ST LIVINUS, BISHOP AND MARTYR - 12 NOVEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 12th of November 

WELCOME!

SAINT LIVINUS, BISHOP AND MARTYR

Saint Livinus was a learned and zealous Irish bishop, who went over into Flanders to preach the faith to the idolaters.

To enter upon that work by dedicating himself a holocaust to God, he spent thirty days in prayer at the tomb of Saint Bavo, at Ghent, and offered there every day the holy sacrifice. 

After this solemn consecration of himself to his Redeemer, he began to announce the word of life, and converted many about the country of Alost and Hautem.

Having cultivated the study of poetry in his youth, he composed an elegy on Saint Bavo, who died only six years before him.

THEY WANTED HIM TO STOP PREACHING THE GOSPEL

Saint Livinus was massacred by the pagans, at Esche, [the pagans tried to cut his tongue off to stop him preaching the Gospel] in the year 633, according to Colgan, who mentions him to have been bishop of Dublin before he went to the mission of Flanders. 

He was buried at Hautem, three miles from Ghent; and his relics were translated to the great monastery of Saint Peter’s at Ghent, in 1006. 

THE RELICS

In a shrine by that of Saint Livinus are preserved the relics of Saint Craphaildes, a lady in whose house Saint Livinus was martyred. She was murdered by the same barbarians, for lamenting his death, and her infant son Brictius, whom Saint Livinus had lately baptised. The infant martyr’s bones are kept in the same shrine with those of Saint Livinus. 

Source: Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints

PRAYER:

O God,

Who has consecrated 

the merits of the holy martyrs 

by the Most Precious Blood of Thy Son ,

look down propitiously on those 

who honour the blessed Livinus,

Thy Bishop and Martyr;

and grant them safety, peace,

and finally the joy of Thy Countenance without end.

Through the same Christ our Lord.

Amen. 

St Anthony’s Treasury 1916