ST CHEF - ABBOT - 29 OCTOBER

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 29th 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 CHEF - ABBOT 

(In Latin, Theuderius.)  Chef [Cherf], a young gentleman of one of the best families of the city of Vienne, by the interior call of the Holy Ghost, forsook the world; and having long exercised himself in the most perfect practices of a monastic life under the direction of St Caesarius at Arles, returned to his own country, and being joined by several disciples, built for them first cells, and afterwards a monastery near the city of Vienne in Dauphine.

 It was anciently a custom in the most regular monasteries, that the priest who said the community Mass, spent the week in which he discharged that function, in the closest retirement in his cell, and in holy contemplation and austere penance, both that he might be better prepared to offer daily the tremendous sacrifice, and that he might more faithfully acquit himself of his mediatorship between God and his people.  

It was also a peculiar custom at Vienne in the sixth century, that some monk, of whose sanctity the people entertained a high opinion, was chosen, who should voluntarily lead the life of a recluse, being walled up in a cell, and spending his whole time in fasting, praying, and weeping to implore the divine mercy in favour of himself and his country. This practice would have been an abuse and superstition, if any person relying on the prayers of others, were themselves more remiss in prayer or penance. St Chef was pitched upon for this penitential state, which obligation he willingly took upon himself, and discharged with so much fervour as to seem desirous to set no bounds to his tears and mortifications. An extraordinary gift of miracles made his name famous in the whole country. 

He died about the year 575, and was buried in the monastery of St Laurence. His relics were translated to a collegiate church of which he is the titular patron, and which gives the name of St Chef to the town where it stands, in Dauphine, eight leagues from Vienne. This saint is named in the Roman Martyrology. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)