Saints celebrated on the 31st of May
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 PETRONILLA, VIRGIN
Among the disciples of the apostles in the primitive age of saints, this holy virgin shone as a bright star in the church. She lived when Christians were more solicitous to live well than to write much: they knew how to die for Christ; but did not compile long books or disputations, in which vanity has often a greater share than charity. Hence no particular account of her actions hath been transmitted down to us.
ST PETER'S DAUGHTER
But how eminent her sanctity was we may judge from the lustre by which it was distinguished among the apostles, prophets, and martyrs. Her name is the feminine and diminutive of Peter, and she is said to have been a daughter of the apostle St Peter, which tradition is confirmed by certain writings quoted by the Manichees in the time of St Augustine, which affirm that St Peter had a daughter whom he cured of a palsy.
APOSTLE PETER'S WIFE HAD DIED
That St Peter [apostle] was married before his vocation to the apostleship we learn from the gospel; though St Jerome and other ancient fathers testify that he lived in continency after his call. St Clement of Alexandria assures us, that his wife attained to the glory of martyrdom; at which that apostle himself encouraged her, bidding her to remember our Lord.
A CHURCH BORE ST PETRONILLA'S NAME
But it seems not certain whether St Petronilla was more than the spiritual daughter of that apostle. She flourished at Rome, and was buried on the way to Ardea, where anciently a cemetery and a church bore her name; so famous that in it a station or place for the assembly of the city in public prayer, was established by Gregory III. She is commemorated in the true Martyrology of Bede, in those which bear the name of St Jerome, etc.
THE GREAT END FOR WHICH MAN LIVES
The saints, whether in sickness or in health, in public or in private life, devoted all their thoughts and actions to God, and thus sanctified all their employments. The great end for which they lived was always present to their minds, and they thought every moment lost in which they did not make some advances towards eternal bliss. How will their example condemn at the last day the trifling fooleries, and the greater part of the conversation and employments of the world, which aim at nothing but present amusements, as if it were the business of a rational creature to divert his mind from thought and reflection, and forget the only affair - the business of eternity.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - St Petronilla and the Sick; from a 14th-century French manuscript)
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