المحتوى المقدم من Fr. Michael Black. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Fr. Michael Black أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.
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المحتوى المقدم من Fr. Michael Black. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Fr. Michael Black أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.
January 26: Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops First Century Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saints of stomach disorders Saint Paul could not do it alone Today’s saints were two bishops from the apostolic period of the Church, those decades immediately following the death and resurrection of Our Lord. In this grace-filled time, the Apostles and Saint Paul were carving the first deep furrows into the pagan soil they traveled, planting in the earth the rich seeds of Christian faith which succeeding bishops would later water, tend, and harvest. Little is certainly known about today’s saints apart from references to them in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Saint Paul. But these numerous references are enough. The generations of theologians, bishops, martyrs, and saints who lived in the post-apostolic period give universal and consistent witness to the veracity of Paul’s letters and the events they recount. There are theological, more than historical, lessons to be taken from the lives and ministry of today’s saints. Saints Timothy and Titus were apostles of an Apostle. They shared in the ministry of Saint Paul, who had a direct connection to Christ through a miraculous occurrence on the road to Damascus, a feast commemorated, not coincidentally, the day prior to today’s memorial. Timothy, Titus, and many others, known and unknown, carried out on a local level a priestly ministry which Paul engaged in on a more regional level. It was Saint Paul’s practice, and probably that of the other surviving Apostles, to appoint assistants wherever they went who acted with the authority of the Apostle who appointed them. These assistants were variously called priests or bishops, terms that were often interchangeable. Deacons, of course, shared in the priestly ministry too, but more as assistants to bishops. A direct connection to an Apostle, either through his personal ministry or through a group or delegate he appointed (through an ordination rite), was fundamental to establishing a church. Accredited leaders were needed. This is a constant theme in the writings of Saint Paul. No Apostle—no Church. The body could not be separated from the head and still survive. In other words, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel always—always—occurred contemporaneously with the foundation of a solidly structured local Church. The modern tendency to emphasize the internal, personal, and spiritual message of Christ over the external, public, hierarchical Church which carries His message is a dichotomy unknown to early Christianity. For early Christians and faithful Christians still today, the Church carries a message and is itself a message. The content of the Gospel and the form of the Gospel community go hand in hand. The constant, amoeba-like splitting of Protestant communities attests to the inevitable divisions which result when the Church and its message are separated. A later tradition holds that Saint Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Equally ancient traditions state that Saint John the Evangelist retreated to Ephesus before dying on the island of Patmos, and that Mary followed John to Ephesus, living in a house above the town. It is possible, then, that Saint Timothy drank from the deepest wells of the Christian tradition. Sitting around the warm glow of a fire at night, he may have heard about the life of Christ from the very lips of the most important witnesses—Mary and John. We can imagine that Timothy heard about many of the unwritten events of Christ’s life from Saint John. It is this same John who ends his Gospel by writing that “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Timothy and Titus were bearers of the very oldest Christian traditions. Saints Timothy and Titus, through your lives dedicated to the missions, you helped lay the foundations of Christianity, and carried on the priestly ministry of Jesus by preaching, teaching, and governing His flock. Help us to be as bold now as you were then.
المحتوى المقدم من Fr. Michael Black. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Fr. Michael Black أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.
January 26: Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops First Century Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saints of stomach disorders Saint Paul could not do it alone Today’s saints were two bishops from the apostolic period of the Church, those decades immediately following the death and resurrection of Our Lord. In this grace-filled time, the Apostles and Saint Paul were carving the first deep furrows into the pagan soil they traveled, planting in the earth the rich seeds of Christian faith which succeeding bishops would later water, tend, and harvest. Little is certainly known about today’s saints apart from references to them in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Saint Paul. But these numerous references are enough. The generations of theologians, bishops, martyrs, and saints who lived in the post-apostolic period give universal and consistent witness to the veracity of Paul’s letters and the events they recount. There are theological, more than historical, lessons to be taken from the lives and ministry of today’s saints. Saints Timothy and Titus were apostles of an Apostle. They shared in the ministry of Saint Paul, who had a direct connection to Christ through a miraculous occurrence on the road to Damascus, a feast commemorated, not coincidentally, the day prior to today’s memorial. Timothy, Titus, and many others, known and unknown, carried out on a local level a priestly ministry which Paul engaged in on a more regional level. It was Saint Paul’s practice, and probably that of the other surviving Apostles, to appoint assistants wherever they went who acted with the authority of the Apostle who appointed them. These assistants were variously called priests or bishops, terms that were often interchangeable. Deacons, of course, shared in the priestly ministry too, but more as assistants to bishops. A direct connection to an Apostle, either through his personal ministry or through a group or delegate he appointed (through an ordination rite), was fundamental to establishing a church. Accredited leaders were needed. This is a constant theme in the writings of Saint Paul. No Apostle—no Church. The body could not be separated from the head and still survive. In other words, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel always—always—occurred contemporaneously with the foundation of a solidly structured local Church. The modern tendency to emphasize the internal, personal, and spiritual message of Christ over the external, public, hierarchical Church which carries His message is a dichotomy unknown to early Christianity. For early Christians and faithful Christians still today, the Church carries a message and is itself a message. The content of the Gospel and the form of the Gospel community go hand in hand. The constant, amoeba-like splitting of Protestant communities attests to the inevitable divisions which result when the Church and its message are separated. A later tradition holds that Saint Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Equally ancient traditions state that Saint John the Evangelist retreated to Ephesus before dying on the island of Patmos, and that Mary followed John to Ephesus, living in a house above the town. It is possible, then, that Saint Timothy drank from the deepest wells of the Christian tradition. Sitting around the warm glow of a fire at night, he may have heard about the life of Christ from the very lips of the most important witnesses—Mary and John. We can imagine that Timothy heard about many of the unwritten events of Christ’s life from Saint John. It is this same John who ends his Gospel by writing that “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Timothy and Titus were bearers of the very oldest Christian traditions. Saints Timothy and Titus, through your lives dedicated to the missions, you helped lay the foundations of Christianity, and carried on the priestly ministry of Jesus by preaching, teaching, and governing His flock. Help us to be as bold now as you were then.
