ST SPEUS, ABBOT - 28 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 28th 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 SPEUS, ABBOT

Saint Speus (Spes) was born near Nursia (Nursia) in Italy. In 471 he built a monastery there called Cample, which he presided over. God bestowed on him the grace of temporal suffering to protect him from eternal punishment. He blinded him completely, an evil that lasted 40 years, but in his mercy he never deprived him of the grace of the interior light and so, while the body felt the scourge of outward suffering, he enjoyed spiritual comforts.  

HIS SPECIAL COMMISSION

Shortly before his death, which God revealed to him, he regained his sight, but at the same time he was commissioned to visit the surrounding monks and teach them the godly life. He did this for fourteen days, then on the fifteenth received the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ surrounded by his brothers, and intoned the chorus in the usual manner. During this, the monks saw a dove fly out of his mouth, penetrating the ceiling of the oratory, rushing towards heaven. At the same moment God took his holy soul to Himself. This, according to the Bollandists, occurred in A.D. 513.

(From Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, 1858)

HIS ENTRY IN THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Nursia, the abbot St Speus, a man of extraordinary patience, whose soul at its departure from this life was seen by all his brethren to ascend to Heaven in the shape of a dove.