ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL
Saints celebrated on the 28th 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 VITALIS OF RAVENNA, MARTYR
(About the Year 62.) Saint Vitalis is honoured as the principal patron of the city of Ravenna, in which he glorified God by martyrdom in the persecution of Nero.
HE WAS THE FATHER OF SS. GERVASIUS AND PROTASIUS
He was a citizen of Milan, and is said in his acts to have been the father of SS. Gervasius and Protasius. The divine providence conducted him to Ravenna, where he saw a Christian named Ursicinus, who was condemned to lose his head for his faith, standing aghast at the sight of death, and seeming ready to yield.
HE WAS EXTREMELY MOVED AT THIS SPECTACLE
Happy is he who, by a perfect diffidence in himself and a sincere humility, obtains strength and comfort from above in the fiery trials of his last conflicts; when the devil rages with the greatest fury, knowing that he has only a little time to compass the ruin of a soul for ever. Vitalis was extremely moved at this spectacle.
The honour of God, which was in danger of being insulted by sin, and the soul of a brother in Christ which appeared to be upon the very brink of apostasy, were alarming objects to awaken his zeal. He who dreaded the presumption of rashly seeking the combat, knew his double obligation of preferring the glory of God, and the eternal salvation of his neighbour to his own corporal life: he therefore boldly and successfully encouraged Ursicinus to triumph over death, and after his martyrdom, carried off his body, and respectfully interred it.
HE WAS APPREHENDED
The judge, whose name was Paulinus, being informed of what he had done, caused him to be apprehended, stretched on the rack, and, after other torments, to be buried alive in a place called the Palm-tree, in Ravenna, as Fortunatus and his acts relate. These acts add that his wife, Valeria, returning from Ravenna to Milan was beaten to death by certain peasants, because she refused to join them in an idolatrous festival and riot.
HIS RELICS
The relics of St Vitalis are deposited in the great church which bears his name in Ravenna, and was magnificently built by the emperor Justinian, in 547. It belongs to a noble Benedictine abbey, where in a ruinous private chapel are shown the tombs of the emperor Honorius, and of the princes and princesses of his family.
A CONTINUED SACRIFICE
We are not all called to the sacrifice of martyrdom; but all are bound to make their whole lives a continued sacrifice of themselves to God, and to perform every action in this perfect spirit of sacrifice. An ardent desire of devoting ourselves totally to God in life and in death, and a cheerful readiness to do and to suffer whatever he requires of us, in order constantly to accomplish his divine will, is a disposition which ought to accompany and to animate all our actions. The perfection of our sacrifice depends on the purity, fervour, and constancy of this desire.
TO LIVE AND DIE IN GOD
We must in particular make our bodies and our souls with all their faculties continual victims to God: our bodies by patient suffering, voluntary mortification, chastity, temperance, and penitential labour: our souls by a continual spirit of compunction, adoration, love, and praise. Thus we shall both live and die to God, perfectly resigned to his holy will in all his appointments.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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