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ST STEPHEN OF GRANDMONT, ABBOT - 8 FEBRUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

Saints celebrated on the 8th 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 STEPHEN OF GRANDMONT, ABBOT 

[A.D. 1124.] Saint Stephen [also known as St Stephen of Muret] was son of the virtuous viscount of Thiers, the first nobleman of Auvergne. From his infancy he gave presages of an uncommon sanctity. 

Milo, a pious priest, at that time dean of the church of Paris, was appointed his tutor, and being made bishop of Beneventum in 1074, kept the saint with him, continued to instruct him in sacred learning, and in the maxims of Christian perfection, and ordained him deacon. 

STUDIES IN ROME

After his death in 1076, Stephen pursued his studies in Rome during four years. All this time he seemed to himself continually solicited by an interior voice to seek a sanctuary for his soul in holy solitude, considering the dangers of the pastoral charge, the obligations of leading a penitential life, and the happiness of the exercises of holy retirement. 

He desired to imitate the rigorous institute of a certain monastery, which he had seen in Calabria, and obtained leave of Pope Gregory VII to embrace an eremitical life. 

HE TIED UP HIS AFFAIRS

He therefore returned to the castle of Thiers, the seat of his late parents, to settle his affairs. He had always been their favourite child, and regarded by them as the blessing bestowed on their prayers and fasts, by which they had begged him of God. Being both exceeding pious, they had rejoiced to see him so virtuously inclined; but they being now dead, his other friends vehemently opposed his design of renouncing the world. 

HE LEFT THEM PRIVATELY

Stephen left them privately, and travelling through many deserts, arrived at Muret, a desolate, barren mountain, in the neighbourhood of Limoges, haunted by wild beasts, and of an exceeding cold situation. Here he took up his abode, and, by a vow, consecrated himself to the divine service, in these words: “I, Stephen, renounce the devil and his pomps, and do offer and dedicate myself to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God in three Persons.” 

"ONE GOD IN THREE PERSONS"

This engagement he wrote and kept always by him with a ring as the symbol. He built himself a hut with the boughs of trees, and in this place passed forty-six years in prayer, and the practice of such austerities as almost surpassed the strength of a human body. He lived at first on wild herbs and roots. In the second summer he was discovered by certain shepherds, who brought him a little coarse bread; which some country people from that time continued to do as long as he lived. 

HIS AUSTERITIES

He always wore next his skin a hair-cloth with iron plates and hoops studded with sharp spikes, over which his only garment, made of the coarsest stuff, was the same both in summer and winter. When overcome by sleep, he took a short rest on rough boards, laid in the form of a coffin. When he was not employed in manual labour, he lay prostrate on the ground in profound adoration of the majesty of God. The sweetness which he felt in divine contemplation made him often forget to take any refreshment for two or three days together. When sixty years of age, finding his stomach exceedingly weak, he suffered a few drops of wine to be mixed with the water which he drank.   

Many were desirous to live with him and become his disciples. Though most rigorous to himself, he was mild to those under his direction, and proportioned their mortifications to their strength. But he allowed no indulgence with regard to the essential points of a solitary life, silence, poverty, and the denial of self-will. 

A TOTAL DISENGAGEMENT FROM ALL EARTHLY THINGS

He often exhorted his disciples to a total disengagement of their hearts from all earthly things, and to a love of holy poverty for that purpose. He used to say to those who desired to be admitted into his community: “This is a prison without either door or hole whereby to return into the world, unless a person makes for himself a breach. And should this misfortune befall you, I could not send after you, none here having any commerce with the world any more than myself.” 

THE LOWEST PLACE

He behaved himself among his disciples as the last of them, always taking the lowest place, never suffering any one to rise up to him; and whilst they were at table, he would seat himself on the ground in the midst of them, and read to them the lives of the saints. God bestowed on him a divine light, by which he often told others their secret thoughts. The author of his life gives a long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many obstinate sinners were still more miraculous: it seemed as if no heart could resist the grace which accompanied his words.   

"WE ARE SINNERS"

Two cardinals coming into France, as legates to the king from the pope, one of whom was afterwards Pope Innocent II, paid the saint a visit in his desert. They asked him whether he was a canon, a monk, or a hermit? He said he was none of those. Being pressed to declare what he was: “We are sinners,” said he, “whom the mercy of God hath conducted into this wilderness to do penance. The pope himself hath imposed on us these exercises, at our request, for our sins. Our imperfection and frailty deprive us of courage to imitate the fervour of those holy hermits who lived in divine contemplation almost without any thought for their bodies. You see that we neither wear the habit of monks nor of canons. We are still further from usurping those names, which we respect and honour at a distance in the persons of the priests, and in the sanctity of the monks. We are poor, wretched sinners, who, terrified at the rigour of the divine justice, still hope, with trembling, by this means, to find mercy from our Lord Jesus Christ in the day of his judgment.” 

HE REDOUBLED HIS FERVOUR

The legates departed exceedingly edified at what they saw and heard. Eight days after the saint was admonished by God of the end of his mortal course, after which he most earnestly sighed. He redoubled his fervour in all his exercises, and falling sick soon after, gave his disciples his last instructions, and exhorted them to a lively confidence in God, to whom he recommended them by an humble prayer. 

"LORD, INTO THY HANDS I COMMEND MY SPIRIT"

His exhortation was so moving and strong that it dispelled their fears in losing him, and they seemed to enter into his own sentiments. He caused himself to be carried into the chapel, where he heard Mass, received extreme unction and the viaticum: and on February 8, 1124, being fourscore years old, expired in peace, repeating those words: “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” He had passed in his desert fifty years, bating two months. 

HIS FUNERAL

His disciples buried him privately, to prevent the crowds of people breaking in. But the news of his death drew incredible numbers to his tomb, which was honoured by innumerable miracles. Four months after his death, the priory of Ambazac, dependent on the great Benedictine abbey of St Augustine, in Limoges, put in a claim to the land of Muret. The disciples of the holy man, who had inherited his maxims and spirit, abandoned the ground to them without any contention, and retired to Grandmont, a desert one league distant, carrying with them his precious remains. From this place the order took its name. The saint was canonized by Clement III, in 1189, at the request of king Henry II of England. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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