ST GERMER, ABBOT - 24 SEPTEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 24th 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 GERMER, ABBOT 

Saint Germer's parents, Rigobert and Aga, were of the prime nobility in the territory of Beauvais. St Germer [Geremar, Geremarus] was born at their castle in the village Warandra, in the reign of King Clotaire; married a pious lady named Domana, and whilst yet a layman, built a monastery in honour of St Peter, called the Island, which was afterwards destroyed by the Normans, and is now an estate belonging to St Germer’s abbey. 

Germer, by the advice of St Owen, made his monastic profession in the monastery of Pental, in the territory of Rouen. 

He was soon after chosen abbot, but finding the monks averse to regularity he left the abbacy, and led an anchoretical life in a cave near the river Seine five years and six months. 

His only son Amalbert, dying, was buried in St Peter’s monastery. Germer, with the estate which reverted to him from his son’s death, founded the monastery of Fley or Flaviacum, now St Germer’s, five leagues from Beauvais towards Rouen, in which he assembled a community of fervent monks, in 655. 

Having governed this house three years and a half, he happily died on September 24, 658. 

His body was interred in the church of his abbey, which soon after took his name. His relics, for fear of the Norman plunderers, were conveyed secretly to Beauvais, where they are still kept in the cathedral, except the bones of one arm, which have been given back to St Germer’s. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)