February 17: Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order Thirteenth Century Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (Violet on Lenten Weekday) Invoked to aid in imitating the charity of Our Lady of Sorrows Groups buttress fidelity to individual good intentions There are many reasons to join a group. To quilt, play soccer, learn chess, or travel. We accomplish personal goals in a group that we would never accomplish alone. Groups create positive peer pressure to show up on time, read the book, do the exercise, or complete the task assigned. When we join a group, we freely create obligations for ourselves, because we know, deep down, that accountability to others encourages fidelity to our own obligations. The groups of the medieval world were called guilds. Craftsmen of similar skills organized in guilds to learn, promote, and protect their trade. Guilds offered mutual assistance that no individual could replicate. There was power in numbers. Today we commemorate seven young men who belonged to a merchant guild in Florence, Italy, in the 1200s. These seven men were serious Christians. They loved God and the Church. And in addition to protecting their commercial interests by joining a guild, they also protected their souls by joining a local spiritual guild called the Confraternity of the Blessed Virgin, where their spiritual exercises were guided by a wise and educated priest who encouraged their devotion. After the members of the Confraternity experienced mystical visions of the Virgin Mary, there was nothing left to do except abandon the world, set aside money for their families, and flee the busy city for a solitary life in the nearby mountains. The Seven fasted, prayed, and lived lives of such extreme austerity that a visiting cardinal admonished them to stop living like dogs. Over time they adopted a rule, accepted new recruits, elected leaders, and spread throughout Italy and beyond. They eventually took the name of the Order of Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Servants of Mary, or Servites. The Seven Holy Founders were especially devoted to the Seven Sorrows of Mary, and the Servites were instrumental in the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows becoming part of the Church’s calendar on September 15. The sword that pierced Mary’s heart, the tears she shed when witnessing Our Lord’s passion, indeed all the Sorrows of Mary motivated the Seven Holy Founders to promote devotion to Mary under this title. Mary was strong and stood at the foot of the cross. But she was also a mom who loved her boy. So she had a heavy heart that continually pondered what His suffering meant. We unite in joy at Christ’s resurrection on Easter and join with Mary’s sorrow just days before. The emotions of Scripture become the emotions of those who read it and those who live it in the liturgy and devotions of the Church. The names of the Seven Holy Founders are known. But the Church celebrates them as a group, with their individuality ceding to their group identity. Together they accomplished more than seven men working separately could ever have accomplished. Their confraternity became an Order, and that Order still exists for the mutual spiritual benefit of all, a theological guild holding its members to high standards of spiritual perfection. Servite priests and brothers are still active in various countries around the world, hundreds of years after the Order’s founding. This is a testament to the immovable, rock-solid foundation on which its Seven Holy Founders constructed their spiritual and theological home. Our prayers turn to you, Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order. Help us to find mutual support in loving God and Mary through a holy alliance with like-minded Christians. Through your example, may our love for God burn hotter than a single flame.…
February 14: Saints Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop St. Cyril: 827–869; St. Methodius: 815–884 Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (When Lenten Weekday, Optional Memorial; Violet) Co-Patrons of Europe and Apostles to the Slavs Two makers of Europe light the flame of Eastern Christianity The Cyrillic alphabet, used by hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia, is named after today’s Cyril. Numerous proofs could be advanced for why a certain person is historically significant. Few proofs, however, can eclipse an alphabet being named after you. The evangelical labors of Cyril and Methodius were so path breaking, long lasting, and culture forming that these brothers stand in the very first rank of the Church’s greatest missionaries. Shoulder to shoulder with brave men such as Patrick, Augustine of Canterbury, Boniface, Ansgar, and others, they baptized nations, mustered clans from the forests, codified laws, transcribed alphabets, and transformed the crude pagan gropings for the divine into the transcendent worship of the one true God at Mass. Saints Cyril and Methodius helped form the religiously undivided reality of Christendom long before it was ever called Europe. Cyril was baptized as Constantine and was known by that name until late in his life. He and Methodius were from Thessalonica, in Northern Greece, where they spoke not only Greek but also Slavonic, a critical linguistic advantage for their later missionary adventures. Cyril and Methodius received excellent educations in their youth and, as they matured, were given important educational, religious, and political appointments in an age when those disciplines were braided into one sturdy cord. The people, the state, and the Church were an undivided whole. Cyril and Methodius served the imperial court, the one true Church, and their native land as professors, governors, abbots, deacons, priests, and bishops. Sometime after 860, the brothers were commissioned by the Emperor in Constantinople to lead a missionary crew heading into Moravia, in today’s Czech Republic. They walked straight into a tangled web of political, religious, linguistic, and liturgical controversies which have vexed Eastern and Central Europe until today. The Church of Rome allowed only three languages to be used in its liturgical and scriptural texts—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—the three languages inscribed above Christ’s head on the cross. The Church in the East, juridically under Rome but culturally spinning off into its own orbit over the centuries, was a patchwork of peoples where local vernaculars were used in the liturgy. Languages are always spoken long before they are written, and the spoken Slavonic of Moravia had unique sounds demanding new letters populating a new alphabet. Cyril created that new alphabet, and then he and Methodius translated Scripture, various liturgical books, and the Mass into written Slavonic. This led to some serious tensions. The newly Christianized German bishops were suspicious of missionaries in their own neighborhood who came from Greece, spoke Slavonic, and who celebrated the sacred mysteries in a quasi-Byzantine style. Moravia and the greater Slavic homeland were under German ecclesiastical jurisdiction, not Greek. How could the Mass be said in Slavonic, or the Gospels translated into that new language? How could a Byzantine liturgy co-exist with the Latin rite? Cyril and Methodius went to Rome to resolve these various issues with the Pope and his advisers. The brothers were treated respectfully in Rome as well-educated and heroic missionaries. Cyril died and was buried in the Eternal City. Methodius returned to the land of the Slavs and to ongoing tensions with German ecclesiastics and princes. He translated virtually the entire Bible into Slavonic, assembled a code of Byzantine church and civil law, and firmly established, with the Pope’s permission, the use of Slavonic in the liturgy. After Methodius’ death, however, German and Latin Rite influences prevailed. The Byzantine Rite, the use of Slavonic in the liturgy, and the Cyrillic alphabet were all forced from Central to Eastern Europe, particularly into Bulgaria, shortly after Methodius died. While they were always honored in the East, the Feast of SS. Cyril and Methodius was extended to the entire Catholic Church only in 1880. Pope Saint John Paul II named Saints Cyril and Methodius Co-Patrons of Europe. Their massive legacy inspires the two lungs of the Church, both East and West, to breathe more deeply the enriched oxygen of the entire Christian tradition. Saints Cyril and Methodius, you prepared yourselves for brave and generous service to Christ and His Church through long years of preparation and, when the time came, you served heroically. May we so prepare, and so serve, until we can serve no more.…
