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ST PELAGIA, PENITENT - 8 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER 

Saints celebrated on the 8th 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 PELAGIA, PENITENT 

This saint had been a comedian at Antioch, even whilst she was a catechumen; but afterwards renounced that profession, and became a true penitent. 

The manner of her conversion is thus related in the Greek Menaea, published by the Emperor Basil. The Patriarch of Antioch having assembled a council of bishops in that city, St Nonnus, one of the number, was commissioned to announce the word of God to the people.

Accordingly he preached before the church of St Julian martyr, in the presence of the other bishops. During the sermon, Pelagia passed that way richly adorned with jewels; and her beauty, heightened with all the elegance of dress, drew on her the attention of the whole assembly, except the bishops, who turned away their eyes from so scandalous an object; but Nonnus, looking earnestly at Pelagia, cries out in the middle of his discourse: "The Almighty in his infinite goodness will show mercy even to this woman, the work of his hands." 

At these words, she stopped suddenly, and, joining the audience, was so touched with remorse for her life, that she shed abundance of tears; and immediately after the sermon she addressed herself to Nonnus, imploring him to instruct her how to expiate her sins, and to prepare her for the grace of baptism. 

The holy penitent distributed all her goods among the poor, changed her name from Margaret to Pelagia, and resolved to spend the remainder of her life in the exercise of prayer, and the austerities of penance. 

After her baptism, which she received at the hands of Nonnus, she retired to Jerusalem, and having taken the religious veil, shut herself up in a grotto on Mount Olivet, in the fifth age. 

Phocas, a monk of Crete, in the relation of his voyage from Palestine in 1185,  describes Mount Olivet, and the grotto where the saint completed the martyrdom of her penance, and where her relics were preserved in an urn. 

St Pelagia is mentioned on this day in the Roman Martyrology. See her life written by James, deacon of Heliopolis, in Syria, an eye-witness of her conversion and penance. The same is found in an ancient manuscript in folio, on vellum well preserved, which formerly belonged to the abbey of St Edmundsbury in England, and is at present in the author’s possession. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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