ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 4th 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.
THE TRANSLATION OF ST CUTHBERT
Bede relates, in the life of Saint Cuthbert, that the saint charged his disciples before his death, that rather than ever fall under the yoke of schismatics or infidels, they would, when threatened with such a calamity, take with them his mortal remains, and choose some other dwelling.
DANISH PIRATES
In the year 875 the province of Northumberland was so cruelly infested by Danish pirates, and Lindisfarne was so much exposed to their continual ravages, that Sardulf, the bishop, Eadred, the abbot, and the community of the monks, left that place, and carrying with them that sacred treasure, wandered to and fro for seven years.
In 882 they rested with it at Concester, a small town a few miles from the Roman wall, where the bishop’s see continued one hundred and thirteen years, as Camden remarks.
Both King Alfred and the Danish leader granted peace for a month to all persons that fled to the saint’s shrine, and Alfred gave to his church all the land that lies between the Tyne and the Tees, as Matthew of Westminster, or whoever is the author of that compilation called the Flores of the English history, assures us.
THEY TOOK THE SAINT'S BODY TO RIPPON AND DURHAM
In 995, in the fresh inroads of the Danes, Bishop Aldune retired with the saint’s body to Rippon, and four months after to Durham, a place strong by its natural situation, but not habitable, till the people of the country, on this occasion, cut down the wood, and raised a small church, and cells for the monks.
HIS BODY WAS FOUND INCORRUPT
The body of the saint remained without being tainted with the least corruption, as Hovenden and all our other historians prove it to have been found whenever it was visited; and many miracles were wrought at his shrine, accounts of which are found in the above-mentioned historians, and others, especially in the History of the Church of Durham, written in 1100, not by Turgot, the prior, as Seldon imagined, but by Simeon, a monk of that house, as Mr Bedford proves in his accurate edition of this work.
A YEARLY MEMORIAL WAS KEPT ON THIS DAY
The author relates how, a little before his time, Bishop William had, by the authority of the Conqueror, placed the monks of Weremouth and Jarrow in the cathedral at Durham. A yearly memorial of the translation of St. Cuthbert’s body to Durham was kept on this day.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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