ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 11th 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 PATIENS, ARCHBISHOP OF LYON, CONFESSOR
God, by an admirable effect of his holy providence, was pleased to raise up this holy prelate for the comfort and support of his servants in Gaul, under the calamities with which that country was afflicted during great part of the fifth century.
For his extraordinary virtues he was placed in the archiepiscopal chair of Lyons some time before the year 470: many think soon after the death of St Eucherius in 450.
HE BUILT A NUMBER OF STATELY CHURCHES
By the dignity of his see he was metropolitan of the province called the Second of Lyons; but he diffused the effects of his boundless charity over all the provinces of Gaul. He built a great number of rich and stately churches, to repair, adorn, and embellish many old ones, and amply fed the poor in the greater part of the towns in Gaul. St Apollinaris Sidonius says that he knew not which to admire and praise more in him, his zeal for the divine honour or his charity for the poor.
MANY HERETICS WERE CONVERTED TO THE FAITH
By his pastoral solicitude and assiduous sermons many heretics were converted to the faith. The Burgundians, who were at that time masters of the city of Lyons, were a brutish and savage nation, and infected with the heresies of the Arians and Photinians. St Patiens found the secret first to gain their hearts and afterward to open their understandings, convince them of the truth, and draw them out of the abyss of their errors.
HE KNEW HOW TO COMBINE SEVERITY AND COMPASSION
Like another Ambrose, he knew how to join severity with compassion, and activity with prudence and discretion. He seems to have died about the year 480. His name is honoured on September 11 in the Roman Martyrology.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 🎨 A pencil drawing of Lyons Cathedral)
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