قراءة كتاب The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Vol. VII
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The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Vol. VII
obstacles from self-love or inordinate attachments, the sweet and happy fruits of assiduous prayer and contemplation, whereby he sanctified his studies, in which he made great progress, and at the same time advanced daily in Christian perfection. He had faithfully served God many years in his own country, when an ardent zeal for the divine honor and the salvation of souls induced him to travel into Lower Germany to preach the faith to the idolaters. He made a journey first to Rome to receive his mission from the chief pastor, and with the apostolic blessing went into Brabant, great part of which country about Mechlin he converted to the faith. He was ordained a regionary or missionary bishop without any fixed see. He frequently interrupted his exterior functions to renew his spirit before God in holy solitude. In his retirement he was slain on the 24th of June in 775, by two sons of Belial, one of whom he had reproved for adultery. His body was thrown into a river, but being miraculously discovered, it was honorably interred by his virtuous friend and protector, count Ado. A great and sumptuous church was built at Mechlin to receive his precious relics, which is still possessed of that treasure, and bears the name of this saint. The city of Mechlin keeps his feast a solemn holiday, and honors him as its patron and apostle. Janning the Bollandist gives a long history of his miracles. His great church at Mechlin was raised to the metropolitical dignity by Paul IV. Ware says that the feast of St. Rumold was celebrated as a double festival with an office of nine lessons throughout the province of Dublin before the reformation. It was extended to the whole kingdom of Ireland in the year 1741.
It was from the spirit of prayer that the saints derived all their lights and all their strength. This was the source of all the blessings which heaven through their intercession showered down on the world, and the means which they employed to communicate an angelical purity to their souls. “This spirit,” says a father of the Church,2 “is nourished by retreat, which in some manner may be called the parent of purity.” This admirable transformation of our souls produced by prayer is to be attributed to God’s glory, which by prayer he makes to shine in the secret of our hearts. In fine, when all the avenues of our senses are closed against the creature, and that God dwells with us, and we with God; when freed from the tumult and distractions of the world we apply all our attention to interior things and consider ourselves such as we are, we then become capable of clearly contemplating the kingdom of God, established in us by that charity and ardent love which consumes all the rust of earthly affections. For the kingdom of heaven, or rather the Lord of heaven itself, is within us, as Jesus Christ himself assures us.
SS. JULIUS AND AARON, MM.
These saints were Britons, and seem to have taken, the one a Roman and the other a Hebrew name at their baptism. They glorified God by martyrdom at Caerleon upon Usk in Monmouthshire, in the persecution of Dioclesian, probably about the year 303. St Gildas,3 St. Bede,4 and others, speak of their triumph as having been most illustrious. Leland and Bale say, SS. Julius and Aaron had travelled to Rome, and “there applied themselves to the sacred studies.” Bede adds, “very many others of both sexes, by unheard-of tortures, attained to the crown of heavenly glory.” Giraldus Cambrensis informs us, that their bodies were honored at Caerleon in the year 1200, when he wrote. Each of these martyrs had a titular church in that city; that of St. Julius, belonged to a nunnery, and that of St. Aaron to a monastery of canons. See Godwin De Episc. Landav. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Giraldus Cambrensis, Leland, and Tanner, Bibl. Britan. p. 1.
ST. THEOBALD OR THIBAULT, C.
He was of the family of the counts palatine of Champagne, and son of count Arnoul. He was born at Provins in Brie in 1017, and was called Theobald from the most virtuous archbishop of Vienne, who was his uncle. In his youth he preserved his heart free from the corruption of the world amidst its vanities; and the more pains others took to make him conceive a relish for them, the more diligent he was in fencing his heart against their dangers, the more perfectly he discovered their emptiness and secret poison. In reading the lives of the fathers of the desert he was much affected by the admirable examples of penance, self-denial, holy contemplation, and Christian perfection, which were set before his eyes as it were in a glass, and he earnestly desired to imitate them. The lives of St. John the Baptist, of St. Paul the hermit, St. Antony, and St. Arsenius in their wildernesses, charmed him, and he sighed after the like sweet retirement, in which he might without interruption converse with God by prayer and contemplation. He often resorted to an holy hermit named Burchard, who lived in a little island in the Seine; and by making essays he began to inure himself to fasting, watching, long prayers, and every rigorous practice of penance. He declined all the advantageous matches and places at court or in the army which his father could propose to him. His cousin Eudo, count palatine of Champagne, and count of Chartres and Blois, upon the death of his uncle Rodolph, the last king of Burgundy, in 1034, laid claim to that crown as next heir in blood; but the emperor Conrad the Salic seized upon it by virtue of the testament of the late king.5 Hereupon ensued a war, and count Arnoul ordered his son to lead a body of troops to the succor of his cousin. But the young general represented so respectfully to his father the obligation of a vow by which he had bound himself to quit the world, that he at length extorted his consent.
Soon after the saint and another young nobleman called Walter, his intimate friend, each taking one servant, went to the abbey of St. Remigius in Rheims, and thence having sent back their servants with their baggage, they set out privately; and in the clothes of two beggars, in exchange for which they had given their own rich garments, they travelled barefoot into Germany. Finding the forest of Petingen in Suabia a convenient solitude for their purpose, they built themselves there two little cells. Having learned from Burchard that manual labor is a necessary duty of an ascetic or penitential life, and not being skilled in the manner of working to make mats or baskets, they often went into the neighboring villages and there hired themselves by the day to serve the masons, or to work in the fields, to carry stones and mortar, to load and unload carriages, to cleanse the stables under the servants of the farmers, or to blow the bellows and to make fires for the forges. With their wages they bought coarse brown bread, which was their whole subsistence. Whilst they worked with their hands, their hearts were secretly employed in prayer; and at night retiring again into their forest, they watched long, singing together the divine praises, and continuing in holy contemplation. Their carriage and the tenderness of their complexion discovered that they had not been trained up in manual labor, and the reputation of their