ST MARGARET, VIRGIN - 3 FEBRUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

Saints celebrated on the 3rd 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 MARGARET, VIRGIN 

Saint Margaret, Virgin in England. Her body is preserved entire, and resorted to with great devotion in the church of the Cistercian nuns of Seauve Benoite,  in the diocese of Puy, in Velay, eight leagues from that city towards Lyons. 

AN ENGLISH LADY

The brothers of Sainte-Marthe, in the old edition of Gallia Christiana, and Dom Beaunier, the Maurist monk, confirm the tradition of the place, that she was an English woman, and that her shrine is famous for miracles. 

Yet her life in old French, (a manuscript copy of which is preserved by the Jesuits of Clermont college, in Paris, with remarks of F. Peter Francis Chifflet,) tells us that she was by birth a noble Hungarian. 

A PILGRIMAGE TO JERUSALEM

Her mother, probably at least of English extraction, after the death of her husband, took her with her on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and both led a very penitential religious life, first in that city, and afterwards at Bethlehem. 

SHE RETIRED TO THE CISTERCIAN NUNNERY AT PUY

St Margaret having buried her mother in that country, made a pilgrimage to Montserrat in Spain, and afterwards to our Lady’s at Puy in Velay. Then she retired to the Cistercian nunnery of Seauve Benoite,  where she happily ended her mortal course in the twelfth century. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)