ST GUTHLAKE, HERMIT - 11 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 11th 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 GUTHLAKE, HERMIT 

(Saint Guthlake, Hermit, and Patron of the Abbey of Croyland.) He was a nobleman, and in his youth served in the armies of Ethelred [Æthelred], king of Mercia: but the grace of God making daily stronger impressions on his heart, in the twenty-fourth year of his age he reflected how dangerous a thing it is to the soul to serve in wars which too often have no other motive than the passions of men and the vanities of the world, and resolved to consecrate the remainder of his life totally to the service of the King of kings. 

IN THE SERVICE OF THE KING OF KINGS

He passed two years in the monastery of Repandun, studying to transcribe the virtues and mortifications of all the brethren into the copy of his own life. After this novitiate in the exercises of an ascetic life, with the consent of his superior, in 699, with two companions, he passed in a fisher’s boat into the isle of Croyland, on the festival of St Bartholomew, whom he chose for his patron, and, by having recourse to his intercession, he obtained of God many singular favours. 

ON THE ISLE OF CROYLAND

Here he suffered violent temptations and assaults, not unlike those which St Athanasius relates of St Antony: he also met with severe interior trials; but likewise received frequent extraordinary favours and consolations from God. 

HE WAS ORDAINED A PRIEST 

Hedda, bishop of Dorchester, visiting him, ordained him a priest. The prince Ethalbald, then an exile, often resorted to him, and the saint foretold him the crown of the Mercians, to which he was called after the death of King Coelred, in 719. 

HIS HOLY DEATH

The saint, foreknowing the time of his death, sent for his sister Pega, who lived a recluse in another part of the fens four leagues off to the west. He sickened of a fever, and on the seventh day of his illness, during which he had said Mass every morning, and on that day, by way of Viaticum, he sweetly slept in our Lord, on April 11, 714, being forty-seven years old, of which he had passed fifteen in this island. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)