ST REPARATA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR - 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 REPARATA, VIRGIN AND MARTYR 

Rabanus, who completed his martyrology in the first half of the 9th century, writes of this Saint: 

“On the 8th of October, the virgin Reparata of Caesarea, a city in Palestine, was martyred under the governor Decius. Since the virgin did not want to sacrifice to idols, she was [tortured] and, because this did not induce her to apostatise, she was savagely burned and, to the horror of the Christians, led around the city completely naked and finally beheaded, with a white dove flying out of her neck . The Christians gathered up her body secretly, anointed it and buried it."

The most fabulous journey of her dead body across the Mediterranean Sea to Campania on an old barque without sailors and sails the Bollandists relegate into the realm of fables. How it got to Teano (Teanum), a town in Apulia (of which now only some traces remain at the village of Ponte Rotto), cannot be established. 

However, it is certain that there stood a church in honour of St Reparata, while relics of her were also venerated in the Church of St John in Lucca.

From Ughellus we learn that the Bishop Speciosus in A.D. 724 determined legacies in his will regarding the Church of St John and St Reparata, and that, in the place where this edifice stood, a new church was built in 1294 to replace the old one. 

The ecclesiastical veneration of St Reparata in Florence has taken place since ancient times. The cathedral, which is now called St Maria Florida, was previously dedicated to her. She is the city's patron saint. The above-mentioned Reparata Church existed in Florence as early as the 4th century, because it is documented that the holy Bishop Andreas transferred the body of his predecessor, St Zenobius, into it (A.D. 400).

It seems, therefore, that the saint lived and suffered in Florence itself, and that, in the absence of written reports, an oriental legend was only added later. She is pictured with a crown, book and flag; often with a book and palm. Some religious icons depict her torture and beheading, with a white dove flying up to heaven from the mouth of the dying woman. 

(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, 1858)