Saints celebrated on the 10th 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. HENRY OF TREVISO, CONFESSOR
Blessed Henry was a native of Bolsano [Bozen], in the mountainous part of Tyrol, between Trent and Brescia, and of mean extraction. The poverty of his parents deprived him of the advantage of a school education, but from his infancy he studied earnestly to improve every day in the love of God, the true science of a Christian.
A SPIRIT OF PENANCE
In quest of work he left Bolsano in his youth, and settled at Treviso the capital city of a province in the Venetian territories. He gained his bread by day labour, to which he applied himself with unwearied cheerfulness, and which he sanctified by a spirit of penance and recollection. He could not read, but he never failed to assist at all sermons and instructions as much as it lay in his power to do; and by his earnestness and attention, he always reaped great advantage from whatever he heard relating to piety.
He was diligent in attending at the whole divine office, and all public prayer whenever he could; he heard Mass every day with an edifying devotion, and when at work joined in desire with those who had the happiness to be always employed in singing the divine praises at the foot of the altars. All the time that was not employed in labour and necessary duties he spent in his devotions either in the church or in private, having his beads always in his hands.
HIS ALMSDEEDS
Under his painful and assiduous labour he had led a most abstemious life, and secretly gave all that he was able to save of his wages to the poor. He studied always to conceal his devotions and other virtues from the eyes of men; but through the veil of his extreme humility they spread the brighter rays. Such was his meekness that under sickness or other afflictions, nothing that could savour of complaint or murmuring was ever heard from his mouth; he was an utter stranger to all resentment, and was sweet and affable to the whole world. When children or others reviled and insulted him, he made no other return than by good words, and by praying for them.
PURITY OF CONSCIENCE
He frequented the sacraments with extraordinary devotion, and went every day to confession; not out of scrupulosity, either magnifying small imperfections into great sins, or apprehending sin by a disordered imagination where a sound judgment discovers no shadow of evil, but out of a great desire of preserving the utmost purity of conscience, that his soul might be worthy to praise Him who is infinite purity and sanctity, and before whom the very angels are not without spot, that is, they appear all imperfection if compared to him.
The saint was so solicitous to give all his actions to God with the most pure and perfect intention that he feared a fault of immortification, or idle curiosity in a glance of the eye to look at the flight of a bird if it any way distracted his mind, or hindered his recollection and attention to God at his work.
OLD AGE
When by old age he was no longer able to follow his day-labour, a certain pious lawyer gave him a lodging in his own house, and the servant of God lived by daily alms that were sent him, of which he never reserved anything to the next day: but what he retrenched from his own meal he gave away to those whom he thought in the greatest distress.
HIS HOLY DEATH
He died June 10, 1315. An incredible concourse of people resorted to the little chamber in which his body lay exposed, and three notaries, appointed by the magistrates to take in writing an account of the miracles wrought by God at his relics, compiled a few days before his burial a relation of two hundred and seventy-six. Out of devotion to his memory every one sought to obtain some little part of his small furniture, which consisted only of a hairshirt, a log of wood which served him for a pillow, and twigs, cords, and straw, which made up his hard bed. The Italians call him St Rigo, the diminutive of the name Arrigo or Henry.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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