Saints celebrated on the 15th of June
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 LANDELIN, ABBOT
St Landelin was nobly born at Vaux near Bapaume in 623, and educated in learning and piety under the care of St Aubert, bishop of Cambray; for it was then the laudable custom for noblemen to commit the education of their sons to some holy and learned bishop or abbot, insomuch that many houses of bishops as well as monasteries were seminaries of youth.
BEING ON ONE'S GUARD AGAINST BAD INFLUENCE
It is a point of the utmost importance that youth coming out of such sanctuaries of innocence and virtue, enter the world well apprised of its dangers, and infinitely upon their guard against bad company and the love of vanities and pleasures, which they cannot fortify themselves too much against. They must bring along with them all their religion, nourish it in their hearts by assiduous meditation, and confirm it in their minds by pious reading and consideration, and by the daily exercises of all the other duties of that virtue.
HE BEGAN TO WALK THE BROAD WAY OF THE WORLD
A neglect of this precaution proved for some time fatal to Landelin. Through the seduction and example of certain relations, whose flatteries unfortunately struck in with his passions, he insensibly began to walk in the broad way of the world, and, from a life of pleasure and diversions, fell at length into great disorders.
HE CAST HIMSELF AT THE FEET OF ST AUBERT
But the sudden death of one of his companions struck him with such a terror, that he entered seriously into himself, like the prodigal son, and in the deepest compunction went and cast himself at the feet of St Aubert, who had never ceased to pray for his conversion.
The bishop placed him in an austere monastery to do penance for some years; in which, so extraordinary were his fervour and contrition, that St Aubert ordained him deacon, and, when he was thirty years of age, priest, and appointed him to preach to the people.
SOLITUDE AND PENANCE
But the holy penitent having his past sins always before his eyes, begged leave to weep for them in solitude and severe penance: which, when he had obtained, he retired to Laubach, now called Lobes, a desert place on the banks of the Sambre. Several persons resorting to him, and imitating his manner of life, though at first they lived in separate cells, gave rise to the great abbey of Lobes, about the year 654.
Landelin, regarding himself as unworthy, could not bear to see himself at the head of a religious community of saints; and when he had laid the foundation of this house, he left his disciple, St Ursmar, to finish the building, and constituted him the first abbot.
THE ABBEY OF AUNE AND CRESPIN
Landelin afterwards founded Aune, which is at present a house of Cistercians. The French kings bestowed on him great estates, the chief part of which he settled on his first monastery of Lobes. In quest of closer solitude, he with his two companions, SS. Adelin and Domitian, erected some cells of the branches of trees in a thick forest between Mons and Valenciennes.
Here also disciples flocked to him, and he founded the abbey of Crespin, which he was at length obliged to govern himself. By preaching in the village he instructed the people in the science of salvation, but he never interrupted his penitential courses. He died in sackcloth and ashes in 686. His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on June 15.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
Comments
Post a Comment