Optional Memorials: Saint Sharbel Makhluf - in Ireland, Saint Declan

Ottawa's Maronite Parish is under the patronage of St. Sharbel, a monk and priest mystic, who died in 1898. 

A little known church in our Archdiocese is the mission church of the parish of the Holy Name of Mary in Almont, dedicated to the Irish saint recalled today, St. Declan; the church is located at Brightside (sometime referred to as French Line). 

Herewith brief notices of each saint whose memory may be recalled at Mass today:

St. Sharbel was a Lebanese monk, born in a small mountain village and ordained in 1858. Devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, he spent the last twenty-three years of his life as a hermit. Despite temptations to wealth and comfort, Saint Sharbel taught the value of poverty, self-sacrifice and prayer by the way he lived his life.

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O God, who called the Priest Saint Sharbel Makhluf to the solitary combat of the desert and imbued him with all manner of devotion, grant us, we pray, that, being made imitators of the Lord's Passion, we may merit to be co-heirs of his Kingdom. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

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St. Declan, the first bishop of Ardmore in Ireland, was baptized by St. Colman, and preached the faith in that country a little before the arrival of St. Patrick, who confirmed the episcopal see of Ardmore, in a synod at Cashel in 448. Many miracles are ascribed to St. Declan, and he has ever been much honoured.