Saints celebrated on the 1st of May
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 SIGISMUND OF BURGUNDY, KING AND MARTYR
Wonderful is the providence of God in the means by which he preserves his elect from the contagion of vice, and conducts them to eternal life.
HE EMBRACED THE CATHOLIC FAITH
This saint was son of Gondebald, the Arian king of the Burgundians; but embraced the Catholic faith through the instructions of St Alcimus Avitus, bishop of Vienne.
A HUMBLE AND MORTIFIED LIFE
He succeeded to the kingdom of his father in 516, and in the midst of barbarism lived humble, mortified, penitent, devout, and charitable, even on the throne; a station in which the very name of true virtue is too often scarcely known.
THE MONASTERY OF ST MAURICE
Before the death of his father, he built the famous monastery of St Maurice at Agaune, in the Valais, in the year 515, where many holy hermits lived before that time in scattered cells.
THE SNARE
God permitted this good prince to fall into a snare. He suffered his son Sigeric to be put to death, upon an accusation forged by his second wife, of a conspiracy against his life: but afterwards discovering the calumny, and pierced to the quick with remorse, he retired to Agaune, where he did penance in tears and sack-cloth. He made it his prayer to God that he might be punished in this life, to escape the divine vengeance in the next.
His prayer was heard: for being taken prisoner by Chlodomir, the barbarous king of the Franks, he was, by his order, drowned in a well at Columelle, four leagues from Orleans, after he had reigned one year. His body was kept honourably at Agaune, till it was removed to the cathedral of Prague by the emperor Charles IV. It has been famous for many miracles.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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