ST PHAEBADIUS, BISHOP OF AGEN, CONFESSOR - 25 APRIL

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN APRIL

Saints celebrated on the 25th 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.

ST PHAEBADIUS, BISHOP OF AGEN, CONFESSOR 

[Called in Gascony Fiari; Bishop of Agen, in Gaul.] When the second Arian confession of faith was drawn up at Sirmium, and subscribed to by Osius, in 358, St Phaebadius wrote against it with great success, and by his zeal put a check to that spreading evil, so that in Aquitaine it was universally rejected. 

HIS BOOK AGAINST THE ARIANS

His book against the Arians, which is extant, is written in so masterly a manner, with such solidity, justness, and close reasoning, as to make us regret the loss of his other works. In it he confutes this heretical confession of faith, and even in the more innocent parts discovers the secret wiles and subtle equivocations of its authors. 

THE COUNCIL OF RIMINI

In the council of Rimini, in 359, he zealously opposed the Arians, together with St Servatius of Tongres. These two prelates were at length imposed upon by the artful practices of Ursacius and Valens, to admit a captious proposition, without perceiving the poison which it contained. But, discovering afterwards the snare, they declared they had been deceived, and condemned what they had done at Rimini.  

St Phaebadius, to repair this evil, redoubled his zeal in the council of Paris, in 360, and in the council of Saragossa, in Spain, in 380, and joined St Delphinus, archbishop of Bordeaux, his metropolitan, in all his labours for the faith. 

A SOLID TREATISE

We have a learned, elegant, and solid treatise, in which the council of Rimini is confuted, and Ursacius and Valens attacked, of which Dom Rivet proves St Phaebadius to have been the author. A Greek translation of this piece is published among the discourses of St Gregory Nazianzen, it being the forty-ninth. 

ST JEROME'S CATALOGUE OF ILLUSTRIOUS MEN

St Phaebadius was alive in a very decrepid old age, in 392, when St Jerome wrote his catalogue of illustrious men. The church of Agen places his festival on April 25.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)