The loss of dear friends is a sensible affliction, under which something may be allowed to the tenderness of nature. Insensibility is no part of virtue. The bowels of saints are always tender, and far from that false apathy of which the stoics boasted.“I condemn not grief for the death of a friend,” says St. Chrysostom,[15] “but excess of grief. To mourn is a part of nature; but to mourn with impatience is to injure your departed friend, to offend God, and to hurt yourself. If you give thanks to God for his mercies and benefits, you glorify him, honor the deceased, and procure great advantages for yourself.” Motives of faith must silence the cries of nature.“How absurd is it to call heaven much better than this earth, and yet to mourn for those who depart thither in peace,” says the same father in another place.[16]
ST. OUDOCEUS.
THIRD BISHOP OF LANDAFF, IN ENGLAND.
This saint, dedicated to God from his infancy by his parents, was reared in Christian principles under the inspection of his uncle Saint Theliau, bishop of Landaff; and succeeded him in this see about the year 580.[17] Mauric, king of Glamorgan, held him in the highest veneration, and assisted him in all his endeavors to promote the glory of God; being however excommunicated by the saint for assassinating a prince called Cynedu, he, by his humble submission and penance, was at length restored to the communion of the Church. St. Oudoceus dying about the end of the sixth century, is mentioned in the English Calendars on the 2d of July. See Usher, Antiquit. Britan. p. 291; Wharton, Anglia Sacra, t. 2, p. 669; Alford, in Annal. and Lobineau, Vies des SS. de Bretagne, p. 89.
JULY III.
ST. PHOCAS, GARDENER, M.
From his panegyric, written by St. Asterius, and another by St. Chrysostom, t. 2, ed. Ben. p. 704, Ruinart, p. 627.