ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL
Saints celebrated on the 19th 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 URSMAR OF LOBBES, BISHOP AND ABBOT
Saint Ursmar was born near Avesne, in Haynault, and grew up from his cradle a model of all virtues, in which he made a continual progress by a life of humility, patience, and penance, and by an assiduous application to prayer, in which he usually shed abundance of tears.
HE ASKED TO FULFIL GOD'S HOLY WILL
What he most earnestly asked of God was the gift of an ardent charity, that all his thoughts and actions, and those of all men, might, with the most pure and fervent intention, and in the most perfect manner, be directed in all things to fulfil his holy and adorable will.
FIXING ONE'S THOUGHTS ON HEAVENLY THINGS
In his conversation it was his earnest desire and drift to induce persons of a secular life to fix their thoughts, as much as the condition of their state would allow, on heavenly things; and to accompany even their worldly business with such aspirations and thoughts, and to study to withdraw their hearts from all attachment to creatures.
THE ABBEY OF LOBBES
St Landelin had then lately founded the abbey of Lobbes, on the Sambre, in a territory which is now subject to the prince of Liege, though in the diocese of Cambray. Ursmar here put on the monastic habit. When St Landelin retired into a closer solitude, where he soon after built the monastery of Crespin, he left Ursmar abbot of Lobbes, in 686.
ST URSMAR REDOUBLED HIS FERVOUR
Our saint redoubled his fervour in all the exercises of penance in this dignity. He never tasted any flesh-meat or fish, and for ten years never once touched bread, not even in a dangerous sickness. He finished the building of his abbey and church, and founded Aune and several other monasteries.
HE OFTEN LEFT HIS CELL TO PREACH THE FAITH TO IDOLATERS AND SINNERS
He often left his dear cell to preach the faith to idolaters and sinners. He became the apostle of several districts in the diocese of Cambray, Arras, Tournay, Noyon, Terouanne, Laon, Metz, Triers, Cologne, and Maastricht.
By virtue of a commission from the holy see, he exercised the functions of a bishop: his predecessor, St Landelin, and his two successors, SS. Ermin and Theodulph, were invested with the same character.
HIS HOLY DEATH
In his old age he resigned his abbacy to St Ermin, and died in retirement in 713, being almost sixty-nine years old, on April 18, on which he is honoured as principal patron of Binche, Lobbes, and Luxembourg; but is named on the 19th, which was the day of his burial, in the Roman and several other Martyrologies.
SOURCES
His relics are venerated at Binche, four leagues from Mons. See his original life by a disciple, with the notes by Henschenius: also Folcuin, abbot of Lobbes, in 980. See also Folcuin’s appendix on the miracles wrought at the shrine of St Ursmar, under the author’s own eyes; and in the Bollandists, 18 April, and another life of this saint composed in heroic verse by Heriger, abbot of Lobbes, in the year 1000.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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