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ST GONTRAN, KING AND CONFESSOR - 28 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 28th of March

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 GONTRAN, KING AND CONFESSOR 

Saint Gontran was son of King Clotaire, and grandson of Clovis I. and St Clotildis. Being the second son, whilst his brothers Charibert reigned at Paris, and Sigebert in Austrasia, residing at Metz, he was crowned King of Orleans and Burgundy in 561, making Challons on the Saone his capital. 

When compelled to take up arms against his ambitious brothers and the Lombards, he made no other use of his victories, under the conduct of a brave general called Mommol, than to give peace to his dominions. 

HE PROTECTED HIS NEPHEWS AGAINST BRUNEHAULT AND FREDEGONDE

He protected his nephews against the practices of the wicked dowager queens, Brunehault of Sigebert, and Fredegonde of Chilperic, the firebrands of France. The putting to death the physicians of the queen at her request, on her death-bed, and the divorcing his wife Mercatrude, are crimes laid to his charge, in which the barbarous manners of his nation involved him: but these he effaced by tears of repentance. 

He governed his kingdom, studying rather to promote the temporal happiness of others than his own, a stranger to the passions of pride, jealousy, and ambition, and making piety the only rule of his policy. 

POLITICS ACCORDING TO THE MAXIMS OF THE GOSPEL

The prosperity of his reign, both in peace and war, condemns those who think that human policy cannot be modelled by the maxims of the gospel, whereas nothing can render a government more flourishing. He always treated the pastors of the church with respect and veneration, regarding them as his fathers, and honouring and consulting them as his masters. 

WORKS OF MERCY

He was the protector of the oppressed, and the tender parent of his subjects, whom he treated as his children. He poured out his treasures among them with a holy profusion; especially in the time of a pestilence and famine. He gave the greatest attention to the care of the sick. He fasted, prayed, wept, and offered himself to God night and day, as a victim ready to be sacrificed on the altar of his justice, to avert his indignation, which he believed he himself had provoked, and drawn down upon his innocent people. 

HE WAS READY TO FORGIVE OFFENCES

He was a severe punisher of crimes in his officers and others, and, by many wholesome regulations, restrained the barbarous licentiousness of his troops; but no man was more ready to forgive offences against his own person. He contented himself with imprisoning a man who, through the instigation of Queen Fredegonde, had attempted to stab him, and he spared another assassin sent by the same wicked woman, because he had taken shelter in a church. 

HIS HOLY DEATH

With royal magnificence he built and endowed many churches and monasteries. St Gregory of Tours relates many miracles performed by him, both before and after his death, to some of which he was an eye-witness. This good king, like another penitent David, having spent his life after his conversion, though on the throne, in the retirement and penance of a recluse, (as St Hugh of Cluny says of him, exhorting King Philip I. to imitate his example,) died on March 28, in 593, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, having reigned thirty-one and some months. 

HIS RELICS

He was buried in the church of St Marcellus, which he had founded. The Huguenots scattered his ashes in the sixteenth century: only his skull escaped their fury, and is now kept there in a silver case. He is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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