ST DROGO, PATRON SAINT OF COFFEE - 16 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 16th 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.

SAINT DROGO, RECLUSE, PATRON SAINT OF COFFEE 

[Saint Drogo of Sebourg - also known as Druon, Dreux, Drugo and Drogon.] He was nobly born, at Epinoy in Flanders; but his father died before his birth, and his mother in child-bed. From his infancy, he was remarkable for piety and devotion, and at twenty years of age distributed his money and goods among the poor, and renounced his estates in favour of the next heirs, that he might be at liberty to serve Christ in poverty and penance. 

HE VISITED SEVERAL HOLY PLACES

Being thus disengaged from the world, clad in a ragged poor garment, over a hair shirt, he set out, like Abraham, leaving his friends and his country, and, after having visited several holy places, hired himself shepherd to a virtuous lady, named Elizabeth de la Haire, at Sebourg, two leagues from Valenciennes. 

PENANCE AND HUMILITY

The retirement and abjection of this state were most agreeable to him, on account of the opportunities with which they furnished him of perpetual prayer, and the exercises of penance and humility. 

HEROIC ACTS OF SELF-DENIAL

Happy would servants be, did they consider and make use of the great advantages to virtue which Providence puts into their hands, by daily opportunities of most heroic acts of obedience, self-denial, humility, patience, meekness, penance, and all other virtues. 

The saints thought they purchased such opportunities cheap at any rate; yet many lose them, nay, by sloth, impatience, avarice, or other vices, pervert them into occasions of sin. 

Six years Druon kept sheep, in great obscurity, and as the last among the menial servants; but his humility, modesty, meekness, charity, and eminent spirit of devotion and prayer, in spite of his disguise, gained him the esteem and affection of everybody, particularly of his mistress. Many made him presents: but these he bestowed on the poor, with whatever he could privately retrench from himself. 

FLYING THE DANGER OF APPLAUSE

To fly the danger of applause, at length he left his place, and visited Rome nine times, and often many other places of devotion; making these pilgrimages not journeys of sloth, curiosity, and dissipation, but exercises of uninterrupted prayer and penance. He returned from time to time to Sebourg; where, when a rupture put an end to his pilgrimages, he at length pitched his tent for the remainder of his life. 

A NARROW CELL 

He built himself a narrow cell against the wall of the church, that he might at all times adore God as it were at the foot of his altars. Here he lived a recluse for the space of forty-five years, his food being barley bread made with a lie of ashes, and his drink warm water.  To disguise this part of his mortifications, he called this diet a medicine for his distemper. 

In this voluntary prison he lived in assiduous prayer and manual labour to the eighty-fourth year of his age, dying in 1186, on April 16, on which day his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology. His relics remain in the church of St Martin at Sebourg. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - Title added afterwards)

PATRON SAINT OF COFFEE

Coffee was not known then, but it was because of his bowl of warm water that he became the patron saint of coffee. He lived there in isolation, eating only the Holy Eucharist, barley, and water, for the remainder of his life.