SS. BONA AND DODA, VIRGINS AND ABBESSES - 24 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 24th of April

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.

SAINTS BONA AND DODA, VIRGINS AND ABBESSES 

Saint Beuve (Bona) was of the royal blood of France, nearly related to King Dagobert, and one of the principal ladies of the court. She edified the whole kingdom by her virtues in the world above thirty years, but rejected all solicitations to marry, desiring to devote herself entirely to the service of God. 

THE NEW NUNNERY 

Her brother, St Baudry, or Balderic, who had some years before founded the monastery of Montfaucon, which he governed in quality of abbot, built a nunnery in honour of the Blessed Virgin, in the suburbs of Rheims (Reims), in 639. 

HUMILITY, VOLUNTARY POVERTY, MORTIFICATION, AND PRAYER

St Beuve there took the religious habit, and, notwithstanding her tears and opposition, was chosen the first abbess of this house. By her example she conducted her religious sisters in the perfect spirit of humility, poverty, mortification, and prayer, and died in 673, leaving behind her a sweet odour of her sanctity and virtues to all France. 

SHE WAS SUCCEEDED BY HER NIECE

She was succeeded by her niece, St Doda, a faithful imitator of her spirit and virtues. The bodies of SS. Beuve and Doda were afterwards removed to St Peter’s abbey, within the city. 

THE HISTORY OF THEIR LIVES 

The ancient history of their lives having been lost in a great fire, an anonymous author compiled another from the tradition of the nuns in the tenth century; a piece not much esteemed, omitted by Mabillon, but published by the Bollandists. See, on these holy virgins, Flodoard, the learned canon of Rheims, who died in 966, in his curious History of the Church of Rheims.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)