ST CONON, BISHOP OF THE ISLE OF MAN - 26 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 26th 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 CONON, BISHOP OF THE ISLE OF MAN 

If we can give credit to some lives of Saint Fiaker, and the old Breviary of Limoges, that saint was son of Eugenius, king of Scotland, and by his father committed in his childhood, with his two brothers, to the care of St Conon, from which saintly education he received that ardent love and perfect spirit of piety, by which he was distinguished during the whole course of his life. 

A SAINT FROM HIS INFANCY

Conon, by the purity and fervour in which he served God, was a saint from his infancy. The Isle of Man, which was a famous ancient seat of the Druids, is said to have received the seeds of the Christian faith, by the zeal of St Patrick. 

THE BISHOPRIC

St Conon, passing thither from Scotland, completed that great work, and is said to have been made bishop of Man, or of Sodor, supposed by these authors to have been anciently a town in this island. This bishopric was soon after united with that of the Hebrides or the Western Islands, which see was fixed in the Isle of Hi, Iona or Y-colmkille. 

HIS DEATH

St Conon died in the Isle of Man, about the year 648. His name continued to the change of religion, in great veneration throughout the Hebrides, or islands on the West of Scotland. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)