ST MAWES, CONFESSOR - 18 NOVEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 18th of November 

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 MAWES, CONFESSOR 

"Maw" in the Cornish language signifies a boy. He was a native of Ireland, and came young into Cornwall that he might live to God alone in the closest solitude, in the practice of the most austere penance and the exercises of divine prayer. 

A CHURCH AND A HOLY WELL BEAR HIS NAME

His hermitage was on the sea-coast, near the spacious harbour of Falmouth. The place is still called St Mawes, in Latin S. Mauditi Castrum, where a church, and in the church-yard a chair of solid stone and a miraculous or holy well still bear his name. See Leland,  where he writes that this saint had been a bishop in Britain.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

[St Mawes is also known as Maudez, Maudé, Maudet, Maudetus, and Mandé.]

PRAYER:

O God, who gladden us each year by the feast of Mawes, your confessor, graciously grant that, as we rejoice in his merits, we may be inspired by his example. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.