February 11: Our Lady of Lourdes Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (Violet on Lenten Weekday) Patroness of bodily ills A heavenly lady appears to a country girl, and miracles follow In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous told her friends that a beautiful young lady was appearing to her in a rock formation on the outskirts of her small town of Lourdes. A friend asked Bernadette to do her a favor—to hold the friend’s rosary in her hands the next time Bernadette knelt before the beautiful young lady. Bernadette obliged. Later, Bernadette told her friend how the lady had reacted. The lady had noticed that Bernadette was not holding her own rosary but someone else’s. The lady further said she was not there to make relics and told Bernadette to return next time with her own rosary instead of another’s. Bernadette’s unvarnished recounting of the lady’s reaction was blunt but reasonable and, more importantly, authentic. This plainspokenness fit a pattern. Over and over again, whenever little, uneducated Bernadette was asked about the beautiful young lady she saw in the grotto, her answers never changed and included startling but authentic details. Bernadette reported that when she and the lady prayed the rosary together, the lady only said the Our Father and the Glory Be. Mary didn’t pray the Hail Mary. How could she pray to herself? Would she say “Hail Me?” Bernadette reported that the lady spoke to her in the Lourdes’ dialect which Bernadette herself grew up with, slightly different from standard French. Bernadette stated that a golden rose rested on each of the lady’s feet. Of course! And when Bernadette respectfully asked the lady her name, she didn’t understand the big words in the response: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” In addition to the miraculous cures associated with the healing waters of Lourdes, the very character of Bernadette, as well as the tone and content of her accounts, removed all doubt that the beautiful young lady she saw was indeed the Virgin Mary. Our Lady of Lourdes is perhaps the most powerful and prolific physical healer in the history of the Church after Christ himself. Through her intercession, and through the waters that flow in her magnificent shrine, many thousands have been cured of their infirmities, as medical records prove beyond any doubt. Holy Mary has appeared at various times and in various places, mostly to the simple and mostly in the country. She loves the faith of the simple and speaks to them in simple language. In this, Mary reflects the words of her Son Jesus. He speaks plainly. His message is clear. And Mary’s simple words always point to the simple words of her own Son. God is like the sun whose fiery brilliance scorches the eyes of all who look right at Him. Get too close and you’ll be burned. Like the sun, the Creator of the world can be distant, mysterious, and intimidating. But Mary is like the moon, bathed in a soft, pleasant glow. She’s close to us, and easy on the eyes. The sun’s heat and light may make life possible, but the sun itself is dangerous and remote. But Mary can be approached by man. And like the moon, she doesn’t produce her own light but just reflects in a softer tone the powerful rays of the enormous star whose light generates life itself. Our Lady of Lourdes, give physical healing to all who invoke your intercession. The saving waters at your shrine have healed thousands of pilgrims. May all the prayers and supplications directed to you be immersed in the waters of your holy baths, so that what is asked may be granted through your intercession and according to God’s will.…
February 10: Saint Scholastica, Virgin c. Early Sixth Century–547 Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (When Lenten Weekday, Optional Memorial; Violet) Patron Saint of nuns, convulsive children, education, and books A mysterious woman co-founds Western monasticism Saint Scholastica was born in the decades after the last Western Emperor was forced to abandon the crumbling city of Rome in 476. Power was concentrated in the East, in Constantinople, where the real action was. Many centuries would pass until the Renaissance would cover Rome again in its classical glory. But what happened in Western Europe between the end of the Roman era in the fifth century and the dawn of the Renaissance in the fifteenth? Monasticism happened. Armies of monks founded innumerable monasteries crisscrossing the length and breadth of Europe like the beads of a rosary. These monasteries drove their roots deep into the native soil. They became centers of learning, agriculture, and culture that naturally gave birth to the dependent towns, schools, and universities which created medieval society. Monks transformed the farthest northwestern geographic protrusion of the Asian landmass into, well, Europe. Saint Benedict and his twin sister, Saint Scholastica, are the male and female sources for that wide river of monasticism which has carved its way so deeply into the landscape of the Western world. Yet very little is known with certainty about her life. Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who reigned from 590–604, wrote about these famous twins about a half century after they died. He based his account on the testimony of abbots who personally knew Scholastica and her brother. Gregory’s biographical commentary emphasizes the warm and faith-filled closeness between the siblings. Scholastica and Benedict visited each other as often as their cloistered lives allowed. And when they met, they spoke about the things of God and the Heaven that awaited them. Their mutual affection grew out of their common love of God, showing that a correct understanding and love of God is the only source of true unity in any community, whether it be the micro-community of a family or the mega-community of an entire country. When a unified God is understood and worshipped, a unified community results. The Benedictine monastic family tried to replicate the common knowledge and love of God which Scholastica and Benedict lived in their own family. Through common schedules, prayer, meals, singing, recreation, and work, the communities of monks who lived according to the Benedictine Rule, and who live it still, sought to replicate the well-ordered and fruitful life of a large, faith-filled family. Like a well-trained orchestra, all the monks meld their talents into an overwhelming harmony under the wand of the abbot, until their common effort swells over into the beautiful churches and music and schools that carry on today. The gravestones in monastery cemeteries often have no names engraved on them. The polished marble may say, simply, “A holy monk.” The anonymity is itself a sign of holiness. What matters is the body of the larger religious community, not the individual who was just one of that body’s cells. Saint Scholastica died in 547. Her grave is known, marked, and celebrated. She is buried in a luxurious sepulchre in an underground chapel of the monastery of Monte Casino in the mountains south of Rome. She is not anonymous in her resting place, like so many monks and nuns. But she is anonymous in that so few details illustrate her character. Perhaps that was by design. Perhaps it was humility. She and her brother are major religious figures whose stamp is still impressed into Western culture. Yet she is a mystery. She is known by her legacy, and sometimes a legacy is enough. In her case, it is definitely enough. Saint Scholastica, you established the women’s branch of the Benedictine Religious Order and so gave Christian women their own communities to govern and rule. Help all who invoke your intercession to remain anonymous and humble even when developing great plans for God and His Church. You are great, and you are unknown. Help us to desire the same.…
February 8: Saint Josephine Bakhita, Virgin 1869–1947 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (Violet on Lenten Weekday) Patron Saint of Sudan and human-trafficking survivors Out of Africa comes a slave, to freely serve the Master of all Black-on-black or Arab-on-black slavery normally preceded and made possible the white-on-black slavery practiced by the colonial powers. These powers—England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy—were not slave societies, but their colonies were. The complex, pancultural reality of the slave trade and of slavery itself was on full display in the dramatic early life of today’s saint. The future Josephine was born in Western Sudan, centuries after the Church and most Catholic nations had long since outlawed slavery. Enforcing such teachings and laws was infinitely more difficult, however, than promulgating them. And so it happened that a little African girl was kidnapped by Arab slave traders, forced to walk six hundred miles barefoot, and was then sold and resold over a twelve-year period. She was forcibly converted from her native religion to Islam, was cruelly treated by one master after another, was whipped, tattooed, and scarred. After experiencing all the humiliations inherent to captivity, she was bought by an Italian diplomat. She had been too young, and it had been too long, so she did not even know her own name when the diplomat bought her, and she had