ST GILBERT, ABBOT - 4 FEBRUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

Saints celebrated on the 4th 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 GILBERT, ABBOT 

Saint Gilbert, Abbot, Founder of the Gilbertins, was born at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, and, after a clerical education, was ordained priest by the bishop of Lincoln. 

HOLY PARISHIONERS

For some time he taught a free-school, training up youth in regular exercises of piety and learning. The income of the parsonages of Sempringham and Tirington, being the right of his father, became his in 1123. He gave all the revenues of them to the poor, except a small sum for bare necessities, which he reserved out of the first living. 

By his care his parishioners seemed to lead the lives of religious men, and were known to be of his flock, by their conversation, wherever they went. 

THE RULE 

He gave a rule to seven holy virgins, who lived in strict enclosure in a house adjoining to the wall of his parish church of St Andrew at Sempringham, and another afterwards to a community of men, who desired to live under his direction. The latter was drawn from the rule of the canon regulars; but that given to his nuns, from St Benedict's: but to both he added many particular constitutions. Such was the origin of the Order of the Gilbertins, the approbation of which he procured from Pope Eugenius III. 

HIS AUSTERITIES

At length, he entered the Order himself, but resigned the government of it some time before his death, when he lost his sight. His diet was chiefly roots and pulse, and so sparing, that others wondered how he could subsist. He had always at table a dish which he called, The plate of the Lord Jesus, in which he put all that was best of what was served up; and this was for the poor. He always wore a hair shirt, took his short rest sitting, and spent great part of the night in prayer. In this his favourite exercise, his soul found those wings on which she continually soared to God. 

IMPRISONMENT

During the exile of St Thomas of Canterbury, he and the other superiors of his Order were accused of having sent him succours abroad. The charge was false; yet the saint chose rather to suffer imprisonment and the danger of the suppression of his Order, than to deny it, lest he should seem to condemn what would have been good and just. 

HIS HOLY DEATH

He departed to our Lord on February 3, 1190, being one hundred and six years old. Miracles wrought at his tomb were examined and approved by Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, and the commissioners of Pope Innocent III in 1201, and he was canonised by that pope the year following. The Statutes of the Gilbertins, and Exhortations to his Brethren, are ascribed to him. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 🎨 Seal of the Master of Sempringham)