ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 4th 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 IDA OF HERZFELD, WIDOW
Saint Ida's father was a count, who lived in great favour with Charlemagne, emperor and king of France, in whose court she had her education.
From her childhood she learned to contemn the world in the midst of its splendour, to esteem virtue and the divine grace as the only good, and to propose to herself no other object in all her actions and desires than to walk always with God, and to study, with her whole strength, to discover and to accomplish his holy will.
WALKING ALWAYS WITH GOD
Whilst many others wearied themselves and exhausted their vigour and strength in the empty pursuit of vanity and ambition, and sought satisfaction and pleasure in the region of misery and death, Ida trembled for herself lest she should ever suffer herself to be imposed upon by such false appearances.
As it is upon the affections and maxims of the soul, and the opinions which she conceives of things, that all depends, it was the saint’s first care, by assiduous prayer, pious meditation, and reading, to cultivate and daily improve those which religion and piety inspire; and herein she was exceedingly strengthened by the example and conversation of the holy virgins Odilia and Gertrude, the daughters of Pepin.
The emperor gave her in marriage to a favourite lord of his court, named Egbert, and bestowed on her a great fortune in estates, not only on account of her merit, but also to recompense her father’s services. The happy couple lived in the most perfect and holy union of hearts, and constantly excited each other to greater fervour in the practice of all good works.
THE PRACTICE OF ALL GOOD WORKS
The death of her husband left her a widow whilst she was yet very young; and this state she sanctified by redoubling her devotions, self-denials, and austerities.
The great revenues of her estate she chiefly employed in relieving the poor, and felt no greater pleasure than in clothing and feeding Jesus Christ in his members.
A LITTLE RETIRED CHAPEL
Unobserved by men, she built herself a little retired chapel within a church which she had founded near her own seat in the diocese of Munster. Her exercises of piety, and the heavenly favours she often received in prayer, were generally known only to God; so carefully did she conceal them as much as possible from the eyes of men.
SHE NEVER MENTIONED HER SUFFERINGS
The close of her penitential life was a long and painful sickness, in which, far from ever letting fall the least word of complaint, she never mentioned her sufferings. Having shone as a bright light to the infant church of Germany, she passed to eternal rest before the middle of the ninth century.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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