unclear recollections of where her family would be. She, essentially, had no people. The slave traders had given her the Arabic name Bakhita, “The Fortunate,” and the name stuck. Living with limited freedom as a maid with her new family, Bakhita first learned what it meant to be treated like a child of God. No chains, no lashes, no threats, no hunger. She was surrounded by the love and warmth of normal family life. When her new family was returning to Italy, she asked to accompany them, thus beginning the long second half of her life’s story. Bakhita eventually settled with a different family near Venice and became the nanny for their daughter. When the parents had to tend to overseas business, Bakhita and the daughter were put in the care of local nuns. Bakhita was so edified by the sisters’ prayer and charity that when her family returned to take her home, she refused to leave the convent, a decision reaffirmed by an Italian court which determined she had never legally been a slave in the first place. Bakhita was now absolutely free. “Freedom from” exists to make “freedom for” possible, and once free from obligations to her family, Bakhita chose to be free for service to God and her religious order. She freely chose poverty, chastity, and obedience. She freely chose not to be free. That is the opposite of slavery. Bakhita took the name Josephine and was baptized, confirmed, and received First Holy Communion on the very same day from the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, Giuseppe Sarto, the future Pope Saint Pius X. The same future saint received her religious vows a few years later. Saints know saints. The trajectory of Sister Josephine’s life was now settled. She would remain a nun until her death. Throughout her life, Sister Josephine would often kiss the baptismal font, grateful that in its holy water she became a child of God. Her duties were humble—cooking, sewing, and greeting visitors. For a few years she travelled to other communities of her Order to share her remarkable story and to prepare younger sisters for service in Africa. One nun commented that “her mind was always on God, but her heart in Africa.” Her humility, joy, and sweetness were infectious, and she became well known for her closeness to God. After heroically enduring a painful illness, she died with the words “Our Lady, Our Lady” on her lips. Her process began in 1959, and she was canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II in 2000. Saint Josephine, you lost your freedom when young and gave it away when an adult, showing that freedom is not the goal but the pathway to serving the Master of all. From your place in heaven, give hope to those enduring the indignity of slavery and to those bound tightly by other chains.…
February 8: Saint Jerome Emiliani, Priest 1481–1537 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White (Violet on Lenten Weekday) Patron Saint of orphans and abandoned children He was forever grateful after a near-death experience In the year 1202, a wealthy young Italian man joined the cavalry of his town’s militia. The inexperienced soldiers went into battle against a neighboring town’s larger force and were obliterated. Most of the retreating soldiers were run through with lances and left for dead in the mud. But at least one was spared. He was an aristocrat wearing fine clothes and new, expensive armor. He was worth taking hostage for ransom. The captive suffered in a dark, miserable prison for a full year before his father made the payment for his release. He returned to his hometown a changed man. That town was Assisi. That man was Francis. Today’s saint, Jerome Emiliani, endured much the same. He was a soldier in the city state of Venice and was appointed the commander of a fortress. In a battle against a league of city-states, the fortress fell and Jerome was imprisoned. A heavy chain was wrapped around his neck, hands, and feet, and fastened to a huge chunk of marble in an underground prison. Jerome was forgotten, alone, and treated like an animal in the gloom of a dungeon. This was the pivot point. He repented of his godless life. He prayed. He dedicated himself to the Madonna. And then, somehow, he escaped, chains in hand, and fled to a nearby city. He walked through the doors of the local church and headed to the front to fulfill a fresh vow. He slowly approached a much-venerated Virgin and placed his chains on the altar before her. He knelt, bowed his head, and prayed. His life was about to begin again. Some pivot points can turn a life’s straight line into a right angle. Other lives change slowly, bending like an arc over a long span of years. The deprivations endured by Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Jerome Emiliani occurred suddenly. These men were healthy, had money, and were supported by family and friends. Then, shockingly, they were naked, alone, and chained. Saint Jerome could have despaired in his imprisonment. Many people do. He could have rejected God, understood his sufferings as a sign of God’s disfavor, become bitter, and given up. Instead, he persevered. His imprisonment was a purification. He gave his suffering purpose. Once free, he was like a man born anew, grateful that the heavy prison chains no longer weighed down his body to the floor. Once he started sprinting away from that prison fortress, it was like Saint Jerome never stopped running. He studied, was ordained a priest, and travelled throughout Northern Italy founding orphanages, hospitals, and homes for abandoned children, fallen women, and outcasts of all kinds. Exercising his priestly ministry in a Europe newly split by Protestant heresies, Jerome also wrote perhaps the first question-and-answer catechism in order to inculcate Catholic doctrine in his charges. Like so many saints, he seemed to be everywhere at once, caring for everyone except himself. While tending to the sick, he became infected and died in 1537, a martyr to generosity. He was, naturally, the kind of man who attracted followers. They eventually formed into a religious Congregation and received ecclesiastical approbation in 1540. Saint Jerome was canonized in 1767 and named the Patron Saint of orphans and abandoned children in 1928. Jerome’s life hinged on one pivot. It is a lesson. Emotional, physical, or even psychological suffering, when conquered or controlled, can be a prelude to intense gratitude and generosity. No one walks down the street more free than a former hostage. No one rests more peacefully in a warm, comfortable bed than someone who once slept on the ground. No one gulps a breath of fresh morning air quite like someone who has just heard from the doctor that the cancer is gone. Saint Jerome never lost the wonder and gratitude that flooded his heart at the moment of his liberation. All was new. All was young. The World was his. And he would place all his power and energy in God’s service because he…was…a…survivor. Saint Jerome Emiliani, you overcame confinement to live a fruitful life dedicated to God and man. Help all who are confined in any way—physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually, or psychologically—to overcome whatever binds them and to live a life without bitterness.…
February 6: Saint Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs St. Paul Miki: c. 1562–1597; Late Sixteenth Century Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red (When Lenten Weekday, Optional Memorial; Violet) Patron Saints of Japan Native Japanese die to gain the pearl of great price The words of the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier capture the pathos of today’s memorial: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” The swift rise, and sudden fall, of Catholicism in Japan is one of the great “might-have-beens” in human history. Portuguese and Spanish priests, mostly Jesuits and Franciscans, brought the Catholic religion to the highly cultured island of Japan in the late 1500s with great success. Tens of thousands of people converted, two seminaries were opened, native Japanese were ordained as priests, and Japan ceased to be mission territory, being elevated to a diocese. But the rising arc of missionary success just as quickly curved downward. In waves of persecutions from the 1590s through the 1640s, thousands of Catholics were persecuted, tortured, and executed until the Catholic religion, and indeed any outward expression of Christianity, was totally eradicated. Japan almost became a Catholic nation, coming close to joining the Philippines as the only thoroughly Catholic society in Asia. Japan might have done for Asia in the 1600s what Ireland did for Europe in the early Middle Ages. It could have sent scholars, monks, and missionary priests to convert nations far larger than itself, including China. It was not to be. Paul Miki was a native Japanese who became a Jesuit. The Jesuits would not accept into their seminary men from India or other nations who they felt were of inferior education. But the Jesuits had immense respect for the Japanese, whose culture was equal to, or even exceeded, that of Western Europe. Paul Miki was among those who, after being educated in the faith, evangelized their own people in their own language. He and others blazed a new pathway forward, allowing the Japanese to not only understand but to see, in flesh and blood, that they could retain the best of their native culture while being faithful to the newfound God of Jesus Christ. Paul, a Jesuit brother, and his companions were the first group to suffer mass martyrdom in Japan. A military leader and adviser to the Emperor feared Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the island and ordered the arrest of six Franciscan priests and brothers, three Japanese Jesuits, sixteen other Japanese, and one Korean. The captured had their left ears mutilated and were then forced to march, bloodied, hundreds of miles to Nagasaki. On February 5, 1597, Paul and his companions were bound to crosses on a hill, like Christ, and pierced with lances. An eyewitness described the scene: “Our brother, Paul Miki, saw himself standing in the noblest pulpit he had ever filled. To his “congregation” he began by proclaiming himself a Japanese and a Jesuit... ‘My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves.’ Then he looked at his comrades and began to encourage them in their final struggle...Then, according to Japanese custom, the four executioners began to unsheathe their spears…The executioners killed them one by one. One thrust of the spear, then a second blow. It was over in a short time.” The executions did nothing to stop the Church. Persecution only fanned the flames of faith. By 1614 about 300,000 Japanese were Catholics. More intense persecutions followed until Japan’s leaders sealed off their ports and borders from virtually all foreign penetration, a policy that lasted until the nineteenth century. Only in 1854 was Japan forcibly opened to foreign trade and Western visitors. Then, thousands of Japanese Catholics suddenly came out of hiding, mostly near Nagasaki. They bore the names of the Japanese martyrs, spoke some Latin and Portuguese, asked their new guests for statues of Jesus and Mary, and sought to verify if a French priest was legitimate with two questions: 1) Are you celibate?; and 2) Do you come from the Pope in Rome? These hidden Christians also opened their fists to show the priest something else—relics of the martyrs who their remote ancestors had honored centuries before. Their memory had never died. Saint Paul Miki, you accepted martyrdom rather than abandon your faith. You chose to serve those closest to you rather than to flee. May we too know, love, and serve God in the heroic fashion that made you so brave and composed in the face of intense suffering.…
February 5: Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr c. Third Century Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red (When Lenten Weekday, Optional Memorial; Violet) Patron Saint of Sicily, breast cancer, rape victims, and bellfounders Of all the men drawn to her, she desired only one Pope Saint Gregory the Great reigned as the Supreme Pontiff of the Church from 590–604. His family loved Sicily and had property there, so the young Gregory was familiar with that beautiful island’s saints and traditions. When he became Pope, Saint Gregory inserted the names of two of Sicily’s most revered martyrs, Agatha and Lucy, into the heart of the Mass, the Roman Canon. Saint Gregory even placed these two Sicilians just before the city of Rome’s own two female martyrs, Agnes and Cecilia, who had been part of the Roman Canon for many centuries prior. It was this papal decision that has preserved Saint Agatha’s memory more effectively than anything else. Liturgy is inherently conservative and protects the Church’s oldest memories. So on the lips of thousands of priests every day are the names of some of the Church’s most revered female martyrs: “Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the saints.” Not much is known for certain about the life and death of Saint Agatha, but long tradition supplies what primary documents lack. Pope Damasus (366–384) may have composed a poem in her honor, indicating how widespread her reputation was by that early date. Agatha was from a well-off family in Roman Sicily, probably in the third century. After dedicating her life to Christ, her beauty drew powerful men to her like a magnet. But she refused all suitors in favor of the Lord. Perhaps during the persecution of the Emperor Decius around 250, she was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and martyred. She refused to renounce her faith or to give in to the powerful men who desired her. An ancient homily relates: “A true virgin, she wore the glow of a pure conscience and the crimson of the lamb’s blood for her cosmetics.” It is also the constant tradition that her torture included sexual mutilation. Saint Lucy is shown in art with her eyeballs on a platter. Saint Agatha is normally shown holding a plate on which rest her own breasts, as they were cut off by her pagan tormentors before her execution. This peculiar image is, in fact, carved into the entrance of Rome’s sixth-century church of Saint Agatha, a church re-dedicated by Pope Saint Gregory himself so long ago. Men commit most of the physical violence in the world. And when their victims are women, that violence can be particularly vicious because their victims are so defenseless. The stories of the early male martyrs of the Church relate tales of extreme torture by their Roman captors. But the stories of the women martyrs often relate something more—sexual humiliation. Few male martyrs suffered similar indignities. Saint Agatha and others were not only physically tough to endure the pain they did but also mentally and spiritually powerful to have resisted, to the death, the public embarrassment and degradation particular to them as women. They were the strong ones. Their male captors looked weak. It was Christianity’s exaltation of women, children, slaves, prisoners, the old, the sick, the foreigner, and the outcast that caused the vast leaven of the Church to slowly rise in the Mediterranean world. The Church did not create a victim class who complained about a privileged class. The Church preached the dignity of persons. The Church did not even preach equality of individuals or teach that governments must enact laws protecting the unprotected. That is all so modern. The Church spoke in theological language and taught that every man, woman, and child was made in God’s image and likeness and so deserved respect. It taught that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for every person. The Church gave, and gives, total answers to total questions, and those answers were, and are, compelling. The Feast of St. Agatha is still massively celebrated on February 5 in Catania, Sicily. Hundreds of thousands of faithful process through the streets in honor of that island’s patron saint. The ancient traditions carry on. Saint Agatha, you were a virgin espoused to Christ Himself, a bride of the Lord who preserved herself for Him alone. Your vow to love God above all else hardened you to endure temptation, torture, and degradation. May we be as resolute as you when any type of persecution, however mild, seeks us out.…
February 3: Saint Ansgar, Bishop 801–865 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of Scandinavia, Denmark, and Sweden He sowed the frozen turf of the North, though little bloomed Today’s saint walked the forests of Northern Europe during that stretch of history later known, prejudicially, as the “Dark Ages.” He lived three hundred years after the fall of Rome and yet three hundred years before the soaring gothic spires of the High Middle Ages pierced the blue sky. “Ansgar” is a grunt or a mere sound to modern ears. It seems fit for a remote, cold, and brutal age. It is difficult to imagine a child running into the warm embrace of a sunny Ansgar. But the real Saint Ansgar broke bread with Northern Vikings and rough warriors of the forest with names just like his own: Horik, Drogo, Gudmund, and Vedast. Ansgar was one of them, with one big difference—he was a Catholic. The one thing, a very big thing, that links such long-ago saints, priests, and bishops to us moderns is the Catholic faith. We share the exact same faith as Saint Ansgar! If Saint Ansgar were to step out of the pages of a book today, in his bear fur pelt and deerskin boots, and walk through the doors of a twenty-first-century Catholic church, he would be at home. His eyes would search for the burning flame of the sanctuary lamp, and upon spotting it, he would know. He would bend his knee before a tabernacle housing the Blessed Sacrament, just as he did thousands of times in the past. He would walk past statues of Mary and the saints and know their stories. He would hear the same Gospel, make the same sign of the cross, and feel the same drops of blessed water on his forehead. Nothing