ST ANASTASIUS THE SINAITE, ANCHORET - 21st APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 21st 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.

ST ANASTASIUS THE SINAITE, ANCHORET  

Saint Anastasius of Sinai testifies of himself, that in his tender years he listened to the gospel with no less respect than if he had heard Christ himself speak; and received the blessed Eucharist with the same love and tenderness as if he embraced him visibly present.

HE BUILT HIMSELF A CELL NEAR MOUNT SINAI

After visiting the holy places at Jerusalem, he went to mount Sinai, and was so much edified by the sight of the angelical lives of the hermits who inhabited it, that he built himself a cell among them. 

DEAD TO ALL EARTHLY THINGS

Here, perfectly dead to all earthly things and to himself, he deserved, by prayer and obedience, to receive from God the double talent of wisdom and spiritual science, the treasures of which are only communicated to the humble. 

HE LEFT THE DESERT TO DEFEND THE CHURCH

He often left his desert to defend the church. At Alexandria he publicly convicted certain chiefs of the Acephali heretics, that, in condemning St Flavian, they had condemned all the fathers of the church, insomuch that the people could scarcely be contained from stoning them. He confuted them by an excellent work entitled Odegus, or the Guide; in which, besides refuting the Eutychian errors, he lays down rules against all heresies. 

HIS WRITINGS

He has also left several ascetic works, full of piety and devotion. In his discourse on the Synaxis, or Mass, he urges the duties of the confession of sins to a priest, respect at Mass, and pardon of injuries in so pathetic a manner, that Canisius and Combefis recommended this piece to the diligent perusal of all preachers. This saint was living in 678, as Ceillier demonstrates from certain passages in his Odegus.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)