On 23 January, the Catholic Church celebrates the liturgical memory of St. Ildephonsus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.
Newsroom (27/01/2023 08:30, Gaudium Press) St. Ildephonsus was born in Toledo, Spain. His parents entrusted him early on to the discipline of St. Isidore of Seville. He learned to despise the vanities of the century, which he truly abandoned in order to enter into the monastery of Agali, on the outskirts of Toledo, and of which he was later elected abbot.
When St. Eugene of Toledo died towards the end of 657, he was replaced by St. Ildephonsus, who governed that church for nine years and two months. His life was written down by Zixilano and Julian, both successors to him.
Marian Devotion of St Ildephonsus
Of all his writings, there remain only three. The main one is the book on the perpetual virginity of the Holy Virgin. St. Ildephonsus composed it at the request of Quiricius, Bishop of Barcelona, as evidenced by the letters that these two bishops wrote to each other.
In one of them, Quiricius admires the clarity with which St. Ildephonsus has developed the mysteries of the Incarnation and Birth of the Lord, clarifying the steps in which Scripture speaks with a certain obscurity on that subject, and confusing the unbelievers: the three infidels against whom Julian of Toledo said that St. Ildephonsus composed the work
He begins with a fervent prayer to the Blessed Virgin, in which he offers all the praises that can be made to the Mother of God. Then he proves by various passages of Scripture, that it was necessary that her virginity should be perfect, being the dwelling-place of God, and that He who was to be born of such a womb was begotten of God before the dawn, that is, from all eternity; he goes on to write that to attack her virginity is to attack Him who was born of Her; that her Son is perfect God and perfect Man.
He explains that it was as easy for Jesus Christ to preserve the virginity of his Mother as it was to be born miraculously of Her and to perform so many other miracles; that the Angels bore witness to the virginity of Mary, saying to Her, when She answered that She knew no man, “The Holy Ghost shall descend in you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you with His shadow; that is why the holy One that is born of you shall be called the Son of God.”
Finally, he invokes the Blessed Virgin, that She may obtain for him the grace to serve well both the Son and Her; to serve Him as His Creator, and Her as Mother of the Creator; to serve Him as Lord of hosts, and Her as Servant of the Lord of all.
The honour he pays to the Mother is bound to the Son, without ending in Her; if he serves Mary, it is in order to better serve Jesus and to unite to Him in a more intimate way. “It is thus,” he concludes, “that the honour that is done to the Queen is the honour that is done to the King. This whole treatise, of a clear and instructive style, breathes the most tender devotion.
On Baptism, too, the wise and holy doctor wrote
In his book on the knowledge of Baptism, he gathers together what the ancients have said best about the instructions that prepare for such a Sacrament, about the ceremonies that accompany it, and about the obligations that are contracted with it. He explains how Baptism is a renunciation of the devil and his pomp and works, and how, through Baptism, we undertake to live in the world as in a desert. This is the subject of his book on the spiritual desert.
St. Ildephonsus thus continued the catalogue of the illustrious writers, begun by St. Jerome and continued by Genad of Marseilles and St. Isidore of Seville. He begins with St. Gregory the Great, thinking that St. Isidore had not said enough about him, and ends with St. Eugenius, his predecessor, who had succeeded the previous Eugenius.
St. Ildephonsus died on 23 January, 667.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
