Saint Boniface

St. Boniface is the patron saint of Germany. He was born of noble Anglo-Saxon parents in England. Baptized Wynfrid, a name which meant "Joy and Peace," and trained in sanctity and knowledge from the age of five by the Benedictines, he excelled in preaching and expounding the Sacred Scriptures. He was ordained priest at 30 and 9 years later granted his longstanding wish to go as a missionary to his Saxon kinsmen in Friesland. In 722, he was consecrated Bishop of Hessia and Thuringia, and his name was Latinized to Boniface, which means "doing good." It was in Hessia that he dauntlessly felled the huge oak tree consecrated to the heathen god of thunder, and when the much-feared dire consequences expected failed to materialize, the German tribes, one after the other, converted to Christianity. 

A missionary center was established in Hessia to train native clergy. Conversions increased; monasteries and convents, along with schools for the natives staffed by English monks and nuns, also grew in number and size. In 748, he was made Archbishop of Mainz and Primate of Germany. He spent some time each year personally training the monks at the abbey of Fulda, which was under the immediate jurisdiction of the Holy See. Fulda is even today the annual meeting place for the German Bishops. In his 75th year, Boniface undertook one more missionary journey to Friesland, but the heathen inhabitants murdered him along with 12 clerics and 40 converts at Dokkum on 5 June 755. The greatest achievement of this "St Paul of Germany," as Boniface is popularly known, was the unification of all individual missionary endeavors and of the incipient ecclesiastical organization, which he placed on a sound and permanent basis, guided as he was by two principles: first, the restoration of the obedience of the clergy to their Bishops in union with the Pope, the Bishop of Rome; and second, the establishment of many houses of prayer which took the form of Benedictine monasteries.

St. Boniface, grant us the courage to embrace the faith and boldly profess it in our words and deeds.

Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,

Most High Servant,

Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love (Blessed and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)