ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER
Saints celebrated on the 1st of October
SAINT BAVO, ANCHORET, PATRON OF GHENT
This great model of penance, called Allowin, surnamed Bavo, was a nobleman, and native of that part of Brabant called Hasbain, at present comprised in the territory of Liege.
After having led a very irregular life, and being left a widower by the death of his wife, he was moved to a sincere conversion to God by a sermon which he heard St Amand preach.
The apostolical man had no sooner finished his discourse, but Bavo followed him, and threw himself at his feet, bathed in a flood of tears, and confessed himself the basest and most ungrateful of all sinners, and earnestly begged to be directed in the paths of true penance and salvation.
The holy pastor, who saw in his unfeigned tears the sincerity of his compunction, was far from flattering him in the beginning of his work, by which his penance would have remained imperfect; and whilst he encouraged him by the consideration of the boundless mercy of God, he set before his eyes the necessity of appeasing the divine indignation by a course of penance proportioned to the enormity of his offences, and of applying powerful remedies to the deep wounds of his soul, that his inveterate distempers might be radically cured, his vicious inclinations perfectly corrected and reformed, and his heart become a new creature. By these instructions Bavo was more and more penetrated with the most sincere sentiments of compunction, made his confession, and entered upon a course of canonical penance.
Going home he distributed all his moveables and money among the poor, and having settled his affairs, retired to the monastery at Ghent, where he received the tonsure at the hands of St Amand, and was animated by his instructions to advance daily in the fervour of his penance, and in the practice of all virtues.
St Amand after some time gave him leave to lead an eremitical life. He first chose for his abode a hollow trunk of a large tree, but afterwards built himself a cell in the forest of Malmedun near Ghent, where wild herbs and water were his chief subsistence.
After some time, with the approbation of St Floribert, appointed by St Amand, Bavo built himself a new cell in another neighbouring wood, where he lived a recluse, intent only on invisible goods, in an entire oblivion of creatures.
He died on October 1, about the year 653, according to Mabillon, but according to Henschenius, 657. Perier rather thinks in 654. The holy bishop St Amand, the abbot St Floribert with his monks, and Domlinus the priest of Turholt were present at his glorious passage, attending him in prayer. The example of his conversion moved sixty gentlemen to devote themselves to an austere penitential life. By them the church of St Bavo was founded at Ghent.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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