ST ISIDORE OF ALEXANDRIA, PRIEST AND HOSPITALLER - 15 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 15th of January

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 ISIDORE OF ALEXANDRIA, PRIEST AND HOSPITALLER 

Saint Isidore of Alexandria was taken from his cell where he had passed many years in the desert, ordained priest, and placed in the dignity of hospitaller, by St Athanasius. 

"INSTEAD OF FEEDING ON THE BREAD OF ANGELS"

He lived in that great city a perfect model of meekness, patience, mortification, and prayer. He frequently burst into tears at table, saying: “I who am a rational creature, and made to enjoy God, eat the food of brutes instead of feeding on the bread of angels.” 

A SKILFUL SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR

Palladius, afterwards bishop of Helenopolis, on going to Egypt to embrace an ascetic life, addressed himself first to our saint for advice: the skilful director bade him go and exercise himself for some time in mortification and self-denial, and then return for further instructions. 

HE SUFFERED MANY PERSECUTIONS

St Isidore suffered many persecutions, first from Lucius the Arian intruder, and afterwards from Theophilus, who unjustly accused him of Origenism. He publicly condemned that heresy at Constantinople, where he died in 403, under the protection of St Chrysostom. 

 NOTES

1. An hospitaller is one residing in an hospital, in order to receive the poor and strangers. 

2. St Jerome’s zeal against the Origenists was very serviceable to the church; yet his translation of Theophilus’s book against the memory of St Chrysostom, is a proof that it sometimes carried him too far. This weakens his charge against the holy hospitaller of Alexandria, whom Theophilus expelled Egypt, with the four long brothers, (Dioscorous, Ammonias, Eusebius, and Euthymius,) and about three hundred other monks. 

Some accuse Theophilus of proceeding against them out of mere jealousy. It is at least certain, that St Isidore and the four long brothers anathematized Origenism at Constantinople, before St Chrysostom received them to his communion, and that Theophilus himself was reconciled to, them at Chalcedon, in the council at the Oak, without requiring of them any confession of faith, or making mention of Origen. 

Many take the St Isidore, mentioned in the Roman Martyrology, for the hospitaller; but Bulteau observes, that St Isidore of Scété is rather meant; at least the former is honoured by the Greeks.

 (From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)