ST PEGA, VIRGIN - 8 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 8th 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 PEGA, VIRGIN  

Saint Pega was sister to St Guthlack, the famous hermit of Croyland, and though of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, forsook the world, and led an austere retired life in the country which afterwards bore her name, in Northamptonshire, at a distance from her holy brother. 

SHE DIED IN ROME

Some time after his death she went to Rome, and there slept in the Lord, about the year 719. Ordericus Vitalis says, her relics were honoured with miracles, and kept in a church which bore her name at Rome; but this church is not now known. 

PEAGKIRK

From one in Northamptonshire, a village still retains the name of Peagkirk, vulgarly Pequirk; she was also titular saint of a church and monastery in Pegeland, which St Edward the Confessor united to Croyland. She is called St Pee in Northamptonshire, and St Pege at Croyland.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)