Subj : January 14th - St. Kentigern, or Mungo, Bishop In Strathclyde To : All From : rich Date : Wed Jan 13 2021 09:09:05 From: rich January 14th - St. Kentigern, or Mungo, Bishop In Strathclyde d. 603 IF we may trust our sources, St. Kentigern's mother, Thaney (Thenew= , Tenoi; cf. =E2=80=9CSt. Enoch's=E2=80=9D station at Glasgow) was of= royal birth and, being discovered to be with child, of which the father was unknown, was sentenced to be hurled from the top of a precipitous hill (Traprain Law in Haddingtonshire). She escaped, however, without injury, and was then put into a coracle and cast adrift at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. The tide eventually carried her to Culross, on the opposite shore of the estuary, where she brought forth her child, and where St. Serf took both mother and babe under his protection. The boy became very dear to him, and was given the pet name Mungo ( darling). When he had grown up, Kentigern felt himself drawn to a life of solitude and self-denial, and he accordingly retired to a place called =E2=80=9CGlasghu=E2=80=9D, now Glasgow. There after a while a commun= ity gathered round him, and the fame of his virtues spread, so that in the end the clergy and people of that district would have no other for their bishop; and he was consecrated by a bishop from Ireland. St. Kentigern travelled everywhere on foot, preaching the gospel to his people; he practised the severest austerities, and recited the whole psalter every day, often standing immersed the while in the water of some ice-cold stream. During Lent he always withdrew from the company of his fellow-men, and in some desert spot gave himself up entirely to penance and prayer. This apostolic way of life was blessed, we are told, by many miracles. The political conditions of this great tract of country, which was later known as Strathclyde and stretched southwards as far as the Ribble, were terribly unstable. The chieftains were constantly engaged in feuds among themselves, and although they recognized some sort of =E2=80=9Cking=E2=80=9D, or supreme authority, plots and cabals were constan= tly being formed against him. The sequence of events, with such slender and contradictory data as we possess, is impossible to determine, but it is said that Kentigern was eventually driven into exile or flight. He made his way into Wales, where he is said to have stayed for a time with St. David at Menevia, till Cadwallon, a chieftain in Denbighshire, bestowed on him the land near the meeting of the rivers Elwy and Clwyd, on which he built a monastery, called from the former of the two rivers Llanelwy, where a number of disciples and scholars put themselves under his direction, among them St. Asaph. It is to be noted, however, that some Welsh historians deny that Kentigern founded this abbey, now represented by the cathedral church of Saint Asaph, or even that he was ever there; and, indeed, while Asaph's name is com= mon in the toponymy of the district, that of Kentigern is unknown. Later he returned to the north, and when he again reached Strathclyde Kentigern for a while settled at Hoddam in Dumfriesshire, but before long took up his abode at Glasgow as before. His austerity of life and zeal for the spread of the Gospel continued unabated, and his biographer tells us that on one occasion a meeting took place between him and that other great apostle of Scotland, St. Columba, with whom he exchanged croziers. Many extravagant miracles are recounted of Kentigern, one of which is especially famous, as the memory of it is perpetuated by the ring and the fish seen in the arms of the city of Glasgow. King Rydderch found a ring, which he had given to his queen as a love-token, upon the finger of a sleeping knight whom she favoured. He removed it without awakening the sleeper, threw it into the sea, and then asked his wife to produce the ring he had given her. In her distress she applied to St. Kentigern, and he sent a monk out to fish, who caught a salmon which had swallowed the ring. A curious description of the death of the saint in the act of taking a hot bath on the octave of the Epiphany, =E2=80=9Con which day he had been accustomed= to baptize a multitude of people=E2=80=9D, seems certainly to point to some mo= re primitive source which the=C2 biographer had before him. The date of his death seems to have been 603, when Kentigern will have been 85--not, as his biographer states, 185 years old. His feast is kept throughout Scotland as the first bishop of Glasgow, and also in the dioceses of Liverpool, Salford, Lancaster and Menevia. See A. P. Forbes, Lives of St. Ninian and St. Kentigern (1874), who prints the text of Joscelyn of Furness and of the incomplete anonymous life; also his Kalendars of Scottish Saints (1872), pp. 362 seq.; Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. ii, pp. 179 seq. Cf. also the Acta Sanctorum, January 13; and A. W. Wade-Evans, Life of Saint David (1923), pp. 109 seq. Forbes's KSS. is the most useful reference for the little that is known of the lesser Scottish saints in whose honour Catholic churches are still dedicated, e.g. Cumin (at Morar), Quivox (Prestwick), Triduana (Edinburgh), Machan (Lennoxtown). But see also M. Barrett, A Calendar of Scottish Saints (1904). D. D. C. Pochin Mould's Scotland of the Saints (1952) is useful for Scottish saints= in general. Saint Quote: Almsgiving proceeds from a merciful heart and is more useful for the one who practices it than for the one who receives it, for the man who makes a practice of almsgiving draws out a spiritual profit from his acts, whilst those who receive his alms receive only a temporal benefit. -- Saint Thomas Aquinas Bible Quote: Blessed be the man that trusteth in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his confidence.=C2 [Jer. 17:7]=C2 DRB <><><><> A prayer to Our Lord: O most merciful Jesus, lover of souls, I pray Thee by the most sorrowful agony of Thy most Sacred Heart, and by the sorrows of Thine Immaculate Mother, wash in Thy Blood the sinners of the whole world who are now in their agony, and are to die this day.=C2 Amen. --- NewsGate v1.0 gamma 2 * Origin: News Gate @ Net396 -Huntsville, AL - USA (1:396/4) .