ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 22nd of September
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 GUNTHILD OF SUFFERSHEIM
The holy Virgin Gunthild served as a cattle maid in Suffersheim in Middle Franconia, near Solenhofen, and led a holy life, a constant and lasting role model for maids everywhere.
Although she was highly devoted to all works of Christian piety, her favourite virtue was giving alms. Because of this she was so pleasing to God that, upon her entreaties, He let a healing spring gush forth on at least two occasions - one from an old willow tree, the other from the ground, in which latter spring later a leper, of which there were many at that time, was completely cured.
Once she is said to have set off to give poor people milk in a bowl, which she saved from her own daily ration, as a merciful gift and, when she bumped into her stingy employer, he sternly questioned her about what she was carrying.
She replied that she was carrying lye, and when he checked, he saw that it indeed was lye. Following this incident, when our Saint proceeded to visit the poor, the fluid turned back into milk for the poor.
When St Gunthild finally died a holy death [1057 A.D.], a chapel was built on her grave in her honour because of the multitude of miracles wrought at her intercession. Her intercession was much sought-after in the 15th century.
Since Suffersheim was taken over by the Protestants and her original chapel destroyed by them in the process, she was from then on venerated in Biberbach (northeast of Eichstätt, of the parish of Plankstetten). In Biberbach, the faithful experienced great help at her intercession during a cattle epidemic in 1512-14. Her feast, in Biberbach, was celebrated on the Sunday before the feast of St Archangel Michael, and since this Sunday can fall on September 22nd to 28th, the Bollandists' records adopted September 22nd as her feast day.
(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, 1858)
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