was succeeded by his son, Edward the Martyr. Upon the death of the latter, the nobility, who adhered to the martyred king, desired Editha to quit her monastery, and ascend the throne; but she preferred a state of humility and obedience to the prospect of a crown.
She built the church of St Denis, at Wilton; to the dedication of which she invited the holy archbishop St Dunstan.
ST EDITHA'S DEATH
This prelate during Mass was observed to weep exceedingly; the reason of which he afterwards discovered to be, because he learned that Editha should shortly be taken out of this world, and translated to the regions of everlasting light; whilst we, said he, shall still continue sitting here below in darkness and in the shades of death.
SHE WAS BURIED IN THE CHURCH OF ST DENIS
According to this prediction, forty-three days after this solemnity, she happily reposed in our Lord, on September 16, 984. St Dunstan, who had assisted her in her last illness, performed the funeral solemnity, she being buried in the church of Saint Denis.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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