ST BARSANUPHIUS, ANCHORET - 6 FEBRUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

Saints celebrated on the 6th 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 on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST BARSANUPHIUS, ANCHORET 

Having renounced the world, Saint Barsanuphius passed some years in the monastery of St Seridon, near Gaza in Palestine, in the happy company of that holy abbot, John the prophet, the blessed Dorotheus, and St Dositheus. 

HE LEFT THE MONASTERY

That he might live in the constant exercise of heavenly contemplation, the sweetness of which he had begun to relish, he left the monastery about the year 540, and in a remote cell led a life rather angelical than human. 

HE MOVED TO A REMOTE CELL

He wrote a treatise against the Origenist monks, which Montfaucon has published. The Greeks held this saint in so great veneration, that his picture was placed in the sanctuary of the church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople, with those of St Antony and St Ephrem, as we are informed by the Studite monk who wrote the preface to the Instructions of St Dorotheus, translated into French by Abbot Rancé of la Trappe. 

HIS RELICS

The relics of St Barsanuphius were brought in the ninth century to Oria, near Siponto in Italy, where he is honoured as principal patron, on February 7. The Greek Synaxaries have his office on the 6th of this month. Baronius placed his name in the Roman Martyrology on April 11.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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