ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 21st 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 MAURA, VIRGIN
St Maura was nobly born at Troyes in Champagne in the ninth century, and in her youth obtained of God by her prayers the wonderful conversion of her father, who had till then led a worldly life.
After his happy death, Maura continued to live in the most dutiful subjection and obedience to her mother, Sedulia, and by the fervour of her example was the sanctification of her brother Eutropius and of the whole family.
The virgin’s whole time was consecrated to the exercises of prayer, to offices of obedience or charity, in attending on her mother and serving the poor, or to her work, which was devoted to the service either of the poor or of the church: for it was her delight in a spirit of religion to make sacred vestments, trim the lamps, and prepare wax and other things for the altar.
As order in what we do leads a soul to God, according to the remark of St Austin, she was regular in the distribution of her time, and in all her actions.
Every Wednesday and Friday she fasted, allowing herself no other sustenance than bread and water, and she walked barefoot to the monastery of Mantenay, two leagues from the town, where she prayed a long time in the church, and with the most perfect humility and compunction laid open the secrets of her soul to the holy abbot of that place, her spiritual director, without whose advice she did nothing.
God performed many miracles in her favour; but it was her care to conceal his gifts, because she dreaded the poison of human applause.
In her last sickness she received the extreme unction and viatium with extraordinary marks of divine joy and love, and reciting often the Lord’s Prayer, she expired at those words: Thy kingdom come, on September 21, 850.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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