ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST
Saints celebrated on the 30th of August
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 PAMMACHIUS, CONFESSOR
This holy man was a Roman senator, and the ornament of the most illustrious family of the Camilli, as he is styled by St Jerome, whose schoolfellow he was in his youth.
A ROMAN SENATOR
Those who were entrusted with his education took care to season their instructions with delight, in order to make him be in love with his studies; thus they led him through flowery paths to the sources of eloquence; he was also initiated in sacred literature.
HE MARRIED PAULINA
Coming out of school in 370, when St Jerome retired into the desert, Pammachius entered the senate, and by his virtue and abilities was the honour of that illustrious body. He was raised to the proconsular dignity, and married Paulina, the second daughter of St Paula.
He was the first who detected the impious errors of Jovinian, and denounced them to Pope Siricius, who condemned that heresiarch in 390.
HE DETECTED THE IMPIOUS ERRORS OF JOVINIAN
Friendships begun in childhood, and cemented by a sympathy of inclinations and studies, according to the remark of Quintilian, are usually the most agreeable of all others, and hold out to the last, especially when they are founded in virtue. Such was the union of hearts which linked together St Jerome and Pammachius.
HE CONSULTED HIM
The latter assisted that holy doctor in his works against Jovinian, and often consulted him in his own difficulties.
The younger Paulina died in 393, within a few years after her marriage. Pammachius, after the holy sacrifice was offered for her, according to custom, gave an entertainment to all the poor in Rome, as St Paulinus mentions, who concludes his letter to him as follows:
"Your spouse is now a pledge and a powerful intercessor for you with Jesus Christ. She now obtains for you as many blessings in heaven as you have sent her treasures from hence, not honouring her memory with fruitless tears, but making her partner of these living gifts - viz., by alms given for the repose of her soul; she is honoured by the merit of your virtues; she is fed by the bread you have given to the poor," etc.
HE BUILT A HOSPITAL
St Jerome says, that Pammachius watered her ashes with the balm of alms and mercy, which obtains the pardon of sins; that from the time of her death he made the blind, the lame, and the poor his coheirs, and the heirs of Paulina; and that he never went abroad without being followed by a troop of such attendants. This saint exhorted him to outdo himself in the perfection of his humility.
HE CONVERTED ALL THE FARMERS
Pammachius built an hospital for strangers in the Roman port, and used to serve the sick and the poor with his own hands.
By his letters he converted all the farmers and vassals upon his large estates in Numidia from the Donatist schism to the Catholic communion; which zealous charity drew a letter of congratulation from the great St Austin [Augustine] in 401.
HE SEEMS TO NOT HAVE ENTERED HOLY ORDERS
St Pammachius never seems to have entered holy orders, as some moderns have imagined; but lived sequestered from the world, devoting himself entirely to the exercises of devotion, penance, and charity. He died in 410, a little before the sacking of Rome, and is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on this day.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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