would be unusual. Our faith unites what time and culture divide. The Church is the world’s only multicultural, transnational, timeless family. There is nothing else like Her. Saint Ansgar left his native region in Northern France, after receiving a good Christian education, to become an apostle monk to Northern Germany. He was named by the Pope as Archbishop of Hamburg and, from that post, organized the first systematic evangelization of Scandinavia. These regions were far, far away from the more developed civilizations of Italy, Spain, and France. Yet Saint Ansgar and his helpers traveled that far, and risked that much, to plant the Catholic faith in the frozen ground of what is today Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Yet nearly all the seeds of faith that Saint Ansgar planted were to die in the ground shortly after his own death. Sadly, his missionary efforts produced no long-lasting fruit. The age of the Vikings dawned, and it would be two centuries before Christianity would again flourish and spread across the northern arc of Europe. Yet even that second evangelization would come to a bitter end! In the sixteenth century, Scandinavia abandoned Catholicism for its shadow under the influence of Father Luther and his followers. What a lesson to be learned! As Saint Paul wrote, one plants, one waters, and God gives the growth: “The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each” (1 Co 3:8). Saint Ansgar carried out God’s will. He labored for the Lord and for the faith. What happened after that was up to God in His providence. Carrying out God’s will should be enough for us, as it was for our saint today. We must plant and till, even though harvest time may never come. Saint Ansgar, you persevered in difficult times to bring the faith to a pagan land. You saw success and then failure, glory and then disappointment. Your work did not outlast you but pleased God nonetheless. May we see our work as our duty, even when the fruit of our labor is harvested by someone else, or not at all.…
February 3: Saint Blaise, Bishop and Martyr c. Early Fourth Century Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saint of wool combers and sufferers of throat diseases The memory of an obscure bishop-martyr endures A secularist does not evaluate religion on its own terms but on its practical benefits. Is a religion true? It doesn’t matter. But if you can prove that empty stomachs are now full, that malarial fevers are cooled, and that formerly dusty roads are now paved due to religion, then religion is indeed useful and good, all truth claims aside. Religion’s role in physical healing would be another proof of its great good, if not its truth. For all the incontestable progress of medicine, cancers still spread, tumors still grow, and infections still poison. Even the most modern of moderns, in a state of total vulnerability, understands in his deepest of deeps that physical healings surge from sources other than modern science. PhDs wash in the River Ganges, rocket scientists lower their bodies into the cool baths of Lourdes, and surgeons spread sacred oil on their skin hoping against hope for a cure that has eluded medicine. The memory of Saint Blaise, a man of obscure origins, stands behind one of the most enduring healing traditions in all of Christendom. In the holy name of Blaise, two candles are crossed, X-shaped, and pressed against the neck to ward off and cure diseases of the throat. Oils and relics, candles and flames, bread and wine, words and blessings. God’s face does not appear in the ash cloud rising from a volcanic eruption or in a golden pile at the end of a rainbow. The Christian believes that God’s salvation and healing power come through His Holy Mother, through His saints, and through the creation He molded in His own hands. A believer doesn’t believe in belief, any more than a soldier loves patriotism. A soldier loves his country, and a believer loves God. And because the believer loves God, he loves a someone, not a something, and waits in line and shuffles forward, step by step, to the priest holding those X-shaped candles on today’s feast. Because it is usually winter, the believer adjusts his jacket collar, feels the milky wax candle against his tender throat, closes his eyes, and prays that the cough disappear, that his voice remain strong, or that the faintest lump turn out to be nothing at all. Saint Blaise is primarily a “Northern” saint invoked to remedy mostly cold-climate ills. Details of Saint Blaise’s life are difficult to verify. Some traditions, dating from centuries after he lived, state that he was a bishop in Armenia, east of modern-day Turkey. His reputation for holiness drew people to him in search of a cure for their infirmities. It is said that Blaise was tortured and murdered in an anti-Christian persecution. Every saint, no matter how remote his life or obscure his story, casts some light on the truths of our faith. The life of Saint Blaise and the tradition of throat healing that still surrounds him tell us that holy lives have power. His life tells us that holy people intercede for less holy people, and that the less powerful, the less wise, and the less good depend on the strong, the intelligent, and the virtuous in order to leave their state of dependence, ignorance, and sin. In the same way that salvation is mediated, healing is as well. Whether through the skilled hands of a surgeon, the chemicals of a drug, or the intercession of a saint, healing comes. The many channels branch out from the one source who is God. We, the faithful, when fragile and afraid, patiently sit in the doctor’s office for our name to be called, wait at the pharmacy counter for the prescription to be filled, or line up in church for the candles to rest softly on our clavicles. Healing is on offer, we are ripe to be cured, and any sacred intervention is welcome, no matter whence it comes. Saint Blaise, many centuries ago you suffered for the same faith we now share with you. May we be ever united to you in our common Church, and may we be healed of all infirmities of the throat through your heavenly intercession.…
February 2: The Presentation of the Lord Feast; Liturgical Color: White God goes to Church The various names, meanings, and traditions overlapping in today’s Feast churn like the crystals in a kaleidoscope, revealing one image and then another with every slight rotation of the tube. The Presentation of the Lord in the Temple is, rotate, also the Purification of Mary. But, rotate, it’s also known as the “Meeting of the Lord” in the Christian East. And, rotate, it’s also the Feast of Candlemas, marking forty days after Christmas. The multiple names and meanings of today’s Feast have given birth to surprisingly broad and varied cultural expressions. The biblical account of the Presentation is the source for the “two turtle doves” in the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” for the sword piercing Mary’s Immaculate Heart in Catholic iconography, for the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the rosary, and for the Canticle prayed by all the world’s priests and nuns every single night of their lives. The Presentation is even the remote source of the frivolous American folkloric tradition of Groundhog Day. Behind all of these names and meanings are, however, a few fundamental theological facts worthy of reflection. The Lord Jesus Christ, forty days after His birth, in keeping with both the biblical significance of the number forty and with Jewish custom, was presented in the temple in Jerusalem by His parents, Mary and Joseph. Saint Luke’s Gospel recounts the story. After the Presentation, Jesus was to enter the temple again as a boy and later as an adult. He would even refer to His own body as a temple which He would raise up in three days. Jesus’s life was a continual self-gift to God the Father from the very beginning to the very end. His parents did not carry their infant Son to a holy mountain, a sacred spring, or a magical forest. It was in His temple that the God of Israel was most present, so they brought their Son to God Himself, not just to a reflection of Him in nature. The extraordinarily beautiful temple in Jerusalem, the building where Jesus was presented by His parents, was burned to ashes by a powerful Roman army under the future Emperor Titus in 70 A.D. It was never rebuilt. A tourist in Rome can, even today, gaze up at the marble depictions of the sack of the Jerusalem Temple carved on the inside vaults of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. Christianity has never had just one sacred place equivalent to the Jewish Temple or the Muslims’ Kaaba in Mecca. Christianity is historical, yes, but it has a global reach rising above any one culture or region. Christ is destined for all cultures and all times. Every Catholic church with the Blessed Sacrament is a Holy of Holies, which fully expresses the deepest mysteries of our faith. There is no strict need to go on pilgrimage to Rome or