ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER
Saints celebrated on the 4th of October
WELCOME!
SAINT 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. Saint 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.
Saint 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.
Source: Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
PRAYER:
May the intercession of Saint Anmon commend us to you, so that through his merits we may obtain that which we cannot accomplish by our own. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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