Saints celebrated on the 25th 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 ALDHELM, BISHOP OF SHERBURN
Saint Adhelm (Adhelm) was born among the West-Saxons, and a near relation of king Ina, but had his education under St Adrian at Canterbury.
HIS ABBACY
Maidulf, a pious Irish monk, founded a small poor monastery, called from him Maidulfsbury, corruptly Malmesbury. In this place Aldhelm took the monastic habit, and Maidulf seeing his great virtue and capacity, resigned to him the abbacy in 675. The saint exceedingly raised its reputation and increased its building and revenues. The church he dedicated in honour of St Peter, and added to it two others, the one in honour of the Mother of God, the other of St Michael.
This abbey was rendered by him the most glorious pile of building at that time in the whole island, as Malmesbury testifies, who fills almost the whole second part of the life of this saint with extracts or copies of the donations, charters, and privileges of many kings and princes granted to this house, with an ample indult of Pope Sergius, which the saint made a journey to Rome to obtain.
ON THE PRAISES OF VIRGINITY
He was an enemy to gluttony, avarice, vain-glory, and all idle amusements, and watched assiduously in divine reading and holy prayer. He was the first among our English ancestors who cultivated the Latin and English or Saxon poesy, as he says of himself. His principal work is a treatise On the praises of Virginity.
He inserts at length the high commendations which St Augustine, St Jerome, and other fathers bestow on that state, and gives abridged examples of many holy virgins. Among other mortifications it was the custom of this saint to recite the psalter in the night, plunged up to the shoulders in water in a neighbouring pond. When Hedda, bishop of the West-Saxons, or of Winchester, died, that diocese was divided into two, that of Winchester and that of Sherburn.
WINCHESTER AND SHERBURN
St Aldhelm who had been abbot thirty years, was taken out of his cell by force, and consecrated the first bishop of Sherburn, which see was afterwards removed to Salisbury. His behaviour in this laborious charge was that of a true successor of the apostles.
HIS HOLY DEATH
He died in the visitation of his diocese at Dullinge in Somersetshire, on May 25, 709, the fifth of his episcopal dignity. William of Malmesbury relates several miracles wrought by him, both while he was living and after his death. His psalter, vestment, and several other memorials were kept in his monastery till the dissolution. This abbey, the glory of Wiltshire, then fell, and in it was defaced the sepulchral monument of our great king Athelstan.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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