ST KENNOCHA, VIRGIN - 13 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 13th of March

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 KENNOCHA, VIRGIN 

As a young woman, the Scottish maiden Kennocha was devout, meek, chaste, and modest. She was also gifted with a great natural beauty. Although several noblemen sought her hand in marriage, she refused them all, having decided to consecrate her virginity to Christ.

HER PARENTS THREW HER OUT

Thrown out of the house by her own parents because she had refused the marriage offers, Kennocha went into exile to settle in Coila, Scotland, where she lived a devout life of prayer, including night watches and fasting. Kennocha exhibited particularly deep compassion for the poor and orphans. She lived to an advanced age. [She died in 1007.] Her tomb became the site of miracle cures wrought through her intercession. The 1507 breviary of Aberdeen, Scotland, provides a prayer for her feast day:

O God,

author and lover of chastity,

grant us by the prayers

of your virgin Saint Kennocha

such purity of mind and body,

by which we may be worthy

to escape eternal corruption.

St Kennocha, pray for us.

***

FR BUTLER'S ENTRY ON ST KENNOCHA (ST KYLE)

[In the reign of King Malcolm II.]  From her infancy she was a model of humility, meekness, modesty and devotion. Though an only daughter, and the heiress of a rich and noble family, fearing lest the poison which lurks in the enjoyment of perishable goods, should secretly steal into her affections, or the noise of the world should be a hindrance to her attention to heavenly things and spiritual exercises, she rejected all solicitations of suitors and worldly friends, and, in the bloom of life, made an entire sacrifice of herself to God, by making her religious profession in a great nunnery, in the county of Fife. 

THE NUNNERY IN THE COUNTY OF FIFE

In this holy state, by an extraordinary love of poverty and mortification, a wonderful gift of prayer, and purity or singleness of heart, she attained to the perfection of all virtues. 

MIRACLES

Several miracles which she wrought made her name famous among men, and she passed to God in a good old age, in the year 1007. Several churches in Scotland bore her name, particularly one near Glasgow, still called St Kennoch’s Kirk, and another called by an abbreviation of her name Kyle, in which her relics were formerly kept with singular veneration. In the Aberdeen Breviary she is honoured with a particular prayer. She is mentioned by Adam King, in his calendar, and an account of her life is given us in the Chronicle of Scone.