ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY
Saints celebrated on the 28th of February
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 AUGUSTE CHAPDELAINE, PRIEST AND MARTYR
(In leap years, St Auguste is commemorated on his day of death, February 29)
Saint Auguste Chapdelaine obtained the martyr’s palm after a comparatively brief period of activity. But he had in earlier years given many proofs of heroic Christian courage.
HE WISHED TO BECOME A PRIEST
His parents were pious, well-to-do farmers in the village of La Rochelle, diocese of Coutances, where he was born on January 6, 1814. Still they were unwilling to consecrate their son to the service of the Lord, though he prayed for the grace most earnestly and showed by his whole life how well fitted he was for the priesthood.
HE WAS ORDAINED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-NINE
When he was twenty years old, two of his brothers, after a short illness, died in the same week. His parents saw in this a punishment of their obstinacy and now gave Auguste permission to study. He was ordained at the age of twenty-nine and desired to go to the foreign missions, but the bishop was against this. After eight years of patient waiting he was able in 1851 to enter the Paris seminary of foreign missions and the year after went out to China.
HE LABOURED IN CHINA WITH GREAT SUCCESS
On his first attempt to penetrate into the interior from Canton he was captured by brigands and robbed of everything. For nearly two years he laboured with the greatest success in the province of Kwang-si, when he was apprehended at Si-lin-hien on February 24, 1856.
NOT A SOUND OF COMPLAINT PASSED HIS LIPS
At his first trial the mandarin ordered him to be given three hundred blows of the stick [for being a Catholic priest], but the executioners were allowed full liberty and they did not cease until the body of the martyr was covered over and over with blood. Not a sound of complaint or suffering came from the mouth of the scourged victim.
A MIRACLE
During the whole night and the following day he was bound in so cruel a way that he could not stir a limb without the greatest pain. But when he was again led to the tribunal in the evening all the pains of his torture had miraculously disappeared.
At this the mandarin grew furious. He believed that the missionary had used magic. So they poured warm blood from a dog over his head to dispel the charm and beat his face with a thick leather strap until his teeth were broken.
HIS MARTYR'S CROWN
On the next day, February 28, 1856, Chapdelaine was condemned to death and was subjected to a slow martyrdom by the “torture of the cage.” When on the following morning the executioners struck off his head, three rays of blood, it is said, streamed heavenward from the wound. But much more must we admire the heroic patience of the martyr in his unspeakable sufferings.
(From Fr Kempf's "The Holiness of the Church in the Nineteenth Century". - "Saint" has been inserted afterwards. Fr Auguste was canonised on October 1, 2000.)
PRAYER:
Grant to your Church, we beseech you, O Lord, through the intercession of your holy martyr Auguste, not to think high-mindedly, but to grow in humility pleasing to you; that, despising what is base, she may with unbounded love diligently do whatever is right. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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