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 PETER OF ALCANTARA, CONFESSOR
Saint Peter was born at Alcantara, Spain, in 1499. His father, Alphonso Garavito, was a lawyer and governor of that town; his mother was of good extraction, and both were persons eminent for their piety and personal merit in the world.
He embraced the holy Order of St Francis, in the sixteenth year of his age he took the habit of that austere rule in the solitary convent of Manjarez, situated in the mountains which run between Castile and Portugal. An ardent spirit of penance determined his choice of this rigorous institute in imitation of the Baptist.
He had first the care of the vestry, (which employment was most agreeable to his devotion,) then of the gate, and afterwards of the cellar; all which offices he discharged with uncommon exactness, and without prejudice to his recollection.
His food was for many years only bread moistened in water, or unsavoury herbs, of which, when he lived a hermit, he boiled a considerable quantity together, that he might spend the less time in serving his body. For some time his ordinary mess was a soup made of beans; his drink was a small quantity of water.
He had no other bed than a rough skin laid on the floor, on which he knelt great part of the night, leaning sometimes on his heels for a little rest; but he slept sitting, leaning his head against a wall. His watchings were the most difficult and the most incredible of all the austerities which he practised; to which he inured himself gradually, that they might not be prejudicial to his health; and which, being of a robust constitution of body, he found himself able to bear. He was assailed by violent temptations and cruel spiritual enemies; but, by the succour of divine grace, and the arms of humility and prayer, was always victorious.
He was professed, and later ordained a priest (in 1524), and soon after employed in preaching. Incredible was the fruit which his sermons produced.
The love of retirement being always St Peter’s predominant inclination, he was sent to the convent of St Onuphrius, at Lapa, near Soriana, situated in a frightful solitude; but, at the same time, he was commanded to take upon him the charge of guardian or warden of that house. In that retirement, he composed his golden book, On Mental Prayer, at the request of a pious gentleman, who had often heard him speak on that subject. In it the great advantages and necessity of mental prayer are briefly set forth: all its parts and its method are explained, and exemplified in affections of divine love, praise, and thanksgiving, and especially of supplication or petition. Short meditations on the last things, and on the passion of Christ, are added as models. Our saint has left us another short treatise, On the Peace of the Soul, or On an Interior Life, no less excellent than the former.
In 1541, he returned to Lisbon, to join F. Martin of St Mary, who was laying the foundation of a most austere reformation of this Order reduced to an eremitical life, and was building the first hermitage upon a cluster of barren mountains called Arabida, upon the mouth of the Tagus, on the opposite bank to Lisbon.
In 1544, he was recalled by his own superiors into Spain, and afterwards, in 1550, founded a new convent near Lisbon. In 1553 he was appointed custos by a general chapter held at Salamanca.
A friend founded a convent for him, such a one as he desired, near Pedroso, in the diocese of Palentine, in 1555, which is the date of this reformed institute of Franciscans, called the Barefooted, or of the strictest observance of St Peter of Alcantara.
The saint, whilst in quality of commissary he made the visitation of several monasteries of his Order, arrived at Avila in 1559. St Teresa laboured at that time under the most severe persecutions from her friends and her very confessors, and
St Peter, from his own experience and knowledge in heavenly communications and raptures, easily understood her, cleared all her perplexities, gave her the strongest assurances that her visions and prayer were from God, loudly confuted her calumniators, and spoke to her confessor in her favour.
St Peter was making the visitation of his convents, and confirming his religious in that perfect spirit of penance with which he had inspired them, when he fell sick in the convent of Viciosa.
The holy man, perceiving that his last hour approached, would be carried to the convent of Arenas, that he might die in the arms of his brethren. He was no sooner arrived there but he received the holy sacraments. In his last moments he exhorted his brethren to perseverance, and to the constant love of holy poverty. Seeing he was come to the end of his course, he repeated those words of the psalmist: I have rejoiced in those things which have been said to me. We shall go into the house of the Lord. Having said these words, he rose upon his knees, and stooping in that posture, calmly expired on October 18, in the year 1562, of his age sixty-three.
St Peter was beatified by Gregory XV in 1622, and canonised by Clement IX. in 1669.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints) [St Peter is the patron saint of Night Watchmen]
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