ST HILARION, ABBOT - 21 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 21st 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 HILARION, ABBOT 

Hilarion was born in a little town called Tabatha, five miles to the south of Gaza; he sprang like a rose out of thorns, his parents being idolaters. He was sent by them very young to Alexandria to study grammar. Being brought to the knowledge of the Christian faith he was baptised, and became immediately a new man, renouncing all the mad sports of the circus, and the entertainments of the theatre, and taking no delight but in the churches and assemblies of the faithful.

About the year 307, when he was about fifteen years old, he retired into a desert seven miles from Majuma, towards Egypt, between the sea-shore on one side, and certain fens on the other. His friends forewarned him that the place was notorious for murders and robberies; but his answer was, that he feared nothing but eternal death. 

Living in solitude he thought himself at liberty to practise certain mortifications, which the respect we owe to our neighbour makes unseasonable in the world. He cut his hair only once a year, against Easter; never changed any coat till it was worn out, and never washed the sackcloth which he had once put on, saying: "It is idle to look for neatness in a hair shirt." 

He sustained his body only with a few dried figs, and the juice of herbs. At the same time praying and singing he would be breaking the ground with a rake, that his labour might add to the trouble of his fasting. By weaving small twigs together with great rushes in making baskets, he provided himself with the frugal necessaries of life. 

He knew a great part of the holy scripture by heart, and always recited some parts of it after he had said many psalms and prayers; he prayed with as great attention and reverence as if he had seen with his eyes our Lord present with whom he spoke.

When he was fourscore years of age there were made for him little weak broths or gruels of flour and herbs. His long life is chiefly ascribed to his regularity, moderate labour, and great abstemiousness. It is a proverb which the experience of all ages confirms, that to eat long, a person ought to eat little.   

Our saint did not pass all these years, nor arrive at so eminent a degree of virtue and sanctity without violent temptations and assaults from the infernal spirit: in all which he was victorious by the assistance of omnipotent grace. Without the shield of prayer under these temptations would have meant to perish. 

At times his mind was haunted, and his imagination filled with impure images, or with the vanities of the theatre and circus. These most painful assaults the hermit repulsed with watchfulness, prayer, severe mortifications, and labour.  The adversary also tried to affright him with hideous appearances and monstrous spectres. When all this terrible artillery proved too weak, he shifted the scene, and presented him again with all that could delight and charm the senses. The phantoms of the enemy St Hilarion dissipated by casting himself upon his knees, and signing his forehead with the cross of Christ; and being enlightened and strengthened by a supernatural grace he discovered his snares. 

After the departure of the vanquished enemy, the saint found his soul filled with unspeakable peace and joy, and in the jubilation of his heart sung to God hymns of praise and thanksgiving, saying: He hath cast the horse and the horseman into the sea; some trust in their chariots, and some in their horses, etc. 

From his victories themselves he learned to be more humble, watchful, and timorous.  

Upon the report of healing miracles he wrought many flocked to the saint, desiring to embrace a monastic life under his direction. Till that time neither Syria nor Palestine were acquainted with that penitential state: so that St Hilarion was the first founder of it in those countries, as St Antony had been the founder of it in Egypt. From the model which our saint set, a great number of monasteries were founded all over Palestine. 

Hilarion died in 371, or the following year, being about eighty years of age; for he was sixty-five years old at the death of St Antony. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)