Saint Hilarion Church, Yvelines, France.
Photo: 13 April 2015.
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Author: rene boulay
(Wikimedia Commons)
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 14.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
“Monks were unknown in Syria before Saint Hilarion”, says his historian Saint Jerome.
“He instituted the Monastic life in that Country, and was the Master of those who embraced it. The Lord Jesus had His Anthony in Egypt and His Hilarion in Palestine, the former advanced in years, the latter still young”.
Now Our Lord very soon raised this young man to such glory, that Anthony would say to the sick, who came to him from Syria attraced by the fame of his Miracles: “Why take the trouble to come so far, when you have near you my son Hilarion ?”
And yet Hilarion had spent only two months with Anthony; after which, the Patriarch had said to him: “Persevere to the end, my son; and thy labour will win thee the delights of Heaven”.
Saint Hilarion.
And Saint Ursula and 11,000 Companions.
Feast Day 21 October.
Available on YouTube
Then, giving a hair-shirt and a garment of skin to this boy of fifteen whom he was never to see again, he sent him back to sanctify the solitudes of his own Country, while he himself retired farther into the desert.
The enemy of mankind, foreseeing a formidable adversary in this new Solitary, waged a terrible War against him. Even the flesh, in spite of the young ascetic’s Fasts, was Satan’s first accomplice.
But without any pity for a body so frail and delicate, as his historian says, that any effort would have seemed sufficient to destroy it, Hilarion cried out indignantly: “Ass, I will see that thou kick no more; I will reduce thee by hunger, I will crush thee with burdens, I will make thee work in all weathers; thou shalt be so pinched with hunger, that thou wilt think no more of pleasure”.
Vanquished in this quarter, the enemy found other allies, through whom he thought to drive Hilarion, by fear, back to the dwellings of men. But to the robbers who fell upon his poor wicker hut, the Saint, said smiling: “He that is naked has no fear of thieves”. And they, touched by his great virtue, could not conceal their admiration, and promised to amend their lives.
Then, Satan determined to come in person, as he had done to Anthony; but with no better success. No trouble could disturb the serenity attained by that simple, Holy Soul.
One day, the demon entered into a camel and made it mad, so that it rushed upon the Saint with horrible cries. But he only answered: “I am not afraid of thee; thou art always the same, whether thou come as a fox or a camel”. And the huge beast fell down tamed at his feet.
There was a harder trial yet to come from the most cunning artifice of the serpent. When Hilarion sought to hide himself from the immense concourse of people who besieged his poor cell, the enemy maliciously published his fame far and wide, and brought to him overwhelming crowds from every land.
In vain, he quitted Syria and travelled the length and breadth of Egypt; in vain, pursued from desert to desert, he crossed the sea, and hoped to coneal himself in Sicily, in Dalmatia, in Cyprus.
From the ship, which was making its way among the Cyclades [Editor: An island group in the Aegean Sea, South-East of Greece], he heard, in each island, the infernal spirits calling one another from the Towns and Villages and running to the shores as he passed by.
At Paphos, where he landed, the same concourse of demons brought to him multitudes of men; until at length God took pity on His servant and discovered to him a place inaccessible to his fellow-men, where he had no company but legions of devils, who surrounded him day and night.
Far from fearing, says his biographer, he took pleasure in the neighbourhood of his old antagonists whom he knew so well; and he lived there in great peace the last five years before his death.
Saint Hilarion was one of the first Confessors, if not the very first, to be honoured in the East with a public cultus like the Martyrs.
In the West, the White-Robed army led by Saint Ursula adds to the glory of the Holy Monk who has the first honours of this day.
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