to Jerusalem once in your life. But you do have to go on pilgrimage to your local parish once a week for Mass. Every Catholic church in every place, not just one building in one place, encompasses and transmits the entirety of our faith. God’s hand must have been involved in the headship of the Church migrating from Jerusalem to Rome in the first century. Our Pope does not live in the historical cradle of the faith he represents, because Saint Peter saw no need to remain in Jerusalem in order to be faithful to his Master. The Church is where Christ is, Christ is in the Holy Eucharist, and the Holy Eucharist is everywhere. We go to church, as the Jews went to their one temple or to their many synagogues, because God is more God in a church. And when we experience the true God, we experience our true selves. That is, we are more us when God is more God. God is interpreted according to the mode of the interpreter when He is sought in a glowing sunset, a rushing waterfall, or a stunning mountain. In nature, God is whoever the seeker wants Him to be. In a church, however, God is protected from misinterpretation. He is surrounded and protected by His priests, saints, sacraments, music, art, and worship. In a church, God is fully clothed, equipped, and armored. He is less likely to be misunderstood. So we go to find Him there, to dedicate ourselves to Him there, and to receive Him there in His Body and in His Blood. Lord Jesus, as an infant You were brought to the temple by Your parents out of religious duty. Help all parents to take their duties to God seriously, to inculcate their faith in the next generation by their words and actions, so that the faith will be handed on where the faith is first learned—in the family and in the home.…
January 31: Saint John Bosco, Priest 1815–1888 Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of editors, publishers, schoolchildren, and juvenile delinquents His fatherly heart radiated the warm love of God Some saints attract the faithful by the raw power of their minds and the sheer force of their arguments. Think of Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Augustine. Other saints write so eloquently, with such grace and sweetness, that their words draw people to God like bees to honey. Think of Saint John Henry Newman or Saint Francis de Sales. Still other saints say and write almost nothing, but lead lives of such generous and sacrificial witness that their holiness is obvious. Think of Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Today’s saint was not a first-class thinker, eloquent writer, bloody martyr, or path-breaking Church reformer. Yet his abundant gifts drew people to God in their own unique way. Saint John Bosco was, to put it in the simplest terms, a winner. His heart was like a furnace radiating immense warmth, fraternal concern, and affectionate love of God. His personality seemed to operate like a powerful magnet that pulled everyone closer and closer in toward his overflowing, priestly, and fatherly love. His country-boy simplicity, street smarts, genuine concern for the poor, and love of God, Mary, and the Church made him irresistible. Don Bosco (‘Don’ being a title of honor for priests, teachers, etc.) had charm. What he asked for, he received. From everyone. He built, during his own lifetime, an international empire of charity and education so massive and so successful that it is impossible to explain his accomplishments in merely human terms. Like many great saints, Don Bosco’s external, observable charisms were not the whole story. Behind his engaging personality was a will like a rod of iron. He exercised strict self-discipline and firmness of purpose in driving toward his goals. His gift of self, or self-dedication, was remarkable. Morning, noon, and night. Weekday or weekend. Rain or shine. He was always there. Unhurried. Available. Ready to talk. His life was one big generous act from beginning to end. Saint John grew up dirt poor in the country working as a shepherd. His father died when he was an infant. After studies and priestly ordination, he went to the big city, Turin, and saw first-hand how the urban poor lived. It changed his life. He began a ministry to poor boys which was not particularly innovative. He said Mass, heard confessions, taught the Gospel, went on walks, cooked meals, and taught practical skills like book binding. There was no secret to Don Bosco’s success. But no one else was doing it, and no one else did it so well. Followers flocked to assist him, and he founded the Salesians, a Congregation named after his own hero, Saint Francis de Sales. The Salesian empire of charity and education spread around the globe. By the time of its founder’s death in 1888, the Salesians had 250 houses the world over, caring for 130,000 children. Their work continues today. Don Bosco was not concerned with the remote causes of poverty. He did not challenge class structures or economic systems. He saw what was in front of him and went “straight to the poor,” as he put it. He did his work from the inside out. It was for others to figure out long-term solutions, not for him. Don Bosco did not know what rest was and wore himself out by being all things to all men. His reputation for holiness endured well beyond his death. A young priest who had met him in Northern Italy in 1883, Father Achille Ratti, later became Pope Pius XI. On Easter Sunday 1934, this same pope canonized the great Don Bosco whom he had known so many years before. Saint John Bosco, you dedicated your life to the education and care of poor youth. Aid us in reaching out to those who need our assistance today, not tomorrow, and here, not somewhere else. Through your intercession, may we carry out a fraction of the good that you achieved in your life.…
January 28: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor 1225–1274 Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of universities and students A theological Grand Master, he positioned every piece exquisitely on the chessboard The silhouette of Saint Thomas Aquinas hovers like a giant on the highest summit of human thought, casting so wide and deep a shadow over the landscape that all subsequent thinkers labor on the shady slopes below him. It is fair to say that Thomism, the thinking method and intellectual conclusions of Saint Thomas, has been the Catholic Church’s standard theology since he lived in the thirteenth century. Saint Thomas understood that all thinking about God is done from inside original sin and within the parameters of human intellectual capacity. The uncreated, timeless, mysterious God, then, is by definition incomprehensible to creatures trapped in time, space, matter, sin, distraction, and confusion. God is outside of the universe, rather than being just one important ingredient in the recipe of reality. This essential “otherness” of God means that His presence is not completely accessible to the senses. It is not just a question of seeing farther, understanding more deeply, hearing more acutely, or feeling more intensely. Twenty senses instead of five would still not be enough to capture God, because He transcends all other forms of being known to us. In the 1950s, a Russian cosmonaut looked out over space from his orbit miles above the earth and declared "I have found no God." He was looking for something that wasn’t there and answering a question that was poorly posed. Sometimes God is described as the highest being in an immense hierarchy of beings. From this perspective, the tiniest specks of organic or inorganic life, up and onward through plant and animal life, mankind, the planets and the solar system itself, are all beneath and owe their creation to the super being of God Himself. In this “ladder-of-existence” understanding, every being is a rung leading to higher and higher rungs at the top of which stands God. Such an understanding of God is inaccurate, Aquinas would hold. God is not the highest of all beings but Being itself. Every person at one time did not exist. Creation itself, including mankind, is created, meaning at some point it was not. But God cannot not be. For Saint Thomas, God’s essential action is to exist. It is intrinsic to His nature as God. God, then, is not something in the air but the air itself. He is not the biggest whale in the ocean. He is the water. This means that there is no strict need to provide scientific evidence for God, because even asking the question presumes the reality all around us. Science, for example, can explain the chemical composition of ink, but it has nothing to say about the meaning of words printed in ink. Science clearly has limits. Thomism’s understanding of God as non-contingent being, which makes all dependent existence possible, is intellectually sophisticated and also deeply attractive. This understanding of God meshes nicely with an appreciation for the natural beauty of the earth, love of art, and charity for our fellow man, while also allowing space for God to reveal Himself more fully, and gratuitously, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. Importantly, it also avoids confusing God’s creation with God Himself. Saint Thomas’s encyclopedic knowledge and massive erudition existed harmoniously with a humble nature and a simple, traditional Catholic piety. He was a well-balanced man and a dedicated Dominican priest. This synthesis of childlike wonder and deep inquiry marked his life. After having a mystical vision of Jesus Christ on the cross while praying after Mass one day, Saint Thomas abandoned any further writing. He died on his way to the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, not yet fifty years old. He is buried in Toulouse, France, retaining his status as the Church’s most eminent theologian. Saint Thomas, your life of the mind co-existed with a deep piety. Your writings defend the faith of those who have neither the time nor the gift for higher study. Help all those who teach in the Church to follow your example of humble and faithful inquiry into the highest truths.…
