August 2016 – Page 2

Leonie Martin

Earlier this week the postulator of the cause of canonization of Leonie Martin –nun of the Order of the Visitation, the daughter of Saints Zelie and Louis Martin, sister of Saint Thérèse, published an update on his recent work. The mortal remains of Sister Leonie was disinterred, given a new habit of the Visitation and placed in a glass coffin. Sister Leonie’s face was face was covered by a mask and work was done to stave-off the further decomposition. It is expected that the body of Sister Leonie will be entomb in the Chapel of the Visitation Monastery.

This is a supreme example where we help each other become saints. A significant grace of God! On this blog, and read elsewhere, it is frequently said that saints-beget-saints. How else could you explain how Sister Françoise-Thérèse’s parents and sister are saints and their influence on this member of her biological family?

There is a book entitled, 15 Days of Prayer with Leonie Martin. The book is only in French at the moment but this would be the title in English.

Let us pray for the canonization of the Servant of God Sister Françoise-Thérèse.

Faith and our true life

What is important above everything else, first and foremost, is faith: faith in the reality of the divine presence in and around us, bringing the acts of our will and mind up to the level of the true life to which Our Lord is calling us.

This act of faith, which transforms our destiny from a purely human one to one truly divine, is painful to nature, and calls for a heroism of which we would not be capable had not God already given us the grace to make the initial effort and maintain it. Utterly incapable d ourselves of making this first act, we could not do better than say with the father of the sick child: Lord, I do believe; help thou my unbelief (Mark 9:24).

The Prayer of Love and Silence
A Carthusian

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

We have the great Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary today! We honor the transitus of the Mother of God because what happened to her, is also the gift God wants to give to us. The commemoration of the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary is known as the Assumption because of the tradition that her body did not decay but that she was raised up, body and soul, into heaven. The Eastern Churches call today’s commemoration the Dormition, or falling asleep. The Assumption tradition was already present among right-believing/worshipping Christians in the sixth century. It was thought at the beginning of the 20th century that since that this doctrine so widespread and after consulting the views of the world’s bishops, Pope Pius XII formally and infallibly declared the doctrine of the Assumption to be part of the authentic and ancient dogma of the universal Church on 1 November 1950.

Saint Robert Bellarmino reflects: “And who, I ask, could believe that the ark of holiness, the dwelling place of the Word of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, could be reduced to ruin? My soul is filled with horror at the thought that this virginal flesh which had begotten God, had brought him into the world, had nourished and carried him, could have been turned into ashes or given over to be the food of worms.”

I think Father David Petras gives an important sum of the feast in this way: This is the mystery the ends of the earth celebrate today, for it has transformed the meaning of human life, and “through he holy Dormition, the world is given new life.”

St Maximillian Mary Kolbe

With the Church we pray:

O God, who filled the Priest and Martyr Saint Maximilian Kolbe with a burning love for the Immaculate Virgin Mary and with zeal for souls and love of neighbor, graciously grant, through his intercession, that, striving for your glory by eagerly serving others, we may be conformed, even until death, to your Son.

An excerpt from a letter by the saint:

Obedience is the one and the only way of wisdom and prudence for us to offer glory to God. If there were another, Christ would certainly have shown it to us by word and example. Scripture, however, summed up his entire life at Nazareth in the words: He was subject to them; Scripture set obedience as the theme of the rest of his life, repeatedly declaring that he came into the world to do his Father’s will. Let us love our loving Father with all our hearts. Let our obedience increase that love, above all when it requires us to surrender our own will. Jesus Christ crucified is our sublime guide toward growth in God’s love.

We will learn this lesson more quickly through the Immaculate Virgin, whom God has made the dispenser of his mercy. It is beyond all doubt that Mary’s will represents to us the will of God himself. By dedicating ourselves to her we become in her hands instruments of God’s mercy even as she was such an instrument in God’s hands. We should let ourselves be guided and led by Mary and rest quiet and secure in her hands. She will watch out for us, provide for us, answer our needs of body and spirit; she will dissolve all our difficulties and worries.

From a letter of Maximillian Mary Kolbe
(Scritti del P. Massimiliano M. Kolbe, Italian translation, vol. I, pt, 1 [Padua, 1971], 75-77, 166)

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal

“Should you fall even fifty times a day, never on any account should that surprise or worry you. Instead, ever so gently set your heart back in the right direction and practice the opposite virtue, all the time speaking words of love and trust to our Lord after you have committed a thousand faults, as much as if you had committed only one. Once we have humbled ourselves for the faults God allows us to become aware of in ourselves, we must forget them and go forward.”

Many of us have few personal connections with Saint Jane Frances (1572-1641) as the holy foundress –and the co-founder Saint Francis deSales– of the Order of the Visitation in 1610.. A native of Dijon, France, Jane Frances was a wife and mother and who united her sufferings with the Heart of Jesus.

There are monasteries of the Order of the Visitation around like the Georgetown Visitation, the Tyrringham Visitation, the Toledo Visitation, or the Brooklyn Visitation. In 2010, the Order celebrated 400 years of monastic witness and began a new era in their holy vocation.

The impression one gets from the Visitation Order is that while being serious contemplatives their stamina for a more traditional form of life is different and no less holy and inviting; the Visitation has a certain suppleness of life that is not easily explained –it needs to be experienced. The journey of a nun of the Visitation is accompanied with these words of the foundress: “Daughters of the Gospel, established especially to be imitators of the Sacred Heart of the Word Incarnate in His gentleness and humility. These virtues are, as it were, the foundation and basis of their Order, giving them the incomparable grace and privilege of bearing the title of Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, pray for us!

