O God, source and origin of all fatherhood, who kept the
Martyrs Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and his companions faithful to the Cross of your
Son, even to the shedding of their blood, grant, through their intercession
that, spreading your love among our brothers and sisters, we may be your
children both in name and in truth.
Saint Andrew and his 117 companions are known as the Martyrs of Vietnam, killed for their faith in Christ between 1745 and 1862, but these people are few in number compared with the vast number of people thought to have been persecuted. Saint Andrew was a secular priest who was killed in 1839. Among the companions there were 8 bishops, 50 priests, 59 lay faithful of Vietnamese, Spanish and French nationalities. Pope John Paul II canonized these saints in 1988.
How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of
God. Life in immortality! Brightness in righteousness! Truth in full assurance!
Faith in confidence! Temperance in holiness! And all this God has subjected to
our understandings: What therefore will those things be which he has prepared
for them that wait for him? Only the Creator and Father of spirits, the Most
Holy, knows both the greatness and beauty of them. Let us therefore strive with
all earnestness, that we may be found in the number of those that wait for him,
and that we may receive the reward which he has promised. But how, beloved,
shall we do this? We must fix our minds by faith towards God, and seek those
things that are pleasing and acceptable to him. We must perform those things
that are agreeable to his holy will and follow the way of truth, casting off
from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, together with all covetousness,
strife, evil manners, deceit, whispering, detractions, all hatred of God, pride
and boasting, or vain-glory and ambition; For they that do these things are
odious to God, and not only they that do them, but also all such as approve of
those that do them. (St Clement I to the Corinthians 17)
The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound
of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that
later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can
correctly evaluate the arguments. For me an unforgettable experience was the
Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death
of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the
last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away,
we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: "Anyone who
has heard this, knows that the faith is true." The music had such an
extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by
the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness,
but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in
the composer's inspiration. (Message to Communion and Liberation, August 2002,
Rimini, Italy; text available May 2, 2005, Zenit.org)
Saint Rose Philippine was called "the woman who is always praying." Her singular focus on Christ and the mission won her esteem among those who found the Christian Gospel foreign. She is buried in St. Charles, MO, having died there on this date in 1852 at the age of 83. She lived the Lord's parable of the Pearl of Great Price.
Beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1940 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988, Duchesne is the US founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart, an order of religious women who were first founded in France by Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat.
The privilege of having the relics of one's patron coming to your home is a singular experience. Friends who are seminarians at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary welcomed their patron's relics in solemn ceremony this past weekend.
O Lord and Bridegroom of your Church,
We praise you for this virgin wise
Who, lighted lamp in hand, went forth
To preach her Groom and win his prize!
From early youth she heard your voice
And longed to work in Asian lands;
But "in the west you'll find your east,"
The pope said, firm in his commands.
So from her home, Francesca came
That she might care for those who left
Italian homes to seek for work,
But in the New World were bereft.
She founded schools and hospitals
And orphan homes, and traveled wide;
Despite ill health and stature small
Her works became our Church's pride.
She labored long with sisters brave,
And soon her congregation spread
From North to Southern hemisphere,
Although she sailed the seas with dread.
In labors long and hard, she worked
That Christ her Lord might be well served
In poor and sick and ignorant,
That they might feel God's love deserved.
O Trinity of love most great,
O Father, Son, and Spirit blest,
With Frances and with all your saints
Bring us, at length, to heaven's rest.
J. Michael Thompson
Copyright © 2009, World Library Publications
LM; DUKE STREET, ROCKINGHAM NEW, HAMBURG
Hear the hymn we raise in gladness, Echoing the ages long!
78 78 77; GROSSER GOTT, or JESU MEINE ZUVERSICHT
You may be curious to know the saints and blessed Pope Benedict references in Verbum Domini, or whose work he used.
The Pope said, "The interpretation of sacred Scripture would remain incomplete were it not to include listening to those who have truly lived the word of God: namely, the saints" (48).
And, "No sooner do I glance at the Gospel, but
immediately I breathe in the fragrance of the life of Jesus and I know where to
run. Every saint is like a ray of light streaming forth from the word of God..." (49).
Who are the saints?
"Read the divine Scriptures frequently; indeed, the sacred book should never be out of your hands. Learn there what you must teach."
The Church offers us today the life of someone salvation history has determined to be a significant figure in the proclamation of the Gospel. Pope Saint Leo the Great, a doctor of the Church helped the Church of his era develop orthodox thinking on the person of Jesus Christ that is standard theology today. He defended the two natures of Jesus Christ at the Council of Chalcedon. The Fathers of Chalcedon said, "Peter has spoken through Leo!"
The Pope advocated knowing the lives of the saints as a way of coming to know Christ, and to know how to live one's baptism. This video of Saint Josemaría Escrivá gives an excellent introduction to the life of a 20th century saint and founder of the lay movement of Opus Dei.
Saint Charles Borromeo's intercession is as much needed today as ever we needed it. He was an unexpected gift of God to his family and to the Church and we ask him to intercede for us. Some interesting points about the legacy of Saint Charles Borromeo, whose feast we celebrate today.
Today is the day since the time of Pope Gregory III that the Church has observed a day for all the saints ever recognized officially, and for those who are in the process of becoming listed saints in the martyrology, and certainly all those holy men and women who ever lived. Looking at the Roman Martyrology, the book that contains all the saints of the Church, but it doesn't list the all the Baptized. Hence, our feast day. There is a great dynamic of love that we observe today, but it should be a dynamic that we live every day of our lives. How many people, holy men and women have we known who touched out lives in great and small ways. I think of the various priests, and laity who promised to pray for me.
During his September visit to England, Pope Benedict boldly asked the young (indeed, all of us) to consider becoming saints and not to settle for something less than what we are made for. The value here, if you want to speak in this way, is that holiness is not for plastic people, people who have no sense of relationships, no concept of community, no understanding of the value of good friends. Holiness means taking ourselves seriously as loved people and worthy of friendship with the Lord and with another person; holiness is means setting aside distractions, sinful tendencies and the lack of attentiveness of God and what Jesus did for us. That is, Jesus' death and resurrection for love of us personally. It's taken me a long time to understand this point, and what the Pope has invited to, but there is solid, reliable truth in that God alone satisfies me. Which means, other things and mediocre relationships do not. Here is a portion of his homily:
What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy. He loves you much more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for you. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness.
Perhaps some of you have never thought about this before. Perhaps some of you think being a saint is not for you. Let me explain what I mean. When we are young, we can usually think of people that we look up to, people we admire, people we want to be like. It could be someone we meet in our daily lives that we hold in great esteem. Or it could be someone famous. We live in a celebrity culture, and young people are often encouraged to model themselves on figures from the world of sport or entertainment. My question for you is this: what are the qualities you see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What kind of person would you really like to be?
When I invite you to become saints, I am asking you not to be content with second best. I am asking you not to pursue one limited goal and ignore all the others. Having money makes it possible to be generous and to do good in the world, but on its own, it is not enough to make us happy. Being highly skilled in some activity or profession is good, but it will not satisfy us unless we aim for something greater still. It might make us famous, but it will not make us happy. Happiness is something we all want, but one of the great tragedies in this world is that so many people never find it, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple - true happiness is to be found in God. We need to have the courage to place our deepest hopes in God alone, not in money, in a career, in worldly success, or in our relationships with others, but in God. Only he can satisfy the deepest needs of our hearts.
Pope Benedict XVI17 September 2010
