SAINT FEAST DAY 8 JULY: ST KILIAN

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JULY

Saints celebrated on the 8th of July

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST KILIAN, BISHOP AND MARTYR

(SS. Kilian, Bishop, Colman, Priest, and Totnan, Deacon, Martyrs) 

Kilian or Kuln was a holy Irish monk, of noble Scottish extraction. With two zealous companions he travelled to Rome in 686, and obtained of Pope Conon a commission to preach the gospel to the German idolaters in Franconia; upon which occasion Kilian was invested with episcopal authority.

HE BECAME BISHOP

The missionaries converted and baptised great numbers at Würzburg, and among others Gosbert, the duke of that name. This prince had taken to wife Geilana, the relict of his deceased brother; and though he loved her tenderly, being put in mind by St Kilian that such a marriage was condemned and void by the law of the gospel, he promised to dismiss her, saying that we are bound to love God above father, mother, or wife. 

SHE SENT ASSASSINS

Geilana was tormented in mind beyond measure at this resolution; jealousy and ambition equally inflaming her breast; and, as the vengeance of a wicked woman has no bounds, during the absence of the duke in a military expedition, she sent assassins, who privately murdered the three holy missionaries in 688. 

TRANSLATION OF THE RELICS

The ruffians were themselves pursued by divine vengeance, and all perished miserably. St Burchard, who in the following century was placed by St Boniface in the episcopal see of Würzburg, translated their relics into his cathedral. (Excerpts from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 📷 1. St Kilian, 2. Würzburg Cathedral)