BL. BERNARD OF MENTHON, CONFESSOR

BL. BERNARD OF MENTHON, CONFESSOR - 15 JUNE

Saints celebrated on the 15th of June

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.

BL. BERNARD OF MENTHON, CONFESSOR

Blessed Bernard was by birth a noble Savoyard, and spent his youth in innocence, penance, and serious studies. When he was grown up his father proposed to him an honourable match; but the young man earnestly desiring to devote himself to the service of the church, and recommending himself to God, privately withdrew, and put himself under the direction of Peter, archdeacon of Aoust, with whom he made great progress in piety and sacred learning.

HE MADE GREAT PROGRESS IN PIETY AND SACRED LEARNING

In 966 the bishop of Aoust appointed him archdeacon; which office comprised at that time the jurisdiction both of the grand vicar and official, consequently the whole government of the diocess under the bishop. Bernard, by pious meditation, prayer, and fasting, and by an indefatigable application to the function of preaching during forty-two years, banished ignorance and superstition, and reformed the dioceses of Aoust, Sion, Geneva, Tarantaise, Milan, and Novara.

THE MONASTERIES

Having destroyed a famous idol of Jupiter on a high mountain in the Walais, and detected the cheat of the priests who gave oracles concealed in its hollow trunk, he erected near that place a monastery and an hospital, now called Great St Bernard; for he founded on two inhospitable roads and mountains the two monasteries of Great and Little St Bernard, which are hospitals for the entertainment of all travellers; without which charitable succours hundreds of travellers would yearly perish.

HIS RELICS

St Bernard died at Novara, eighty-five years old, on May 28, 1008. He is honoured with a solemn office in many churches in Piedmont, etc., on June 15, which was the day of his burial. His body is enshrined in the monastery at Novara. But his head is exposed in a rich case in the monastery of Monte-joye, which bears his name in the diocese of Aoust.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

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