ST WASNULF, CONFESSOR - 1 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 1st of October

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 WASNULF, CONFESSOR  

[Saint Wasnon, Patron of Conde] The Scots from Ireland and North Britain not content to plant the faith in the isles of Orkney, in the Hebrides or Western islands, and in other neighbouring places, travelled also into remote kingdoms, to carry thither the light of the gospel. 

Thence came St Mansuetus, the first bishop of Toul in Lorraine, St Rumold, patron of Mechlin, St Colman.

Several Scottish monasteries were founded in Germany by eminent monks who came from that country, as at Vienna in Austria, at Strasburg, Eichstätt, Nuremberg, Constance, Würzburg, Erfurt, two at Cologne, and two at Ratisbon. 

Out of these only three remain at present in the hands of Scottish Benedictine monks, those at Erfurt and Würzburg, and that of St James at Ratisbon. 

In the seventh century St Vincent, count of Haynault, invited many holy monks from Ireland and Scotland, then seminaries of saints, into the Netherlands. 

Among these St Wasnulf was the most renowned. He was a Scottish priest and preacher, (not a bishop, as some moderns pretend,) and finished his course about the year 651, at Conde, where his body still reposes in a collegiate church endowed with twenty-four canonries. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)