ST ETHBIN, ABBOT - 19 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 19th 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 ETHBIN, ABBOT 

Saint Ethbin (Egbin) was of a noble British family, and was sent early into France to be educated under the care of his countryman, St Samson, who was then bishop of Dole. 

Under this excellent master he made great progress in virtue: and hearing one day at Mass these words of the gospel: Every one of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple, he immediately formed a resolution to renounce the world. 

He was at this time a deacon, and having obtained his prelate’s consent he retired to the abbey of Taurac, in the year 554. Here he chose for his guide a holy monk named Guignole, or Winwaloe. 

The community of Taurac being dispersed about the year 560, by an irruption of the Franks, and Guignole  dying soon after, St Ethbin passed into Ireland, where he lived twenty years in a cell which he had built for himself in the midst of a forest. 

He was famous for his austerities and his miracles, and died at the age of eighty-three, towards the close of the sixth century, on the 19th of October, the day on which his name occurs in the Roman Martyrology.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)