ST VIATOR OF LYONS - 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 VIATOR OF LYONS 

Saint Viator, lector of the cathedral at Lyons, France, lived in the fourth century and is the earliest type of the teacher of the cathedral schools.

In the exercise of the then important functions of the lectorate, namely in reading and expounding the Scriptures to the people and in catechising the children, he displayed that zeal and ability for which he was held in such high esteem by his bishop, St Just, and by the Christian flock of Lyons. 

Hagiographers refer to him as "a most holy youth, who on account of his eminent virtues was much beloved by his bishop". 

After the Council of Aquileia (381) St Just decided to spend the remainder of his life in the penitential solitudes of Thebais, and selected young Viator as the companion of his voluntary exile. Both the aged bishop and his youthful lector died in the odour of sanctity in an austere monastery of Scete in the year 389. 

Because St Viator had sanctified himself in teaching the young, he was selected as the patron of a community of parochial clerics or catechists, who are priests and teaching brothers living on a footing of religious equality. This community, known as the Clerics of St Viator, was founded in the year 1835 by the Very Rev. Father Louis-Joseph Querbes, pastor of the village of Vourles in the Archdiocese of Lyons. 

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)