ST SERAPION THE SCHOLASTIC - 21 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 21st 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 SERAPION THE SCHOLASTIC 

(Saint Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, in Egypt, Confessor.) The surname of the Scholastic, which was given him, is a proof of the reputation which he acquired, by his penetrating genius, and by his extensive learning, both sacred and profane. 

HIS EXTENSIVE LEARNING

He presided some time in the catechetical school of Alexandria, but, to apply himself more perfectly to the science of the saints, to which he had always consecrated himself, his studies, and his other actions, he retired into the desert, and became a bright light in the monastic state. 

St Athanasius assures us in his life of St Antony, that in the visits which Serapion paid to that illustrious patriarch, St Antony often told on his mountain, things which passed in Egypt at a distance; and that at his death, he left him one of his tunics of hair. 

THE SEE OF THMUIS

St Serapion was drawn out of his retreat, to be placed in the episcopal see of Thmuis, a famous city of Lower Egypt, near Diospolis, to which Stephanus and Ptolemy give the title of a metropolis. The name in the Egyptian tongue signified a goat, which animal was anciently worshipped there, as St Jerome informs us. 

DEFENCE OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH

St Serapion was closely linked with St Athanasius in the defence of the Catholic faith - for which he was banished by the Emperor Constantius; whence St Jerome styles himself a confessor. 

Certain persons, who confessed God, the Son consubstantial to the Father, denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. This error was no sooner broached, but our saint strenuously opposed it, and informed St Athanasius of this new inconsistent blasphemy; and that zealous defender of the adorable mystery of the Trinity, the fundamental article of the Christian faith, wrote against this rising monster. 

The four letters which St Athanasius wrote to Serapion, in 359, out of the desert, in which at that time he lay concealed, were the first express confutation of the Macedonian heresy that was published. 

THE BOOK AGAINST THE MANICHEES

St Serapion ceased not to employ his labours to great advantage, against both the Arians and Macedonians. He also compiled an excellent book against the Manichees, in which he shows that our bodies may be made the instruments of good, and that our souls may be perverted by sin; that there is no creature of which a good use may not be made; and that both just and wicked men are often changed, the former by falling into sin, the latter by becoming virtuous. It is, therefore, a self-contradiction to pretend with the Manichees that our souls are the work of God, but our bodies of the devil, or the evil principle.  

St Serapion wrote several learned letters, and a treatise on the Titles of the Psalms, quoted by St Jerome, which are now lost. At his request, St Athanasius composed several of his works against the Arians; and so great was his opinion of our saint, that he desired him to correct, or add to them what he thought wanting. 

HIS HOLY DEATH

Socrates relates that St Serapion gave an abstract of his own life, and an abridged rule of Christian perfection in very few words, which he would often repeat, saying: “The mind is purified by spiritual knowledge, (or by holy meditation and prayer,) the spiritual passions of the soul by charity, and the irregular appetites by abstinence and penance.” 

This saint died in his banishment in the fourth age, and is commemorated on this day in the Roman Martyrology. 

NOTES:

A Latin translation of St Serapion’s book against the Manichees, given by F. Turrianus the Jesuit, is published in the Bibliotheca Patrum, printed at Lyons, and in F. Canisius’s Lectiones Antiquæ. The learned James Basnage, who republished this work of Canisius, with curious additions and notes, has added the Greek text.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)