ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH
Saints celebrated on the 4th 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 LUCIUS I., POPE AND MARTYR
(A.D. 253.) Saint Lucius was a Roman by birth, and one of the clergy of that church under SS. Fabian and Cornelius. This latter being crowned with martyrdom, in 252, St Lucius succeeded him in the pontificate.
HE WAS BANISHED
The emperor Gallus having renewed the persecution of his predecessor Decius, at least in Rome, this holy pope was no sooner placed in the chair of St Peter, but was banished with several others, though to what place is uncertain.
“Thus,” says St Dionysius of Alexandria, “did Gallus deprive himself of the succour of heaven, by expelling those who every day prayed to God for his peace and prosperity.”
St Cyprian wrote to St Lucius to congratulate him both on his promotion, and for the grace of suffering banishment for Christ.
BY GIVING US THE GLORY OF SUFFERING, GOD SHOWS WHERE HIS TRUE CHURCH IS
Our saint had been but a short time in exile, when he was recalled with his companions to the incredible joy of the people, who went out of Rome in crowds toY meet him. St Cyprian wrote to him a second letter of congratulation on this occasion. He says, “He had not lost the dignity of martyrdom because he had the will, as the three children in the furnace, though preserved by God from death: this glory added a new dignity to his priesthood, that a bishop assisted at God’s altar, who exhorted his flock to martyrdom by his own example as well as by his words.
By giving such graces to his pastors, God showed where his true church was: for he denied the like glory of suffering to the Novatian heretics. The enemy of Christ only attacks the soldiers of Christ: heretics he knows to be already his own, and passes them by. He seeks to throw down those who stand against him.”
VIRTUE AND FAITH
He adds in his own name and that of his colleagues: “We do not cease in our sacrifices and prayers (in sacrificiis et orationibus nostris) to God the Father, and to Christ his son, our Lord, giving thanks and praying together, that he who perfects all may consummate in you the glorious crown of your confession, who perhaps has only recalled you that your glory might not be hidden; for the victim, which owes his brethren an example of virtue and faith, ought to be sacrificed in their presence.”
St Cyprian, in his letter to Pope Stephen, avails himself of the authority of St Lucius against the Novatian heretics, as having decreed against them, that those who were fallen were not to be denied reconciliation and communion, but to be absolved when they had done penance for their sin.
HIS FEAST DAY
Eusebius says, he did not sit in the pontifical chair above eight months; and he seems, from the chronology of St Cyprian’s letters, to have sat only five or six, and to have died on March 4, 253, under Gallus, though we know not in what manner. The most ancient calendars mention him on the 5th of March, others, with the Roman, on the 4th, which seems to have been the day of his death, as the 5th that of his burial. His body was found in the Catacombs, and laid in the church of St Cecily in Rome, where it is now exposed to public veneration by the order of Clement VIII.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
Comments
Post a Comment