ST GUNDLEUS, CONFESSOR - 29 MARCH

 ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 29th 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 GUNDLEUS, CONFESSOR - 29 MARCH

Saint Gundleus [Gwynllyw], who was formerly honoured with great devotion in Wales, was son to the king of the Dimetians in South-Wales. 

HE DIVIDED THE KINGDOM WITH HIS SIX BROTHERS

After the death of his father, though the eldest son, he divided the kingdom with his six brothers, who nevertheless respected and obeyed him as if he had been their sovereign. 

HIS FAMILY

He married Gladusa [Gladys], daughter of Braghan, prince of that country, which is called from him Brecknockshire, and was father of St Canoe and St Keyna. St Gundleus had by her the great St Cadoc, who afterwards founded the famous monastery of Llancarvan, three miles from Cowbridge, in Glamorganshire. 

HE RETIRED FROM THE WORLD

Gundleus lived so as to have always in view the heavenly kingdom for which we are created by God. To secure this, he retired wholly from the world long before his death, and passed his time in a solitary little dwelling near a church which he had built. 

SACK-CLOTH AND BARLEY-BREAD

His clothing was sack-cloth, his food was barley-bread, upon which he usually strewed ashes, and his drink was water. Prayer and contemplation were his constant occupation, to which he rose at midnight, and he subsisted by the labour of his hands: thus he lived many years. 

HIS HAPPY DEATH

Some days before his death he sent for St Dubritius and his son St Cadoc, and by their assistance, and the holy rites of the church, prepared himself for his passage to eternity. He departed to our Lord towards the end of the fifth century, and was glorified by miracles. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)