1 - Daily Bible Readings for 4/1/2020 START' TO DAY to methodically read the Bible -

Colonel Edmund J. Burke

2020-01-05 00:26:32 UTC

"Now, what does 'Let him take up his cross' mean? Put up with all that is annoying: that is how they must follow me. To tell the truth, when they follow me, imitating my conduct and keeping my commandments, they will have many who will try to oppose them, forbid them, dissuade them, and this will be done by those same people who appear to be followers of Christ."

--St. Augustine--Sermon 96, 4

Prayer: O Lord, my God, what is the kernel of your deep mystery? How far
from it have I been led by the consequences of my sins!
--St. Augustine--Confessions 11, 31

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January 2nd - St. Adelard or Adalhard, monk
d. 827

THE family of this holy monk was most illustrious, his father Bernard
being son of Charles Martel and brother of King Pepin, so that Adalhard
was first cousin to Charlemagne. He was only 20 years old when, in 773,
he took the monastic habit at Corbie in Picardy, a monastery founded by
Queen St. Bathildis. The first employment assigned him was that of
gardener, in which, whilst his hands were employed in digging or
weeding, his thoughts were on God and heavenly things.

The great example of his virtue defeated the projects of his humility
and did not suffer him to live long unknown, and some years after he was
chosen abbot. Being obliged by Charlemagne often to attend at court, he
soon, in fact, became the first among the king’s counselors, as he is
styled by Hincmar, who had seen him there in 796. He was even compelled
by Charlemagne to quit his monastery altogether, and act as chief
minister to that prince’s eldest son Pepin, who, at his death at Milan
in 810, appointed the saint tutor to his son Bernard.

After the death of Charlemagne, Adalhard was accused of supporting the
revolt of Bernard against Louis the Debonair, who banished him to a
monastery in the little island of Hen, called afterwards Noirmoutier, on
the coast of Aquitaine. The saint’s brother Wala (one of the great men
of that age, as appears from his curious life, published by Mabillon) he
obliged to become a monk at Lérins. This exile St. Adalhard regarded as
a great gain, and in it his tranquillity of soul met with no interruptions.

The emperor at length was made sensible of his innocence, and after five
years’ banishment recalled him to court towards the close of the year
821 but he soon had again to retire to his abbey at Corbie, where he
delighted to take upon himself the most humbling employments of the
house. By his solicitude and powerful example his spiritual children
grew daily in fervour; and such was his zeal for their advancement, that
he passed no week without speaking to every one of them in particular,
and no day without exhorting them all in general by his discourses. The
inhabitants of the country round had also a share in his labours, and he
expended upon the poor the revenues of his monastery with a profusion
which many condemned as excessive, but which Heaven sometimes approved
by sensible miracles. The good old man would receive advice from the
least of his monks. When entreated to moderate his austerities, he
answered, “I will take care of your servant”, meaning himself, “that he
may serve you the longer.”

During his banishment another Adalhard, who governed the monastery by
his appointment, began at our saint’s suggestion to prepare the
foundation of the monastery of New Corbie, commonly called Convey, in
the diocese of Paderborn, that it might be a nursery of evangelical
labourers for conversion of the northern nations. St. Adalhard, after
his return to Corbie, completed this undertaking, and to perpetuate the
strict observance, which he established in his two monasteries, he
compiled a book of statutes for their use, of which considerable
fragments are extant. Other works of St. Adalhard are lost, but by
those, which we have, and also by his disciples St. Paschasius
Radbertus, St. Anskar and others, it is clear that he was a zealous
promoter of literature in his monasteries. Paschasius assures us that he
instructed the people not only in the Latin, but also in the Teutonic
and vulgar French languages.

Alcuin, in a letter addressed to him under the name of Antony, calls him
his son, whence many infer that he had been scholar to that great man.
St. Adalhard had just returned from Germany to Corbie, when he fell ill
3 days before Christmas and died on January 2, 827, in his 73rd year.
Upon proof of several miracles the body of the saint was translated with
solemnity in 1040; of which ceremony we have a full account, by an
author, not St. Gerard, who also composed an office in his honour, in
gratitude for having been cured of intense pains in the head through his
intercession.

See his life, compiled with accuracy but in a tone of panegyric, by his
disciple, Paschasius Radbertus, printed in the Acta Sanctorum, and more
correctly in Mabillon (vol. v, p. 306). Cf. also U. Berlière in DHG.,
vol. i, cc. 457-458; and BHL., n. 11.

Saint Quote:
Do not worry about me; I am in God’s hands. I want to assure you that I
feel His help at every step. Despite the present situation, I am happy
and completely at peace.
--Blessed Joseph, writing to his parents from the concentration camp at
Auschwitz, Poland

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O God,

whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich:

Deliver us from an inordinate love of this world,

that we, inspired by the devotion of your servant Saint Adelard of Corbie,

may serve you with singleness of heart,

and attain to the riches of the age to come;

through Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.