ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY
Saints celebrated on the 13th 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 LICINIUS, BISHOP OF ANGERS, CONFESSOR
(Called by the French Lesin.) Saint Licinius was born of a noble family, allied to the kings of France, about the year 540. He was applied to learning as soon as he was capable of instruction, and sent to the court of King Clotaire I (whose cousin he was) being about twenty years of age.
A HOLY MAN
He signalised himself by his prudence and valour both in the court and in the army, and acquitted himself of all Christian duties with extraordinary exactitude and fervour. Fasting and prayer were familiar to him, and his heart was always raised to God.
A TRAGEDY
King Chilperic made him count or governor of Anjou, and being overcome by the importunities of his friends, the saint consented to take a wife about the year 578. But the lady was struck with a leprosy on the morning before it was to be solemnised.
This accident so strongly affected Liciuius, that he resolved to carry into immediate execution a design he had long entertained of entirely renouncing the world.
PIETY AND PENANCE
This he did in 580, and leaving all things to follow Jesus Christ, he entered himself among the clergy, and hiding himself from the world in a community of ecclesiastics, found no pleasure but in the exercises of piety and the most austere penance, and in meditating on the holy scriptures.
AUDOUIN HAD DIED
Audouin, the fourteenth bishop of Angers, dying towards the year 600, the people remembering the equity and mildness with which Licinius had governed them, rather as their father than as a judge or master, demanded him for their pastor. The voice of the clergy seconded that of the people, and the concurrence of the court of Clotaire II in his minority, under the regency of his mother Fredegonda, overcame all the opposition his humility could make.
CORPORAL WORKS OF MERCY
His time and his substance were divided in feeding the hungry, comforting and releasing prisoners, and curing the bodies and souls of his people. Though he was careful to keep up exact discipline in his diocese, he was more inclined to indulgence than rigour, in imitation of the tenderness which Jesus Christ showed for sinners.
HIS ELOQUENCE
Strong and persuasive eloquence, the more forcible argument of his severe and exemplary life, and God himself speaking by miracles, qualified him to gain the hearts of the most hardened, and make daily conquests of souls to Christ.
FREQUENT RETREATS
He renewed the spirit of devotion and penance by frequent retreats, and desired earnestly to resign his bishopric, and hide himself in some solitude: but the bishops of the province, whose consent he asked, refusing to listen to such a proposal, he submitted, and continued to spend the remainder of his life in the service of his flock.
HE WAS BURIED IN THE CHURCH OF ST JOHN BAPTIST
His patience was perfected by continual infirmities in his last years, and he finished his sacrifice about the year 618, in the sixty-fifth of his age. He was buried in the church of St John Baptist, which he had founded, with a monastery, which he designed for his retreat. It is now a collegiate church, and enriched with the treasure of his relics.
HIS FEAST DAYS
His memory was publicly honoured in the seventh age: November 1 was the day of his festival, though he is now mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on February 13. At Angers he is commemorated on June 8, which seems to have been the day of his consecration, and on June 21, when his relics were translated or taken up, 1169, in the time of Henry II king of England, count of Anjou.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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