The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): JanuaryBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): January
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
When the prayer was over, the
holy man ordered the broken goblet to be brought to him. He looked at
it, and felt it, and could find no crack or breakage in it. Wherefore,
he exclaimed indignantly, 'What are you about, brothers? You must be
blind to say that the glass is broken, when there is not a sign of
injury done to it.' The brethren, considering it, were amazed at the
miracle, and did not dare to speak. Then, after a while, I and my
companion came back for the vessel, and we asked it of him who was
carrying it. He called me apart, and returned it to me, bidding me tell
the Emperor to regard it as a great treasure. And when I asked his
meaning, he told me all that had happened."
S. Odilo seems to have been fond of art, for he rebuilt the monasteries
of his order, and made them very beautiful, and the churches he adorned
with all the costly things he could procure. The marble pillars for
Cluny were brought, by his orders, in rafts down the Durance, into the
Rhone, and he was wont to say of Cluny, that he found it of wood and
left it of marble. He erected over the altar of S. Peter, in the church,
a ciborium, whose columns were covered with silver, inlaid with nigello
work.
When he felt that his death approached, he made a circuit of all the
monasteries under his sway, that he might leave them in thorough
discipline, and give them his last admonitions. On this journey he
reached Souvigny, a priory in Bourbonnais, where he celebrated the Vigil
of the Nativity, and preached to the people, although at the time
suffering great pain. After that, he announced to the brethren in
chapter, that he was drawing nigh to his end, and he besought their
prayers. As he was too weak to go to the great Church of S. Peter, which
was attended by the monks, he kept the festival of the Nativity with a
few brethren, whom he detained, to be with him in the Chapel of S. Mary;
joyously he praecented the psalms and antiphons, and gave the
benedictions, and performed all the ceremonies of that glad festival,
forgetful of his bodily infirmities, knowing that soon he was to see God
face to face, in the land of the living, and no more in a glass darkly.
Most earnest was he, lest death should come and find him unprepared.
Throughout the Octave, he was carried in the arms of the monks to
church, where he assisted at the choir offices, night and day, and at
the celebration of the mass, refreshing himself at the sacred mysteries,
and looking forward to the feast of the Circumcision, when his friend
William, abbot of Dijon, had fallen asleep, on which day, he foretold,
he also should enter into his rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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