Saints celebrated on the 4th 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 JOHN MARTIN MOYE, PRIEST
[Saint John Martin Moye] was a priest of the Diocese of Metz, founder of the Sisters of Divine Providence, missionary in China. He was born at Cutting, Lorraine, January 27, 1730.
BEGINNINGS
He was the sixth of the thirteen children of John Moye and Catharine Demange. His older brother, a seminarian, taught him the first rudiments of Latin, and he completed his classical studies at the College of Pont-à-Mousson. He then studied philosophy at the Jesuit College of Strasbourg, and entered the theological Seminary of St-Simon, Metz, in the autumn of 1751. Ordained a priest March 9, 1754, he was appointed vicar in the episcopal city the same month.
THE CONGREGATION
His great zeal for souls attracted attention; many pious ladies placed themselves under his firm and wise direction. This enabled him to find some select souls for the establishment of schools for country children whose education he had much at heart.
He began the work in 1763. In 1767, in spite of the ill-will of many and the persecutions of a few, the Congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence was founded. That same year he was appointed superior of the little seminary of St Dié.
THE MISSION
Leaving the care of his sisterhood to two friends, Father Moye now determined to act upon his long delayed desire to become a missionary. In 1769 he joined the Séminaire des Missions Etrangères at Paris, and in 1773 he was at work in Oriental Su-Tchuen, China.
Nine years of hard labour, frequently interrupted by persecution and imprisonment, made him realise the necessity of native help. In 1782 he founded the "Christian Virgins", religious women following the rules of the Congregation of Providence at home, devoting themselves to the care of the sick and to the Christian instruction of pagan Chinese women and children in their own homes. After a hundred years of success, they are still active in the Chinese mission.
HIS RETURN
Exhausted by labours and sickness, Father Moye returned to France in 1784. He resumed the direction of the Sisters of Divine Providence and evangelised Lorraine and Alsace by preaching missions. The Revolution of 1791 drove him into exile, and with his Sisters he retired to Trier [Treves].
After the capture of the city by the French troops, typhoid fever broke out and, helped by his Sisters, he devoted himself to hospital work. He contracted the virulent disease and died, a martyr of Christian charity, at Trier, May 4, 1793.
The spot where he was buried is now a public square. Leo XIII declared John Martin Venerable and authorised the introduction of the cause of his beatification January 14, 1891.
[St John Martin Moye (Jean-Martin Moye) was beatified on November 21, 1954 and canonised on May 21, 1955.]
(Information from Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
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