ST ARNOLD, BISHOP OF SOISSONS - 14 AUGUST

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 14th of August

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 ARNOLD, BISHOP OF SOISSONS 

St Arnold [Arnoul, Arnulphus] was a French nobleman [born 1040] and had distinguished himself in the armies of Robert and Henry I. kings of France. He was called to a more noble warfare, resolving to employ for God the labour which, till then, he had rather consecrated to the service of the world. 

He became a monk in the great monastery of St Medard at Soissons; and his example was followed by many other persons of distinction. With his abbot’s leave he shut himself up in a narrow cell, and in the closest solitude, almost without any commerce with men, devoted himself to assiduous prayer, and the exercises of the most austere penance. 

He had led this manner of life three years and a half, when a council held at Meaux by a legate of Pope Gregory VII at the request of the clergy and people of Soissons, resolved to place him in that episcopal see. To the deputies of the council who came on that errand, Arnold returned this answer: "Leave a sinner to offer to God some fruits of penance; and compel not a madman to take upon him a charge which requires so much wisdom." 

He was, however, obliged to put his shoulders under the burden. He set himself with incredible zeal to fulfil every branch of his ministry; but finding himself not able to correct certain grievous abuses among the people, and fearing the account he should have to give for others no less than for himself, he procured leave to resign his dignity. 

He afterwards founded a great monastery at Aldenburgh, then a considerable city, in the diocese of Bruges, towards Ostend, where he happily died on sackcloth and ashes in 1087.

Many miracles wrought at his tomb were approved in a council held at Beauvais in 1121. His relics were enshrined in 1131, and are still preserved in the church of St Peter at Aldenburgh or Oudenburgh.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)