ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY
Saints celebrated on the 25th 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 POPPO, ABBOT OF STAVELOT
Saint Poppo was born in Flanders in 978, and received a pious education, under the care of a most virtuous mother, who died a nun at Verdun.
THE SWEETER FOOD
In his youth he served for some time in the army, but even whilst he lived in the world, he found the spiritual food of heavenly meditation and prayer with which the affections of the soul are nourished, to be incomparably sweeter than all the delights of the senses, and to give himself up entirely to these holy exercises, he renounced his profession and the world.
HE TOOK THE MONASTIC AT ST THIERRY'S
In a visit which he made by a penitential pilgrimage to the holy places at Jerusalem, he brought thence many precious relics, with which he enriched the church of our Lady at Deisne, now a marquisate between Ghent and Courtray. He made also a pilgrimage to the shrines of the apostles at Rome, and some time after his return, took the monastic habit at St Thierry’s near Rheims [Reims].
HIS EMINENT VIRTUE
Richard, abbot of Verdun, becoming acquainted with his eminent virtue, obtained with great difficulty his abbot’s consent to remove him tither: and being made abbot of St Vedast’s at Arras, upon the deposition of Folrad, who had filled that house with scandalous disorders, he appointed Poppo procurator.
HE PREVAILED WITH ST HENRY TO ABOLISH THE COMBATS OF MEN AND BEARS
In a journey which our saint was obliged to make to the court of St Henry, he prevailed with that religious prince to abolish the combats of men and bears. St Poppo was chosen successively prior of St Vedast’s, provost of St Vennes, and abbot of Beaulieu, which last he rebuilt. He was afterwards chosen abbot of St Vedast’s, and some time later of the two united abbeys of Stavelot and Malmedy, about a league asunder, in the diocese of Liege; also, two years after this, of St Maximin’s at Trier. Those of Arras and Marchiennes were also committed to his care: in all which houses he settled the most exact discipline.
HIS HOLY DEATH
He died at Marchiennes, on January 25, 1048, being seventy years of age. St Poppo received Extreme Unction at the hands of Everhelm, abbot of Hautmont, afterwards of Blandinberg at Ghent, who afterwards wrote his life, in which he gives a particular account of his great virtues.
HIS NAME WAS INSERTED IN THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY
The body of St Poppo was carried to Stavelot, and there interred; his remains were taken up and enshrined in 1624, after Baronius had inserted his name in the Roman Martyrology; for Molanus in his Indiculus and Miraeus observe that he was never canonised. Chatelain denies against Trithemius that any commemoration was ever made of him in the public office in any of the abbeys which he governed. But Martenne assures us that he was honoured among the saints at Stavelot, in the year 1624.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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