St Wenceslaus King Martyr (907-929) Saint of the day

September 28

St Wenceslaus (or Vaclav) owed his thoroughly Christian education to his grandmother, St Ludmilla, who instilled in him a special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. But when his father, a Christian, died, his mother, a pagan named Dragomir, became regent for the all-too-young Wenceslaus and started a violent pagan reaction in which the German missionaries were gradually expelled and St Ludmilla suffered martyrdom by strangulation. At this juncture, in 922, the people insisted on the growing prince wresting the regency out of his mother’s hands. Before long, Wenceslaus obliged. Recalling the German Priests from their banishment, and combining courage and energy with great kindness of heart, he did everything in his power to raise the religious, moral, and cultural standard of his subjects.

He obtained from Emperor Otto I the title of King of Bohemia. But a number of nobles opposed his policies, and in this they were actively encouraged by Dragomir and by her second son, Boleslav, an apostate and a man of turbulent character. In the meanwhile, a son was born to Wenceslaus. Resentful at having lost his chance at succession to the throne, Boleslav plotted his murder and invited him to his home town where he murdered him at the church door of AltBunzlau where he had gone, as was his wont, to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. St Wenceslaus is the Patron of Bohemia (Czechoslovakia).