Saints celebrated on the 1st of July
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.
SAINT CALAIS OF ANISOLE, ABBOT
(In Latin Carilephus, first Abbot of Anille in Maine.) Saint Calais was born in Auvergne, of a family equally virtuous and noble.
He was yet a child when they sent him to the monastery of Menat in the diocese of Clermont, in order to be early principled in knowledge and piety. Here he became a religious, and practised all the prescriptions of the rule with the greatest fervour.
THEY MOVED ON
After some time he quitted the monastery with St Avi, and they both retired to the abbey of Micy near Orleans. The bishop of this city having destined them for holy orders, they withdrew themselves from the abbey, and advancing together as far as Perche, led by their fervour to the austerities of an eremitical life, they separated.
RIGOROUS DISCIPLINE
St Calais was followed by two persons, who by no means would consent to quit him, and with these he went to Maine, where he perfectly revived the rigorous discipline of the ancient eastern hermits. But as he was constantly visited by numbers who sought to live under his direction, he at length consented to receive them.
THE MONASTERY
King Childebert gave him land whereon to build a monastery, which was first called Anisole or Anille, from the river on which it was situated, but it is now, as well as the little town built round it, called after this saint. The life of the holy founder was not only extraordinary for penance and prayer, but he excelled in the exact observance of his rules; insomuch that he constantly refused the visit of queen Ultrogotha, wife of Childebert, because one of the statutes forbade women to enter the monastery.
HIS RELICS
He died in 542, and his name is mentioned this day in the Roman Martyrology. A portion of his relics is kept in the abbey of St Calais, but the greater part is in the chapel of the castle of Blois which also bears his name.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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