ST VIGILIUS, BISHOP OF TRENT, MARTYR - 26 JUNE

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JUNE

Saints celebrated on the 26th 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.

ST VIGILIUS, BISHOP OF TRENT, MARTYR  

Saint Vigilius succeeded Abundantius in the episcopal see of Trent in 385. He begged of St Ambrose, who was his metropolitan, rules for his conduct in his ministry, which that holy prelate gave him in a long letter, in which he exhorted him vigorously to oppose the practice of usury, and the custom of Christians intermarrying with infidels. 

MANY IDOLATERS

There remained still many idolaters in the valleys of the diocese of Trent, who adored Saturn and other false divinities. 

St Vigilius sent SS. Sisinnius, Martyrius, and Alexander, to preach the faith to them, and afterwards wrote their acts, or a narrative of their martyrdom in a short letter to St Simplician, St Ambrose’s successor, and in another longer to St Chrysostom. 

THE MARTYR'S CROWN

He looked on their glory with a holy envy, and condemned himself as a mercenary and a coward so long as he saw his own crown deferred. His labours, however, were at length recompensed with the happiness of laying down his life for Christ. 

The ancient calendars rank him among the martyrs, and Fortunatus tells us, that in seeking death he found life, being slain for the faith by a troop of infidel peasants. Usuardus says, they murdered him by a shower of stones, and places his martyrdom in the consulship of Stillico, which happened in 400 or 405. Surius confounds this saint with another of the same name, who lived one hundred years later.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)