Saints celebrated on the 11th 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 HILDULPH, BISHOP AND ABBOT
(A.D. 707) St Hildulph, or Hidulph, [Hildulf] was born at Ratisbon in Bavaria, of one of the most illustrious families in the country, and renounced great temporal possessions in his youth to consecrate himself to God in an ecclesiastical state, which he embraced with his brother St Erard, (who was advanced to the episcopal see at Ratisbon, was buried at Moyen-Moutier, and is honoured among the saints on January 8).
ARCHBISHOP OF TRIERS
Hidulph was consecrated archbishop of Triers, and discharged for some time all the duties of a vigilant and zealous pastor. The monastery of St Maximin had been founded in the fourth century, and doubtless observed the discipline of the oriental monks. Hidulph introduced into it the Benedictine Order about the year 665, and so much augmented it in revenues and settled in it so perfect a spirit of monastic virtue, that it was the admiration of that age, and is to this day one of the most flourishing abbeys in Germany.
Hidulph was much taken with the charms of holy retirement, with the happy security and liberty of that state, its exercises of humility, penance, and prayer, and the liberty which it affords of living disengaged from worldly attachments and distractions, in a continual application to heavenly things. He was also strongly affected by the example and conversation of many divine men who then adorned the church, and maintained in it the true spirit of Christ, by the odour of sanctity which their angelic minds and deportment spread, and who were raised to this heroic virtue by the exercises of a monastic life. The obligations of his own charge (which he could not abandon unless his reasons for resigning it were such as to be approved of by a superior authority, as that of a primate, and rather of the pope as patriarch of the West) withheld him some time; but he at length found means to resign his see to St Veomade, abbot of St Maximin’s, and hid himself in that monastery.
HE WITHDREW INTO THE MOUNTAINS
But finding it impossible to live in the obscurity which he sought, in the midst of his own diocese, he retired secretly amidst the mountains of Voge, on the confines of Lorraine, and settled in a small hermitage on the spot which the monks of Senones and Estival gave him, and on which he soon after, about the year 676, built the monastery of Moyen-Moutier. This name was given it from its situation between the abbeys of Senones to the east, of Estival to the west, of Bodon-Moutier to the north, and to the south that of Jointures, now the collegiate church of canons, and the town of St Die.
Three hundred monks served God under his direction; for, besides those who composed the monastery of Moyen-Moutier, at the request of his friend St Die, upon his deathbed, and of his community, he took upon him also the charge of that abbey, and many lived under his conduct in separate cells.
HE GOVERNED HIS MONASTERY MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS
St Hidulph governed his own monastery above thirty years, though for some time, whilst he was obliged to reside at St Die’s, he appointed a vicar in his room at Moyen-Moutier. He returned thither before his death, which happened in 707, or, according to others, in 713. His relics are kept in a silver shrine in this monastery, which at present bears his name, and in union with that of St Vannes, began the reformation of the Benedictine Order, which is so famous in Lorraine, and in France.
St Hidulph’s name is not inserted in the Roman Martyrology but is famous in German French, and Benedictine Calendars.
A WONDERFUL VICTORY OVER THEIR PASSIONS
The sanctity of those ancient monks who, by the exercises of humility and holy solitude, attained to so wonderful a victory over their passions, so sublime a degree of virtue, and so heavenly a temper as to have seemed rather angels than men, was the admiration even of infidels, and the edification of all those who had the happiness of enjoying their conversation. "For my part," said St Sulpicius Severus, or his friend Posthumianus, "so long as I shall keep alive and in my senses, I shall ever celebrate the monks of Egypt, praise the anchorets, and admire the hermits." Of the same another ancient eyewitness says, "there have I seen many fathers leading an angelic life, and walking after the example of Jesus." The more happy and the more perfect a religious state is, the greater ought to be the watchfulness and the fervour of those who are engaged in it not to fall short of their obligations, and lose the precious graces of their vocation.
HARSH CRITICISM BY WORLDLY PEOPLE
Persons in the world are usually inclined to show no indulgence for the least failings which they observe in religious persons. How much soever the reformation and perfect sanctification of the more illustrious portion of the flock of Christ be to be desired and prayed for by all, and promoted by the chief pastors, these severe censors would better employ their zeal in looking into, and reforming their own hearts.
ALL CHRISTIANS ARE BOUND TO SANCTITY THEIR SOULS
They must never forget that all Christians, by their baptismal engagements and the sacred law of the gospel which they profess, are bound to sanctify their souls, and to serve God in the perfect sentiments and practice of all virtues. If in this degenerate age many religious establishments stand in need of a spur or some reformation, we may believe an enemy "that there is no class or condition of Christians in general which does not want it still much."
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
Comments
Post a Comment