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ST PELAGIA OF ANTIOCH, VIRGIN AND MARTYR - 9 JUNE

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JUNE

Saints celebrated on the 9th 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.

ST PELAGIA OF ANTIOCH, VIRGIN AND MARTYR 

Saint Pelagia was a tender virgin at Antioch, only fifteen years of age when she was apprehended by the persecutors in 311. Being alone in the house, and understanding that their errand was to carry her before the judge where her chastity might be in danger, she desired leave of the soldiers to go upstairs and dress herself. But fearing to be an innocent occasion to others’ sin, threw herself from the top of the house, and died on the spot by her fall: in which action, says St Chrysostom, she had Jesus in her breast inspiring and exhorting her. She probably hoped to escape by that means; and might lawfully expose her life to some danger for the preservation of her chastity; but nothing can ever make it lawful for any one directly to procure his own death.   

Whoever deliberately lays violent hands upon himself is guilty of a heinous injury against God, the Lord of his life, against the commonwealth, which he robs of a member, and of that comfort and assistance which he owes to it; also against his friends, children, and lastly against himself, both by destroying his corporal life, and by the spiritual and eternal death of his soul; this crime being usually connected with final impenitence, and eternal enmity with God, and everlasting damnation. Nor can a name be found sufficiently to express the baseness of soul, and utmost excess of pusillanimity, impatience, and cowardice which suicide implies. 

Strange that any nation should by false prejudices be able so far to extinguish the most evident principles of reason and the voice of nature, as to deem that an action of courage which springs from a total want of that heroic virtue of the soul. 

The same is to be said of the detestable practice of duels. True fortitude incites and enables a man to bear all manner of affronts, and to undergo all humiliations, dangers, hardships, and torments for the sake of virtue and duty. What is more contrary to this heroic disposition, what can be imagined more dastardly than not to be able to put up a petty affront, and rather to offend against all laws divine and human, than to brook an injury or bear a misfortune with patience and constancy, than to observe the holy precept of Christ, who declares this to be his favourite commandment, the distinguishing mark of his followers, and the very soul of the divine law! Mention is made of a church at Antioch and another at Constantinople, which bore the name of this saint in the fifth century. On St. Pelagia, see the Roman Martyrology, June 9. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 📷 Biblical scene from the Zwiefalten Passionale. Historian Kathleen Schlesinger identified the woman on the donkey as St Pelagia.)

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