ST JODOC, CONFESSOR - 13 DECEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 13th of December

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 JODOC, CONFESSOR

[Judoc, Joyce, Josse, Judocus] Those Britons who, flying from the swords of the English-Saxons, settled in Armorica in Gaul, upon the ruins of the Roman empire in those parts, formed themselves into a little state on that coast till they were obliged to receive the laws of the French. 

Judicael, commonly called Giguel, eldest son of Juthael, became king of Brittany about the year 630. This prince soon after renounced this perishable crown to labour more securely for the acquisition of an incorruptible one, and retired into the monastery of St Meen, in the diocese of St Malo, where he lived in so great sanctity as to be honoured after his death with the title of the Blessed Judicael.

When he resigned the crown he offered it to his younger brother Jodoc, called by the French Josse. But Jodoc had the same inclinations with his eldest brother. However, to consult the divine will, he shut himself up for eight days in the monastery of Lanmamiont, in which had been brought up, and prayed night and day with many tears that God would direct him to undertake what was most agreeable to him and most conducive to his divine honour and his own sanctification. 

SOLITUDE

He put an end to his deliberation by receiving the clerical tonsure at the hands of the Bishop of Avranches, and joined a company of eleven pilgrims who purposed to go to Rome. They went first to Paris, and thence into Picardy in 636, where Jodoc was prevailed upon by Haymo, duke of Ponthieu, to fix upon an estate of his, which was a sufficient distance from his own country, and secure from the honours which there waited for him. 

Being promoted to priest’s orders, he served the duke’s chapel seven years; then retired with one only disciple named Vurmare, into a woody solitude at Ray, where he found a small spot of ground proper for tillage, watered by the river Authie. 

THE DUKE BUILT THEM A CHAPEL AND CELLS

The duke built them a chapel and cells, in which the hermits lived, gaining by the tillage of this land their slender subsistence and an overplus for the poor.

Their exercises were austere penance, prayer, and contemplation. After eight years thus spent here they removed to Runiac, now called Villers-saint-Josse, near the mouth of the river Canche, where they built a chapel of wood in honour of St Martin. 

In this place they continued the same manner of life for thirteen years; when Jodoc having been bit by an adder, they again changed their quarters, the good duke, who continued their constant protector, having built them an hermitage, with two chapels of wood, in honour of SS. Peter and Paul. 

THEY MADE A PENITENTIAL PILGRIMAGE TO ROME

The servants of God kept constant inclosure, except that, out of devotion to the prince of the apostles, and to the holy martyrs, they made a penitential pilgrimage to Rome in 665. 

At their return to Runiac they found their hermitage enlarged and adorned, and a beautiful church of stone, which the good duke had erected in memory of St Martin, and on which he settled a competent estate. The duke met them in person on the road, and conducted them to their habitation. 

HE WAS HONOURED BY MIRACLES BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER HIS DEATH

Jodoc finished here his penitential course in 669, and was honoured by miracles both before and after his death.

Winoc and Arnoc, two nephews of the saint, inherited his hermitage, which became a famous monastery, and was one of those which Charlemagne first bestowed on Alcuin in 792. It stands near the sea, in the diocese of Amiens, follows the Order of Saint Benedict, and the abbot enjoys the privileges of count. It is called St Josse-sur-mer. St Jodoc is mentioned on this day in the Roman Martyrology.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)