From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   June 17th - Saint Avitus, Abbot   
   (d. 530)   
      
   Saint Avitus was the child of a poor family of Orleans, France. From his   
   youth   
   he desired to consecrate himself to God, and he received the monastic habit   
   at   
   the abbey of Micy or Saint-Maximin in the diocese of Orleans, at that time   
   still   
   very small. Its first Superior, Saint Maximin, remarked at the young monk's   
   virtue when he observed that he deprived himself of a great portion of his   
   food   
   each day in order to nourish the poor.   
      
   After serving as steward for the monastery, Saint Avitus decided to leave in   
   secret to go and live in solitude in a deserted place. Saint Maximin   
   recognized   
   in this flight a secret design of God and made no attempt to have him   
   return.   
   But when the holy Abbot died, Saint Avitus was chosen to succeed him by the   
   unanimous consent of the religious. He was brought back despite his   
   protestations of unworthiness, and was obliged to receive the episcopal   
   consecration and his investiture from the bishop of Orleans.   
      
   He labored at his new duties with great assiduity, but saw with sorrow that   
   the   
   religious were becoming lax. He again thought of flight, considering himself   
   the   
   cause of the difficulties, and did indeed find a solitude in the diocese of   
   Chartres, far from all village life, where he lived several years on fruits   
   growing wild in the forest.   
      
   One day a poor mute herdsman lost a pig in the forest, and when a severe   
   storm   
   broke out, lost his way until he saw a light in the distance. When he   
   approached, he found himself facing the Saint. The latter not only lit his   
   torch   
   again for him and showed him the way to go, but made the sign of the cross   
   on   
   his mouth and restored to him the use of speech, which he had not had for   
   long   
   years. When this miracle was divulged, the hermit became known everywhere in   
   the   
   region, and the desert was soon transformed, as it were, into a city. The   
   monastery which Saint Avitus built there and governed later bore his name.   
      
   He left it from time to time to go to the city of Orleans for his works of   
   mercy; his prayers cured many sick and handicapped persons. When he failed   
   to   
   persuade the cruel king Clodomir to liberate Saint Sigismond, king of   
   Burgundy,   
   with his wife and children whom he had captured and held prisoner and was   
   intending to put to death, Saint Avitus told him that if he committed that   
   crime, he himself would perish miserably in the first battle he would   
   undertake.   
   This indeed is what occurred.   
      
   Saint Avitus one day resurrected one of his brethren who had died during his   
   absence; all the monks saw the dead religious rise from his coffin and begin   
   to   
   sing with the others the infinite mercies of Our Lord. Saint Lubin or   
   Leobin,   
   bishop of Chartres, assured his people in a sermon that he had learned of   
   this   
   fact from the very monk who had been resurrected.   
      
   Three famous religious, one of them the same Saint Leobin, who at that time   
   was   
   a simple monk, attended our Saint at his blessed death, which happened about   
   the   
   year 530. His body was carried to the church of Saint George in Orleans and   
   interred there with great pomp. Afterwards king Childebert built a   
   magnificent   
   temple over this tomb, out of gratitude for the prayers of Saint Avitus.   
      
   Source: Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin   
   (Bloud et   
   Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 7.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   The more we see of failure in obedience, the stronger should be our   
   suspicion of   
   temptation and illusion. For when God sends His inspirations to a heart, the   
   first grace He sheds upon it is that of obedience.   
   --St. Teresa   
      
   Bible Quote   
   Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: let his praise be in the church of the   
   saints.  (Psalms 149:1)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   YOUR CROSS   
      
   The everlasting God has in His Wisdom foreseen from eternity, the cross He   
   now   
   presents to you as a gift from His innermost heart. This cross He now sends   
   you   
   He has considered with his all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine   
   mind,   
   tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighted with His   
   own   
   hands to see that it not be one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it   
   with   
   His Holy Name, anointed it with His grace, perfumed it with his consolation,   
   and   
   taken one last glance at you and your courage - has sent it to you from   
   heaven,   
   a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all merciful love of God.   
   -St. Frances de Sales   
      
   Lord Help me to remember that   
   nothing is going to happen   
   to me today that you and   
   I together can't handle.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)