BL. HERMAN JOSEPH OF STEINFELD, CONFESSOR - 7 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 7th of April

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.

BL. HERMAN JOSEPH OF STEINFELD, CONFESSOR  

Blessed Herman [Hermann] Joseph was born at Cologne, and at twelve years of age entered the monastery of Steinfeld of regular canons of the Premonstratensian Order in the duchy of Juliers, and diocese of Cologne. 

AN EMINENT GIFT OF CONTEMPLATION

His incredible fasts and other austerities, and his extraordinary humility, joined with assiduous prayer and meditation, raised him to an eminent gift of contemplation, which replenished his soul with the most profound sentiments of all virtues, and was attended with many heavenly favours: but, as it is usual, this grace was often accompanied with severe interior trials. 

HIS DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN

He was singularly devoted to the Blessed Virgin. At the very remembrance of the mystery of the incarnation, his soul seemed to melt in tender love; and he seemed in raptures whenever he recited the canticle Benedictus at Lauds. 

HIS HOLY DEATH

Such was his desire of contempt, that he one day desired a peasant to strike him on the face. The other in surprise asked the reason: “On account,” said he, “of my being a most filthy and abominable creature, and because I cannot meet with so much contempt as I deserve.” He died on April 7, 1226. 

HIS WRITINGS

He wrote a commentary on the book of Canticles, or Song of Solomon, and some other treatises on sublime contemplation, which may be ranked with those of other great masters in the contemplative way, as Thomas à Kempis, St Theresa, Thauler, Harphius, Blosius, Lanspergius, Hilton, etc.

VENERATION

Blessed Herman is honoured among the saints in his Order, and in some churches in the Low Countries. In the abbey church of Steinfeld he is titular saint of an altar, at which the priests who visit that church out of devotion to him, say a votive Mass in his honour before his relics, with proper prayers of the saint used in that abbey from time immemorial. 

HIS RELICS

Small portions of his relics have been given to several other churches. Some are enshrined and exposed to public veneration in the abbey of Premontré at Antwerp; a portion is kept in the abbey of Parc, at Louvain; another in the parish church of St Christopher, at Cologne, and another at the Chartreuse in the same city. 

HIS FEAST DAY

The Emperor Ferdinand II solicited his canonisation at Rome, and several proofs of miracles and other particulars have been given in for that purpose. His name is inserted on April 7, in the martyrology of the regular canons of St Augustine, approved by Benedict XIV. [May 24 - Premonstratensians, May 21 - Diocese of Cologne.]

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)