SAINT MARCELLA, WIDOW - 31 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 31st 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.

SAINT MARCELLA, WIDOW 

Saint Marcella is styled by St Jerome the glory of the Roman ladies. Having lost her husband in the seventh month of her marriage, she rejected the suit of Cerealis the consul, uncle of Gallus Caesar, and resolved to imitate the lives of the ascetics of the East. 

HER HOLY LIFE

She abstained from wine and flesh, employed all her time in pious reading, prayer, and visiting the churches of the apostles and martyrs, and never spoke with any man alone. 

ROME WAS IN A SHORT TIME FILLED WITH MONASTERIES

Her example was followed by many virgins of the first quality, who put themselves under her direction, and Rome was in a short time filled with monasteries. 

ELEVEN LETTERS OF ST JEROME

We have eleven letters of St Jerome to her in answer to her religious queries. 

THE GOTHS PLUNDERED ROME

The Goths under Alaric plundered Rome in 410. St Marcella was scourged by them for the treasures which she had long before distributed among the poor. All that time she trembled only for her dear spiritual pupil, Principia, (not her daughter, as some have reputed her by mistake,) and falling at the feet of the cruel soldiers, she begged, with many tears, that they would offer her no insult. God moved them to compassion. 

SHE DIED IN ST PRINCIPIA'S ARMS

They conducted them both to the church of St Paul, to which Alaric had granted the right of sanctuary with that of St Peter. St Marcella, who survived this but a short time, which she spent in tears, prayers, and thanksgiving, closed her eyes by a happy death, in the arms of St Principia, about the end of August, in 410, but her name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on January 31.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)