MEMORIAL OF SAINT ELEUTHERIUS, ABBOT AND BLESSED BERTRAND OF GARRIGUES, PRIEST ~ FEAST DAY: SEPTEMBER 6TH: Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Eleutherius, Abbot and Blessed Bertrand of Garrigues, Priest. Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary and the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for the sick and dying, especially those suffering from cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the poor and needy and for peace, love, and unity in our marriages, our families and our world. And we continue to pray for our Holy Father, the Bishops, the Clergy, for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, for the Church, for persecuted christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world…. Amen🙏
SAINT ELEUTHERIUS, ABBOT: St. Eleutherius (d. 585 A.D.) was a monk living in Spoleto, Italy. Little is known of his early life. A wonderful simplicity and spirit of compunction were the distinguishing virtues of this holy sixth century abbot. He was elected to preside Saint Mark’s monastery near Spoleto, and favored by God with the gift of miracles. St. Eleutherius was a simple man of great faith who was the head of a monastery, the Abbot of St. Mark’s Abbey and was well-known as a man of simplicity and penance. He also demonstrated the gift of miracles and exorcism, and raised a dead man to life. St. Eleutherius helped a child who was possessed by the devil. But then St. Eleutherius became full of pride after he healed the boy from demonic possession and saw that the child was afterwards left unharmed, and said that the child would be safe in the monastery school because of all the good men who lived there. St. Eleutherius’ remark to this effect was : “Since the child is among the servants of God, the devil dares not approach him.” Then the boy, who came to live at St. Mark’s Abbey to be educated by the monks, became possessed again. St. Eleutherius repented of his vain and presumptuous remark, and the whole monastery underwent a penitential fast before the devil would leave the boy for the final time.
After that, when St. Eleutherius prayed for a miracle, it usually happened. St. Eleutherius was a friend of Pope St. Gregory the Great, the latter having called upon the saint to pray for him in his illness. 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. St. 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. After resigning his abbacy, Saint Eleutherius died in Rome in Saint Andrew’s monastery, about the year 585 A.D. His feast day is September 6th.
Saint Eleutherius, Abbot ~ Pray for us 🙏
BLESSED BERTRAND OF GARRIGUES, PRIEST: Bl. Bertrand was a young priest, one of the first men to join St. Dominic’s Order of Preachers. He was born at Garrigues in the Comtat Venaissin, France, in the latter part of the 12th century, around 1195 in the diocese of Nimes in southern France. Bl. Bertrand lived a holy life, praying and practicing virtue constantly even as a young person. Blessed Bertrand was educated by the Cistercian nuns and learned by first-hand experience of the dangers posed by the Albigensian heresy flourishing at the time. Accordingly, he became a priest and joined a Cistercian group that was laboring zealously in the Midi to counteract the evil effect by the heretics. However, in 1208, the Cistercian legate was assassinated and the crusade of Simon de Montfort was let loose, leaving Bl. Bertrand without a peaceful means by which to keep combating the heresy.
Shortly afterward, he met St. Dominic who was doing this very thing—combating the heresy by prayer, fasting, and preaching. In 1215, Bertrand was one of six preachers who formed the nucleus for the Order of Preachers begun by St. Dominic, and became one of his close companions. Bl. Bertrand shared St. Dominic’s vision and ideals and often accompanied him on his missionary journeys. In 1216 St. Dominic sent Bl. Bertrand to found a house in Paris three years later, when the saint traveled there, to his surprise he was greeted by 30 young disciples that Bl. Bertrand had recruited into the Order. Around this time St. Dominic commissioned Bertrand to establish a house in Bologna. And in 1221 he was appointed the Prior Provincial of the order in Provence, one of the eight provinces of the Dominican Order in the Church of St. Romanus, when St. Dominic traveled to the Vatican to receive final approbation of the order. Bl. Bertrand spent the last nine years of his active life preaching the faith throughout southern France, and founded the great Priory of Marseille. Blessed Bertrand died at Le Bouchet (Drômes), the Monastery of the Cistercian Nuns of Notre Dame of the Woods near Orange, during the Month of April, 1230 while giving a series of sermons at the Convent. Bl. Bertrand practiced an austere life, and many miracles were attributed to his intercession, during his life and after he died. After his death, it was written that by his watching, fasting, and other penances, he succeded in imitating his beloved Father so closely as to invite the words: ”The disciple is like the master; there goes the image of St. Dominic!” September 6th is his feast day.
PRAYER: Almighty, eternal God, You dedicated the joy of this day to the glorification of Blessed Bertrand. Mercifully grant that we may always strive to retain and complete by our works that faith which he continually proclaimed. Amen 🙏