ST ALDEBRAND, BISHOP - 1 MAY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MAY

Saints celebrated on the 1st of May

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 ALDEBRAND, BISHOP

As a priest in Rimini, Italy, Aldebrand was unafraid to say what his congregation would have preferred not to hear.

On one such occasion, while preaching in the street outside the church, his audience, enraged by his words, rose to kill him.

Aldebrand fled from the city. Scarcely had he left Rimini when, in a strange turn of events, a delegation from the city of Fossombrone came and entreated him to become their bishop.

Aldebrand was consecrated bishop of Fossombrone in 1170. Once, while he was preaching, a flock of swallows that had entered the church began singing so noisily that the people could no longer hear him. Realising this, Aldebrand commanded the birds to be quiet, and they promptly obeyed.

Aldebrand lived to about the age of a hundred. Those attending him in his final illness hoped to strengthen his failing health by serving him as a meal a partridge. But when Aldebrand saw the dish, he remembered his penitential habit of permanently abstaining from the consumption of any flesh. He thereupon made the sign of the cross over the cooked bird, and the creature came back to life and flew away.

“My soul clings to you, your right hand holds me fast.” (Ps 62:9