ST VICTOR, ANCHORET - 26 FEBRUARY

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

 All Saints celebrated on the 26th 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 VICTOR, ANCHORET 

(In the Seventh Age. - St Victor, or Vittre, of Arcies, or Arcis, in Champagne, Anchoret and Confessor.) He was of noble parentage in the diocese of Troyes in Champagne, educated under strict discipline in learning and piety, and a saint from his cradle. 

A SAINT FROM THE CRADLE

In his youth, prayer, fasting and alms-deeds were his chief delight, and, embracing an ecclesiastical state, he took orders; but the love of heavenly contemplation being always the prevalent inclination in his soul, he preferred close retirement to the mixed life of the care of souls. In this choice the Holy Ghost was his director, for he lived in continual union with God by prayer and contemplation, and seemed raised above the condition of this mortal life, and almost as if he lived without a body. 

GOD GLORIFIED HIM BY MANY MIRACLES

God glorified him by many miracles; but the greatest seems to have been the powerful example of his life. We have two pious panegyrics made upon this saint by St Bernard, who says: “Now placed in heaven, he beholds God clearly revealed to him, swallowed up in joy, but not forgetting us. It is not a land of oblivion in which Victor dwells. Heaven doth not harden or straiten hearts, but it maketh them more tender and compassionate; it doth not distract minds, nor alienate them from us; it doth not diminish, but it increaseth affection and charity: it augmenteth bowels of piety. The angels, although they behold the face of their Father, visit, run, and continually assist us; and shall they now forget us who were once among us, and who once suffered themselves what they see us at present labouring under? No: I know the just expect me till thou renderest to me my reward. Victor is not like that cup-bearer of Pharaoh, who could forget his fellow-captive. He hath not so put on the stole of glory himself, as to lay aside his pity, or the remembrance of our misery.” 

HIS HOLY DEATH

St Victor died at Saturniac, now called Saint-Vittre, two leagues from Arcies in the diocese of Troyes. A church was built over his tomb at Saturniac; but in 837 his relics were translated thence to the neighbouring monastery of Montier-Ramey, or Montirame, so called from Arremar, by whom it was founded in 837. It is situated four leagues from Troyes, of the Benedictin Order, and is still possessed of this sacred treasure. 

AN OFFICE OF ST VICTOR

At the request of these monks, St Bernard composed an office of St Victor, extant in his works. St Bernard also wrote two sermons on St Victor. It appears that this saint never was a monk, never having professed any monastic Order, though he led an eremitical life.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)