ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH
Saints celebrated on the 30th of March
BLESSED DODO
Dodo, a devout young dutchman, frequented the churches, fasted, assisted the poor, and obeyed his parents. Following his marriage, he, his wife, and his widowed mother all decided to enter religious life. Dodo received his abbot’s permission to live as a hermit.
HE HEARD A VOICE FROM THE CROSS
He ultimately journeyed to Asch, Netherlands, finding there an abandoned sanctuary with two images, a crucifix and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While praying before the crucifix, Dodo heard a voice from the cross telling him that he was to settle in Asch.
There he spent the rest of his life, rising daily at midnight for the office of matins and continuing his prayers until the morning Mass. In adoration he offered to God five hundred genuflections every day. Dodo’s prayers wrought miraculous cures.
HIS BODY WAS FOUND TO BEAR THE STIGMATA
On Easter night Dodo customarily carried the crucifix around the outside of the church to perform the medieval ceremony called the ‘Elevatio’, a rite symbolising Christ’s resurrection. On one such occasion, when he came to the eastern end of the church’s cemetery, he and others saw the crucifix ascend toward heaven and vanish. Following Dodo’s death (in 1231), his body was found to bear the stigmata.
“Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life.”
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