ST BONITUS, BISHOP OF AUVERGNE, CONFESSOR - 15 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 15th of January

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 BONITUS, BISHOP OF AUVERGNE, CONFESSOR

(Commonly, in Auvergne, he is called Bonet; at Paris, Bont.) 

Saint Bonet was referendary or chancellor to Sigebert III, the holy king of Austrasia; and by his zeal, religion, and justice, flourished in that kingdom under four kings. 

HIS CONSECRATION AS BISHOP

After the death of Dagobert II, Thierry III made him governor of Marseilles and all Provence, in 680. 

His elder brother St Avitus II, bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, having recommended him for his successor, died in 689, and Bonet was consecrated. 

A MOST PENITENTIAL LIFE AND A PILGRIMAGE

But after having governed that see ten years, with the most exemplary piety, he had a scruple whether his election had been perfectly canonical; and having consulted St Tilo, or Theau, then leading an eremitical life at Solignas, resigned his dignity, led for four years a most penitential life in the abbey of Manlieu, now of the Order of Saint Benedict, and after having made a pilgrimage to Rome, died of the gout at Lyons on January 15, 710, being eighty-six years old. 

HIS RELICS

His relics were enshrined in the cathedral at Clermont; but some small portions are kept at Paris in the churches of St Germain l’Auxerrois, and St Bont, near that of St Merry.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)