From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Brief Teaching   
      
   "Here is a brief teaching: you should realize that he gives with mercy   
   when he gives and takes away with mercy when he takes away. Yet do not   
   think that you are neglected by his mercy, since he either bolsters   
   you through his gifts lest you weaken, or corrects you in your pride   
   lest you perish."   
   --St. Augustine--Commentary on Psalm 144, 4   
      
   Prayer: Lord, you have become a refuge for us, that you might care for   
   those who deserted you. You are a refuge so that you can encourage and   
   guide your children.   
   --St. Augustine--Sermon 55, 6   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   November 11th - St. Mennas, Martyr   
      
   THE outline of the legend of St. Mennas (Menas) is that he was an   
   Egyptian by birth and a soldier in the Roman army.  He was at Cotyaeum   
   in Phrygia when the persecution of Diocletian began, whereupon he   
   deserted and hid himself in the mountains, where he led a life of   
   prayer and austerity. On the occasion of some games at Cotyaeum he   
   left his hiding-place and displayed himself in the amphitheatre,   
   announcing that he also was a Christian. He was arrested and brought   
   before the president who, after having him beaten and tortured,   
   ordered him to be beheaded. His remains were recovered and brought   
   back to Egypt, where the miracles reported at his tomb soon made it a   
   great centre of devotion. The cultus of St. Mennas spread far and wide   
   in the East, his true history was overlaid and distorted by fictions   
   and embellishments which brought him into the ranks of the "warrior   
   saints ", and he was credited with absurd wonders) one of them (which,   
   however, he shares with SS. Cosmas and Damian) being, in the words of   
   Tillemont, "in the highest degree scandalous ".   
      
   Father Delehaye is of the opinion that all that can be fairly   
   certainly known about St. Mennas is that he was an Egyptian who was   
   martyred and buried in his native place.  Churches were built in his   
   honour at, among other places, Cotyaeum, and these gave rise to   
   mythical duplicates of the martyr connected with those cities.  The   
   great shrine of St. Mennas, built over his tomb, was at flumma (Karm   
   Abu-Mina), south-west of Alexandria, which was a principal pilgrimage   
   sanctuary until the Arab invasion in the seventh century.  Its ruins,   
   basilica, monastery, baths, secular buildings, were excavated by Mgr   
   K. M. Kaufmann in 1905-08, who found innumerable traces of the former   
   popular cultus of the martyr.  Among them were numerous phials bearing   
   such inscriptions as " Souvenir of St. Mennas ", which were shown to   
   have been made to contain water from a well near the shrine.   
      
   Such phials had been long previously found elsewhere in Africa and in   
   Europe, and had hitherto been supposed to have contained " oil of St.   
   Mennas taken from the lamps in the church.  In 1943 the Orthodox   
   patriarch of Alexandria, Christopher II, issued an encyclical letter   
   in which he attributed the saving of Egypt from invasion at the battle   
   of Alamein to "the prayers to God of the holy and glorious great   
   martyr Mennas, the wonder-worker of Egypt ";  and he put forward a   
   project for restoring the saint's ruined sanctuary near Alamein as a   
   memorial to the fallen.   
      
   The Roman Martyrology mentions to-day another ST MENNAS, who was a   
   solitary in the Abruzzi.  He was a Greek from Asia Minor whose   
   holiness and zeal are spoken of by Pope St. Gregory in his Dialogues.   
      
   Like the great St. George, we have here to do with a martyr of whose   
   historical existence, owing to his localized, wide-spread and early   
   cult, we can hardly entertain a doubt, but whose story has been lost   
   and supplied at a later date by deliberate fabrication. Starting from   
   this primitive fiction it has been transmitted to subsequent   
   generations with endless varieties of detail, and translated into many   
   languages, oriental and western.   
      
   <>  The Greek passio is known to us in three distinct families, but   
   the kernel recognizable in all of them has been obtained by the simple   
   process of borrowing the story of another martyr and giving him a new   
   name.  The martyr in this case was St. Gordius, whose conflict is   
   described to us in a panegyric preached by St. Basil. An immense   
   amount of research has been lavished upon St. Mennas by such scholars   
   as Krumbacher, Delehaye, P. Franchi de' Cavalieri, K. M. Kaufmann and   
   others.  What is of main interest is that the cradle of the cultus of   
   this Egyptian martyr was brought to light in the present century   
   through the excavations of Mgr Kaufmann. It has been described in his   
   folio volume, Die Menas-stadt und das Nationalheiligtum der   
   altchristlichen Aegypter (1910). Father Delehaye in particular has   
   written very fully on the subject. See the Analecta Bollandiana, vol.   
   xxix (1910), pp. 117-150; and vol. xliii, pp. 46-49; Origines du culte   
   des martyrs (1933), pp. 222-223 and passim; Les passions des martyrs   
   et les genres litteraires, pp. 388-389 ; and CMH., pp. 595-596.  See   
   also Budge, Texts relating to St. Mena of Egypt (1909) ; P. Franchi   
   de' Cavalieri in Studi e Testi, vol. xix (1908), pp. 42-108 ; and H.   
   Leclercq in DAC., vol. xi, cc. 324-397, where also is a full   
   bibliography.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   A slight sabre-cut will separate my head from my body, like the spring   
   flower which the Master of the garden gathers for His pleasure. We are   
   all flowers planted on this earth, which God plucks in His own good   
   time: some a little sooner, some a little later . . . Father and son   
   may we meet in Paradise. I, poor little moth, go first. Adieu.   
   --Saint Theophane in a letter to his father just before his martyrdom   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Every individual is capable of sin and every individual can by God's   
   grace repent of sin. As Jesus said in the parable about the rich man,   
   "For God, everything is possible."  (Matt. 19:25-26)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   THIRTY-ONE DAYS OF PRAYER FOR THE HOLY SOULS   
      
   Twenty-Sixth Day   
        According to St. Paul, the Apostle, the honor and glory of God   
   should be the principal motive of all our actions: "Whether you eat or   
   drink, or whatsoever else you do; do all things for the glory of God"   
   (I. Cor. x. 31.) "The glorification of God" ought to be our special   
   aim in our works, most particularly in our acts of charity for the   
   dead; and justly so, for, by delivering these holy souls, we lead them   
   to Heaven, where alone God is perfectly known, loved, and glorified.   
      
        If St. Teresa and other saints have declared their readiness to   
   suffer all tortures imaginable for the promotion of God's glory in a   
   single degree, what should not we do and suffer for the deliverance of   
   these souls from the flames of Purgatory, since by doing so we   
   increase His glory by millions of degrees, and not for one moment   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)