ST MOLOC, BISHOP - 25 JUNE

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JUNE

Saints celebrated on the 25th 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 MOLOC, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR

St Moloc was a Scotsman, and a zealous assistant of St Boniface of Ross in his apostolic labours, in the seventh century. The relics of St Moloc were kept with great veneration at Murlach. 

ST MOLOC'S INTERCESSION

When Sweno, the Danish king, sent out of England a barbarous army under the conduct of Olaf and Enet, king Malcolm II after having been at first discomfited by them, overcame them in a second battle near Murlach, which victory he ascribed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and St Moloc, which with his whole army he had earnestly implored. 

THE ABBEY

In thanksgiving he founded at Murlach, in 1010, an abbey under their joint invocation, together with a stately cathedral church which he adorned with an episcopal see, though this was afterwards translated to Aberdeen. 

A SECOND AND THIRD MONASTERY

The Danes in two other engagements were entirely routed by this religious prince, who perpetuated the memory of the former of these victories by building a second monastery under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the town of Brechin, near which the battle was fought, and by raising an obelisk on the spot, still standing in a village called Cuin, from the name of a Danish general who was there slain. 

For a memorial of his last victory he erected on the place where it was gained a third abbey called Deir, in the county of Buchan, which soon after adopted the Cistercian rule, and flourished till the change of religion in 1550. 

FAMOUS ALL OVER SCOTLAND

The name of St Moloc was famous over all Scotland, especially in the counties of Argyle and Ross. A considerable portion of his relics was honoured in a famous church which still bears his name at Lismore in Argyleshire. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)