ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY
Saints celebrated on the 19th 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 BARBATUS, BISHOP OF BENEVENTO, CONFESSOR
(A.D. 682.) Saint Barbatus (Barbas) was born in the territory of Benevento, in Italy, towards the end of the pontificate of St Gregory the Great, in the beginning of the seventh century.
His parents gave him a Christian education, and Barbatus in his youth laid the foundation of that eminent sanctity, which recommends him to our veneration.
HIS EMINENT SANCTITY
Devout meditation on the holy scriptures was his chief entertainment; and the innocence, simplicity, and purity of his manners, and extraordinary progress in all virtues, qualified him for the service of the altar, to which he was assumed by taking holy orders as soon as the canons of the church would allow it.
A GOOD PREACHER
He was immediately employed by his bishop in preaching, for which he had an extraordinary talent; and, after some time, made curate of St Basil’s, in Morcona, a town near Benevento. His parishioners were steeled in their irregularities, and averse from whatever looked like establishing order and discipline amongst them.
THEY DESIRED TO SLUMBER IN THEIR SINS
As they desired only to slumber on in their sins, they could not bear the remonstrances of their pastor, who endeavoured to awake them to a sense of their miseries, and to sincere repentance: they treated him as a disturber of their peace, and persecuted him with the utmost violence. Finding their malice conquered by his patience and humility, and his character shining still more bright, they had recourse to slanders, in which, such was their virulence and success, that he was obliged to withdraw his charitable endeavours amongst them.
THEY HAD RECOURSE TO SLANDER
By these fiery trials, God purified his heart from all earthly attachments, and perfectly crucified it to the world.
HE RETURNED TO BENEVENTO
Barbatus returned to Benevento, where he was received with joy by those who were acquainted with his innocence and sanctity.
The seed of Christianity had been first sown at Benevento by St Potin, who is said to have been sent thither by St Peter, and is looked upon as the first bishop of this see. We have no names of his successors till St Januarius, by whom this church was exceedingly increased, and who was honoured with the crown of martyrdom in 305.
Totila, the Goth, laid the city of Benevento in ruins, in 545. The Lombards having possessed themselves of that country, repaired it, and King Autharis gave it to Zotion, a general among those invaders, with the title of a duchy, about the year 598, and his successors governed it, as sovereign dukes, for several ages.
AMONG THEM THERE REMAINED MANY IDOLATERS
These Lombards were at that time chiefly Arians; but among them there remained many idolaters, and several at Benevento had embraced the Catholic faith, even before the death of St Gregory the Great, with their duke Arichis, a warm friend of that holy pope.
But when St Barbatus entered upon his ministry in that city, the Christians themselves retained many idolatrous superstitions, which even their duke, or prince Romuald, authorised by his example, though son of Grimoald, king of the Lombards, who had edified all Italy by his conversion. They expressed a religious veneration to a golden viper, and prostrated themselves before it: they paid also a superstitious honour to a tree, on which they hung the skin of a wild beast, and these ceremonies were closed by public games, in which the skin served for a mark at which bowmen shot arrows over their shoulder.
HE PREACHED ZEALOUSLY AGAINST THE ABUSES
St Barbatus preached zealously against these abuses, and laboured long to no purpose: yet desisted not, but joined his exhortations with fervent prayer and rigorous fasting, for the conversion of this unhappy people.
AT LENGTH HE ROUSED THEIR ATTENTION BY FORTELLING THE DISTRESS OF THEIR CITY
At length he roused their attention by foretelling the distress of their city, and the calamities which it was to suffer from the army of the emperor Constans, who, landing soon after in Italy, laid siege to Benevento. In their extreme distress, and still more grievous alarms and fears, they listened to the holy preacher, and, entering into themselves, renounced their errors and idolatrous practices.
Hereupon, St Barbatus gave them the comfortable assurance that the siege should be raised, and the emperor worsted: which happened as he had foretold. Upon their repentance, the saint with his own hand cut down the tree, which was the object of their superstition, and afterwards melted down the golden viper which they adored, of which he made a chalice for the use of the altar.
ILDEBRAND'S DEATH
Ildebrand, bishop of Benevento, dying during the siege, after the public tranquillity was restored, St Barbatus was consecrated bishop on March 10, 663; for this see was only raised to the archiepiscopal dignity by Pope John XIII. about the year 965.
BARBATUS DESTROYED EVERY TRACE OF SUPERSTITION
Barbatus, being invested with the episcopal character, pursued and completed the good work which he had so happily begun, and destroyed every trace or the least remain of superstition in the prince’s closet, and in the whole state.
THE COUNCILS AT ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE
In the year 680 he assisted in a council held by Pope Agatho at Rome, and the year following in the sixth general council held at Constantinople against the Monothelites.
HIS HOLY DEATH
He did not long survive this great assembly, for he died on February 29, 682, being about seventy years old, almost nineteen of which he had spent in the episcopal chair. He is named in the Roman Martyrology, and honoured at Benevento among the chief patrons of that city.
TRUE REPENTANCE
Many sinners are moved by alarming sensible dangers or calamities to enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently, and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one who believes these great truths, if he takes a serious review of them, and has them present to his mind, to remain insensible: transient glances effect not a change of heart.
OPPORTUNISTIC CONVERSIONS
Amongst the pretended conversions which sickness daily produces, very few bear the character of sincerity, as appears by those who, after their recovery, live on in their former lukewarmness and disorders.
St Augustine, in a sermon which he made upon the news, that Rome had been sacked by the barbarians, relates, that not long before, at Constantinople, upon the appearance of an unusual meteor, and a rumour of a pretended prediction that the city would be destroyed by fire from heaven, the inhabitants were seized with a panic fear, all began to do penance like Ninive, and fled, with the emperor at their head, to a great distance from the city. After the term appointed for its pretended destruction was elapsed, they sent scouts to the city which they had left quite empty, and, hearing that it was still standing, returned to it, and with their fears forgot their repentance and all their good resolutions.
ALL NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS
To prevent the danger of penitents imposing upon themselves by superficial conversions, St Barbatus took all necessary precautions to improve their first dispositions to a sincere and perfect change of heart, and to cut off and remove all dangerous occasions of temptations.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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