MAY 16TH, ST. UBALDUS, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR
Month in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Day 2 of the Novena to the Holy Spirit/Ghost.
Today is also celebrated our Lady under the title Queen of the Apostles.
Ubaldus was born of a noble family at Gubbio in Umbria, and well established in godliness and learning from his earliest years. When he was a young man, it was often proposed to him to marry, but he never abandoned his determination to preserve his virginity. After that he was ordained Priest he divided his inheritance among the poor and Churches, and embraced the Institute of Canons Regular of St. Augustine. This Institute he brought to Gubbio, and for some time led therein a most holy life. When the fame of his saintliness had got noised abroad, Pope Honorius II set him, contrary to his own wishes, over the Church of Gubbio, and he was honoured with consecration as Bishop by the hands of the said Pope himself, in the year of our Lord 1129. When Ubaldus came to live as Bishop in Gubbio, he changed his way of life in no wise from that which he had led before, but his virtues began to be more eminent because his word and example were now more able to benefit his neighbours, to whom the shepherd of their souls was a pattern, not by outward showing only, but from his heart. He ate little, dressed simply, and slept upon a hard and very poor bed. He “always bore in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus,” (2 Cor. iv. 10), while he daily fed his soul in unceasing and earnest prayer. Hence he acquired such wonderful meekness, that when he was most grievously wronged and insulted he not only took it patiently, but, by a strange impulse of love for them, embraced his persecutors with every proof of affection. Just the space of two years before Ubald passed away from this present life, he was tried as gold in the furnace, by grievous bodily weakness, and, day after day, amid the sharpest sufferings, he never ceased patiently to give God thanks. He rested in peace on the sacred day of Pentecost, in the year 1160, having for many years governed with great praise the Church which had been entrusted to him, and glorious for good works and miracles. Pope Celestine III. numbered him with the Saints. His strength is most chiefly shown in the casting out of evil spirits. His body hath remained without corruption for all these ages, and is reverenced greatly in his native town by Christ's faithful people. To them he hath more than once shown himself good to those in need.