ST TECLA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS - 15 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER 

Saints celebrated on the 15th 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 TECLA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS 

She was an English woman, and a holy nun at Winburn, in Dorsetshire, who being invited by St Boniface into Germany, was made abbess of Kitzingen, three miles from Würzburg, about the same time that St Lioba was appointed abbess at Bischofsheim, St Walburge at Heidenheim in Bavaria, Kynetrade, also in Bavaria, and Kynegild, in Thuringia, that they might be mistresses of a spiritual life to the new converts of their sex, and train up young ladies to virtue; St Boniface rightly judging that the establishment of sanctuaries, which might be models and examples of true piety and schools for the religious education of youth, was a necessary means for supporting religion, and diffusing its holy spirit. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

PRAYER:

O God, who gladden us each year by the feast of blessed Thecla, graciously grant that, as we rejoice in her merits, we may be inspired by her example. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.