ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL
Saints celebrated on the 12th 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 SABAS THE GOTH, MARTYR
(A.D. 372.) The faith of Christ erected its trophies not only over the pride and sophistry of the heathen philosophers, and the united power of the Roman empire, but also over the kings of barbarous infidel nations; who, though in every other thing the contrast of the Romans, and enemies to their name, yet vied with them in the rage with which they sought, by every human stratagem, and every invention of cruelty, to depress the cross of Christ: by which the finger of God was more visible in the propagation of his faith. Even among the Goths, his name was glorified by the blood of martyrs.
Athanaric, king of the Goths, in the year 370, and according to St Jerome, raised a violent persecution against the Christians among them. The Greeks commemorate fifty-one martyrs who suffered in that nation. The two most illustrious are SS. Nicetas and Sabas.
This latter was by birth a Goth, converted to the faith in his youth, and a faithful imitator of the obedience, mildness, humility, and other virtues of the apostles. He was affable to all men, yet with dignity; a lover of truth, an enemy to all dissimulation or disguise, intrepid, modest, of few words, and a lover of peace; yet zealous and active. To sing the divine praises in the church, and to adorn the altars, was his great delight. He was so scrupulously chaste, that he shunned all conversation with women, except what was indispensable. He often spent whole days and nights in prayer, and devoted his whole life to the exercises of penance: flying vain glory, and by words and example inducing others to a love of virtue, he burned with an ardent desire, in all things to glorify Jesus Christ.
MEAT SACRIFICED TO IDOLS
The princes and magistrates of Gothia began, in 370, to persecute the Christians, by compelling them to eat meats which had been sacrificed to idols, out of a superstitious motive, as if they were sanctified. Some heathens who had Christian relations, desiring to save them, prevailed upon the king’s officers to present them common meats which had not been offered to the idols. Sabas condemned this impious collusion, and not only refused to eat such meats, but protested aloud that whoever should eat them would be no longer a Christian, having by that scandalous compliance renounced his faith. Thus he hindered many from falling into that snare of the devil, but displeased others, who banished him from his town, though they some time after recalled him home.
"I AM A CHRISTIAN"
The next year the persecution was renewed, and a commissary of the king arrived at St Sabas’s town in search of Christians. Some of the inhabitants offered to swear on the victims that there were no Christians in the place. Sabas appeared, and stepping up to those who were going to take that oath, said: “Let no man swear for me: for I am a Christian.” Notwithstanding this, the commissary ordered the oath to be tendered.
THEY HID THE OTHER CHRISTIANS
Therefore the principal men of the city hid the other Christians, and then swore that there was but one Christian in their town. The commissary commanded that he should appear. Sabas boldly presented himself. The commissary asked the by-standers what wealth he had: and being told he had nothing besides the clothes on his back, the commissary despised him, saying: “Such a fellow can do us neither good nor harm.”
THE PERSECUTION WAS RENEWED WITH GREATER FURY
The persecution was renewed with much greater fury in 372, before Easter. Sabas considered how he could celebrate that solemnity, and for this purpose set out to go to a priest named Gouttica in another city. Being on the road, he was admonished by God to return, and keep the festival with the priest Sansala. He did so, and on the third night after Atharidus, son of one that enjoyed a petty sovereignty in that country, entered the town, and with an armed troop suddenly broke into the lodgings of Sansala, surprised him asleep, bound him, and threw him on a cart. They pulled Sabas out of bed without suffering him to put on his clothes, and dragged him naked as he was over thorns and briers, forcing him along with whips and staves. When it was day, Sabas said to his persecutors: “Have not you dragged me, quite naked, over rough and thorny grounds? Observe whether my feet are wounded, or whether the blows you gave me have made any impression on my body:” and indeed they could not perceive any the least marks.
HE STAYED PUT
The persecutors being enraged, for want of a rack, took the axle-tree of a cart, laid it upon his neck, and stretching out his hands, fastened them to each end. They fastened another in like manner to his feet, and in this situation they tormented him a considerable part of the following night. When they were gone to rest, the woman of the house in which they lodged untied him: but he would not make his escape, and spent the remainder of that night in helping the woman to dress victuals for the family.
The next day Atharidus commanded his hands to be tied, and caused him to be hung upon a beam of the house, and soon after ordered his servants to carry him and the priest certain meats that had been offered to idols, which they refused to eat, and Sabas said: “This pernicious meat is impure and profane, as is Atharidus himself who sent it.” One of the slaves of Atharidus, incensed at these words, struck the point of his javelin against the saint’s breast with such violence, that all present believed he had been killed. But St Sabas said: “Do you think you have slain me? Know, that I felt no more pain than if the javelin had been a lock of wool.”
THEY CARRIED HIM AWAY
Atharidus, being informed of these particulars, gave orders that he should be put to death. Wherefore, having dismissed the priest Sansala, his companion, they carried away St Sabas in order to throw him into the Musaeus.
HE BLESSED AND PRAISED GOD
The martyr, filled with joy in the Holy Ghost, blessed and praised God without ceasing for thinking him worthy to suffer for his sake. Being come to the river side, the officers said one to another: “Why don’t we let this man go? He is innocent; and Atharidus will never know anything of the matter.” St Sabas, overhearing them, asked them why they trifled, and were so dilatory in obeying their orders? “I see,” said he, “what you cannot: I see persons on the other side of the river ready to receive my soul, and conduct it to the seat of glory: they only wait the moment in which it will leave my body.” Hereupon they threw him into the river, praising God to the last: and by the means of the axle-tree they had fastened about his neck, they strangled him in the water.
THE SYMBOLS OF BAPTISM AND THE CROSS
He therefore suffered martyrdom, say the acts, by water and wood, the symbols of baptism and the cross: which happened on April 12, Valentinian and Valens being emperors, in 372.
HIS RELICS
After this the executioners drew his body out of the water, and left it unburied: but the Christians of the place guarded it from birds and beasts of prey. Junius Soranus, duke of Scythia, a man who feared God, carried off the body, which he sent into his country, Cappadocia. With these relics was sent a letter from the church of Gothia to that of Cappadocia, which contains an account of the martyrdom of St Sabas, and concludes thus: “Wherefore offering up the holy sacrifice on the day whereon the martyr was crowned, impart this to our brethren, that the Lord may be praised throughout the Catholic and Apostolic Church for thus glorifying his servants.” Thus the acts, which were sent to the church of Cappadocia, together with the relics of St Sabas. Both the Greek and Latin Martyrologies mention this martyr.
WE SHOULD NEVER BE SLOTHFUL IN THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUE
The martyrs despised torments and death, because the immense joys of heaven were always before their eyes. If they made a due impression upon our souls, we should never be slothful in the practice of virtue. When an ancient monk complained of being weary of living in close solitude, his abbot said to him: “This weariness clearly proves that you have neither the joys of heaven nor the eternal torments of the damned before your eyes: otherwise no sloth or discouragement could ever seize your soul.”
"NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF THE BLESSED COUNTRY"
St Augustine gives the following advice: “Not only think of the road through which thou art travelling, but take care never to lose sight of the blessed country in which thou art shortly to arrive. Thou meetest here with passing sufferings, but will soon enjoy everlasting rest. In order to labour with constancy and cheerfulness, consider the reward. The labourer would faint in the vineyard, if he were not cheered by the thought of what he is to receive. When thou lookest up at the recompense, everything thou doest or sufferest will appear light, and no more than a shadow: it bears no manner of proportion with what thou art to receive for it. Thou wilt wonder that so much is given for such trifling pains.”
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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