SEPTEMBER 6, 2024 – ST. ELEUTHERIUS, ABBOT.

FIRST FRIDAY

• Bl. Bertrand of Garrigues (13). Priest. (Historical)
• St. Eleutherius (585). Religious. (Historical)

WONDERFUL, simplicity and spirit of compunction were the distinguishing virtues of this holy man. He was chosen abbot of St. Mark’s near Spoleto, and favored by God with the gift of miracles. A child who was possessed by the devil, being delivered by being educated in his monastery, the abbot said one day: “Since the child is among the servants of God, the devil dares not approach him.” These words seemed to savor of vanity, and thereupon the devil again entered and tormented the child. The abbot humblv confessed his fault, and fasted and prayed with his whole community till the child was again freed from the tyranny of the fiend. St. Gregory the Great, not being able to fast on Easter-eve on account of extreme weakness, engaged this Saint to go with him to the church of St. Andrew’s and put up his prayers to God for his health, that he might join the faithful in that solemn practice of penance. Eleutherius prayed with many tears, and the Pope, coming out of the church, found his breast suddenly strengthened, so that he was enabled to perform the fast as he desired. St. Eleutherius raised a dead man to life. Resigning his abbacy, he died in St. Andrew’s monastery in Rome, about the year 585.

REFLECTION: “Appear not to men to fast, but to thy Father who is in heaven, and thy Father, who seeth in secret, He will repay thee.”

WORD OF THE DAY

HEXAMERON. The biblical six days of creation, expressed in this way by the sacred writer to declare the essential fact of faith that the whole world was created by God, and to imply two consequences of this faith for believers. They are to imitate God in working six days and resting on the seventh, and they are to work now, in co-operating with the Creator, to embellish the earth, since God made the world and now wants man to develop what has been made. (Etym. Greek hexameron, six days’ work; of or in six days.)

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

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