(Pre-55: Vigil of All Saints)
Last Day of the Month in honor of the Most Holy Rosary of the BVM.
Among several holy men and women honoured by the Church on this day, we can find in the Roman Martyrology —
Saint Wolfgang of Ratisbon, Bishop
Wolfgang was born in AD 924 in Swabia, Germany and educated by the Benedictines at Reichenau, Switzerland. He was a spiritual disciple of the reforming Saint Romuald, who went on later to found the Camaldolese order as a reform of monastic life. Nevertheless, Wolfgang became a Benedictine monk at Einsiedeln abbey, Switzerland, in AD 964, and sometime later a priest. There he also became a teacher and eventually the director of the abbey school. In AD 970, Wolfgang was elected a prior of the Abbey. He labored strenuously to evangelize the Magyars (in modern Hungary), and later became a missionary to Pannonia. In 972, he was chosen as the Bishop of Ratisbon (modern Regensberg, Germany) and worked to reform clerical discipline and spirituality in his Diocese. As Bishop, Wolfgang was noted for his preaching, his teaching abilities, his charity (hence the name "Great Almoner"), and his care for lay people in his diocese, and he became the tutor to the future emperor Saint Henry II.
The story is told that, in seeking to find a place for his hermitage, Wolfgang sought to find a solitary place where he could live in prayer and contemplation. To determine God's will, he threw his axe into a thicket. The location where the axe landed was seen as a sign from God, indicating where he should establish his cell. This event not only marked the beginning of his eremitical life, but also led to the founding of a small town named St. Wolfgang, which developed around the site of his cell. Saint Wolfgang died on October 31st, AD 994 at Pupping, Linz (modern Austria) of natural causes, and was canonized by Pope Leo IX in AD 1052.