January 27: Saint Angela Merici, Virgin 1474–1540 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of disabled and physically challenged people and illnesses A holy woman tries to change the world one girl at a time Although not common, some older images and statues of Saint Francis of Assisi show him balancing three orbs on his shoulders. They appear to be globes, heavenly realms, or the earth, the moon, and the sun. But the three orbs actually represent the three orders in the Franciscan family: the first order for men, the second order for women, and the third order for the laity who desire to live by the Franciscan Rule. Today’s saint, Angela Merici, was a Third Order Franciscan, a lay woman who followed a strict rule of Franciscan life outside of a convent. Angela’s holiness, mystical experiences, and leadership skills ultimately led her beyond her Franciscan commitment to found her own community of “virgins in the world” dedicated to the education of vulnerable girls or, in modern parlance, at-risk youths. She placed the community under the patronage of Saint Ursula. The community, after Angela’s death, was formally recognized as the Ursulines and gained such renown for their schools that they came to be known as the female Jesuits. Saint Angela saw the risk that uneducated girls in her native region of Northern Italy would end up being abused sexually or financially and sought to counter these possible outcomes through education. She gathered a like-minded group of virgins around her into a “company,” a military word also used by Saint Ignatius in founding his “Company of Jesus” around the same time. Saint Angela organized her city into districts which reported to “colonels” who oversaw the education and general welfare of the poor girls under their care. Saint Angela’s cooperators did not understand their dedicated virginity as a failure to find a husband or a rejection of religious life in a convent. They emulated the early Christian orders of virgins as spouses of Christ who served the children of their Beloved in the world. Living in the first part of the sixteenth century, Saint Angela was far ahead of her time. Teaching orders of nuns became normative in the Church in later centuries, staffing Catholic schools throughout the world. But nuns did not always do this. This practice had to start with someone, and that someone was today’s saint. Bonds of faith, love of God, and a common purpose knitted her followers together into a religious family that served the spiritual and physical welfare of those who no one else cared about. Women make a house a home, and Saint Angela sought to change society one woman at a time by infusing every home with Christian virtue emanating from the heart of the woman who ran it. She trained future wives, mothers, and educators in their youth, when they were still able to be formed. The Papal Bull of Pope Paul III in 1544, which canonically recognized her community, stated of Saint Angela Merici: “She had such a thirst and hunger for the salvation and good of her neighbor that she was disposed and most ready to give not one, but a thousand lives, if she had had so many, for the salvation even of the least…with maternal love, she embraced all creatures...Her words...were spoken with such unheard of effectiveness that everyone felt compelled to say: ‘Here is God.’” Saint Angela Merici, infuse in our hearts that same love for which you left worldly joys to seek out the vulnerable and the forgotten. Help us to educate the ignorant and to share with the less fortunate, not only for their spiritual and material benefit but for our everlasting salvation.…
January 26: Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops First Century Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red Patron Saints of stomach disorders Saint Paul could not do it alone Today’s saints were two bishops from the apostolic period of the Church, those decades immediately following the death and resurrection of Our Lord. In this grace-filled time, the Apostles and Saint Paul were carving the first deep furrows into the pagan soil they traveled, planting in the earth the rich seeds of Christian faith which succeeding bishops would later water, tend, and harvest. Little is certainly known about today’s saints apart from references to them in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of Saint Paul. But these numerous references are enough. The generations of theologians, bishops, martyrs, and saints who lived in the post-apostolic period give universal and consistent witness to the veracity of Paul’s letters and the events they recount. There are theological, more than historical, lessons to be taken from the lives and ministry of today’s saints. Saints Timothy and Titus were apostles of an Apostle. They shared in the ministry of Saint Paul, who had a direct connection to Christ through a miraculous occurrence on the road to Damascus, a feast commemorated, not coincidentally, the day prior to today’s memorial. Timothy, Titus, and many others, known and unknown, carried out on a local level a priestly ministry which Paul engaged in on a more regional level. It was Saint Paul’s practice, and probably that of the other surviving Apostles, to appoint assistants wherever they went who acted with the authority of the Apostle who appointed them. These assistants were variously called priests or bishops, terms that were often interchangeable. Deacons, of course, shared in the priestly ministry too, but more as assistants to bishops. A direct connection to an Apostle, either through his personal ministry or through a group or delegate he appointed (through an ordination rite), was fundamental to establishing a church. Accredited leaders were needed. This is a constant theme in the writings of Saint Paul. No Apostle—no Church. The body could not be separated from the head and still survive. In other words, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel always—always—occurred contemporaneously with the foundation of a solidly structured local Church. The modern tendency to emphasize the internal, personal, and spiritual message of Christ over the external, public, hierarchical Church which carries His message is a dichotomy unknown to early Christianity. For early Christians and faithful Christians still today, the Church carries a message and is itself a message. The content of the Gospel and the form of the Gospel community go hand in hand. The constant, amoeba-like splitting of Protestant communities attests to the inevitable divisions which result when the Church and its message are separated. A later tradition holds that Saint Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Equally ancient traditions state that Saint John the Evangelist retreated to Ephesus before dying on the island of Patmos, and that Mary followed John to Ephesus, living in a house above the town. It is possible, then, that Saint Timothy drank from the deepest wells of the Christian tradition. Sitting around the warm glow of a fire at night, he may have heard about the life of Christ from the very lips of the most important witnesses—Mary and John. We can imagine that Timothy heard about many of the unwritten events of Christ’s life from Saint John. It is this same John who ends his Gospel by writing that “there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn 21:25). Timothy and Titus were bearers of the very oldest Christian traditions. Saints Timothy and Titus, through your lives dedicated to the missions, you helped lay the foundations of Christianity, and carried on the priestly ministry of Jesus by preaching, teaching, and governing His flock. Help us to be as bold now as you were then.…
مرحبًا بك في مشغل أف ام!
يقوم برنامج مشغل أف أم بمسح الويب للحصول على بودكاست عالية الجودة لتستمتع بها الآن. إنه أفضل تطبيق بودكاست ويعمل على أجهزة اندرويد والأيفون والويب. قم بالتسجيل لمزامنة الاشتراكات عبر الأجهزة.
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