ST AMMON, HERMIT - 4 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 4th of October

 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 AMMON, HERMIT 

Sometimes called Amun or Amus; he was born about 350.

He was an Egyptian who, forced into marriage when twenty-two years old, persuaded his wife on the bridal night to pronounce a vow of chastity, which they kept faithfully, though living together for eighteen years; at the end of this time he became a hermit in the desert of Nitria, and she formed a congregation of religious women in her own house. 

Nitria, to which Ammon betook himself, is a mountain surmounted by a desolate region, seventy miles south of Alexandria, beyond Lake Mareotis (which Palladius called Maria). 

At the end of the fourth century there were fifty monasteries there inhabited by 5,000 monks. St Jerome called the place “The City of God”. 

As to whether Ammon was the first to build a monastery there, authorities disagree, but it is certain that the fame of his sanctity drew many anchorites around him, who erected cells not only on the mountain but in the adjacent desert. 

St Anthony came to visit him and induced him to gather his scattered solitaries into monasteries. When Ammon died at about the age of 62, Anthony, though thirteen days journey distant, saw his soul entering heaven. He is honoured on October 4.

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)