Saints celebrated on the 26th of June
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.
BL. ANDRII ISCHAK, PRIEST AND MARTYR
One of the Blesseds remembered by the Church on June 26 is Blessed Andrii Ischak. He was born in 1887 at Mykolayiv, in the Lviv District of Ukraine. He studied theology at the universities in Lviv and Innsbruck, Austria, and was ordained a priest in 1914. He did his priestly pastoral work in the parish of Sykhiv, near Lviv, and also taught dogmatic theology and canon law at the Lviv Theological Academy.
On June 26, 1941, Blessed Andrii died a martyr for the Faith at the hands of soldiers of the retreating Soviet army.
"THE SHEPHERD DOESN'T ABANDON HIS FLOCK"
From the testimony of Ivan Kulchytskyi: 'As the war began the priest (Blessed Andrii) was taken at Perenkivka, the neighbouring station. Sometime in the afternoon they took him, detained him until evening, then let him go. My dad, because they knew each other well, told him: "Father, when they let you go, I would advise you to hide for a few days." It was clear that the Germans were coming and the Bolsheviks would be fleeing. "Hide yourself and survive." But the priest said: "Ivan, the shepherd doesn't abandon his flock. And I can't leave my parishioners and conceal myself." In two days the military came and took him from his home.
Some distance from the parish, maybe a half-kilometre, it was overgrown with bushes. They brought him there and killed him. They shot him in the stomach.'
"THEY TRAVELLED THE PATH OF VICTORY TO THE END"
Andrii Ischak was declared Blessed by Pope St John Paul II on June 27, 2001, during the Pope's visit to Ukraine. He was one of the twenty-five declared Blessed from Ukraine. In his homily the Pope said,
"The Servants of God who are today inscribed in the Book of the Blessed represent all categories of the ecclesial community: among them are bishops and priests, monks, nuns and lay people. They were tested in many ways by the followers of the infamous Nazi and Communist ideologies... Strengthened by God's grace they travelled the path of victory to the end. These brothers and sisters of ours are representatives that are known out of a multitude of anonymous heroes who underwent persecution, violence and death rather than renounce their faith."
Blessed Andrii Ischak, pray for us.
(From "Spiritual Thought from Father Chris")
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