St Philomena

I don’t have a particularly strong devotion to Saint Philomela, but I do invoke her intercession from time-to-time. And seemingly go to Saint Philomena on odd occasions. I do seem to have a natural connection with the saint coming from the greater New Haven area where there are plenty of older Italian women with the name of Philomela, though most go by “Phil.”

Over the years, however, Saint Philomela’s name surfaces, as it did today. One of the notes about the saint read thus,

“In 1802 the remains of a young woman were found in the catacomb of Saint Priscilla on the Via Salaria, Rome, Italy. It was covered by stones, the symbols on which indicated that the body was a martyr named Saint Philomena. The bones were exhumed, cataloged, and effectively forgotten since there was so little known about the person.

“In 1805 Canon Francis de Lucia of Mugnano, Italy was in the Treasury of the Rare Collection of Christian Antiquity (Treasury of Relics) in the Vatican. When he reached the relics of Saint Philomena he was suddenly struck with a spiritual joy, and requested that he be allowed to enshrine them in a chapel in Mugnano. After some disagreements, settled by the cure of Canon Francis following prayers to Philomena, he was allowed to translate the relics to Mugnano. Miracles began to be reported at the shrine including cures of cancer, healing of wounds, and the Miracle of Mugnano in which Venerable Pauline Jaricot was cured a severe heart ailment overnight. Philomena became the only person recognized as a Saint solely on the basis of miraculous intercession as nothing historical was known of her except her name and the evidence of her martyrdom.

Our Catholic devotion to Saint Philomela:

• Pope Leo XII granted permission for the erection of altars and churches in her honor
• Pope Gregory XVI authorized her public veneration, and named her patroness of the Living Rosary
• The cure of Blessed Pius IX, while archbishop of Imola, was attributed to Philomena; in 1849, Pope Pius named her patroness of the Children of Mary
• Pope Leo XIII approved the Confraternity of Saint Philomena, and raised it to an Archconfraternity
• Pope Pius X raised the Archconfraternity to a Universal Archconfraternity, and named Saint John Vianney its patron
• Saint John Vianney himself called Philomena the New Light of the Church Militant, and had a strong and well-known devotion to her

And as Providence would have it, there is a grammar school near the Benedictine Abbey of St Gregory the Great and Portsmouth Abbey School, Portsmouth, RI, named for the Saint, Saint Philomena School.

St Clare of Assisi

From a letter from Saint Clare of Assisi, virgin, to Saint Agnes of Prague:

Happy indeed is she who is granted a place at the divine banquet, for she may cling with her inmost heart to him whose beauty eternally awes the blessed hosts of heaven; to him whose love inspires love, whose contemplation refreshes, whose generosity satisfies, whose gentleness delights, whose memory shines sweetly as the dawn; to him whose fragrance revives the dead, and whose glorious vision will bless all the citizens of that heavenly Jerusalem. For his is the splendor of eternal glory, the brightness of eternal light, and the mirror without cloud.

Queen and bride of Jesus Christ, look into that mirror daily and study well your reflection, that you may adorn yourself, mind and body, with an enveloping garment of every virtue, and thus find yourself attired in flowers and gowns befitting the daughter and most chaste bride of the king on high. In this mirror blessed poverty, holy humility and ineffable love are also reflected. With the grace of God the whole mirror will be your source of contemplation.

Behold, I say, the birth of this mirror. Behold his poverty even as he was laid in the manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. What wondrous humility, what marvelous poverty! The King of angels, the Lord of heaven and earth resting in a manger! Look more deeply into the mirror and meditate on his humility, or simply on his poverty. Behold the many labors and sufferings he endured to redeem the human race. Then, in the depths of this very mirror, ponder his unspeakable love which caused him to suffer on the wood of the cross and to endure the most shameful kind of death. The mirror himself, from his position on the cross, warned passersby to weigh carefully this act, as he said: All of you who pass by this way, behold and see if there is any sorrow like mine. Let us answer his cries and lamentations with one voice and one spirit: I will be mindful and remember, and my soul will be consumed within me. In this way, queen of the king of heaven, your love will burn with an ever brighter flame.

Consider also his indescribable delights, his unending riches and honors, and sigh for what is beyond your love and heart’s content as you cry out: Draw me on! We will run after you in the perfume of your ointment, heavenly spouse. Let me run and not faint until you lead me into your wine cellar; your left hand rests under my head, your right arm joyfully embraces me, and you kiss me with the sweet kiss of your lips. As you rest in this state of contemplation, remember your poor mother and know that I have indelibly written your happy memory into my heart, for you are dearer to me than all the others.

Father Patrick Ryan, Servant of God

Sainthood causes are always very interesting to me. For one, they show how the Gospel and the Sacraments incarnated in a particular Church or a country. Every saint has a history and a personal spiritual genealogy given particularly by the Trinity for reasons of sanctification. The USA has several saints and blesseds, lots of venerables and servants of God. A recent one, Father Patrick Ryan, is the latest Servant of God.

Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, TN writes:

Yesterday (8/9/2016) I signed documents that God willing will lead to the eventual canonization of a priest who served in East Tennessee, Father Patrick Ryan. This remarkable priest, born in Ireland took care of the sick during an outbreak of Yellow Fever in Chattanooga during the 1870s. He served then at what is now known as the Basilica of Sts Peter and Paul. When others abandoned the sick, he stayed around but eventually he himself died from Yellow Fever. He was known for his holiness and pastoral care. I will share more in months ahead about the case of this man whom now is being considered for his holiness as a Saint of God. The Vatican has under recognized his holiness by allowing the process to begin. And so yesterday, with their approval and my signature giving my assent as the bishop, he is now known under the title of “Servant of God”!

Bring your prayer intentions to the Servant of God Father Patrick Ryan so that he will bring them to the Lord.

St Lawrence

The martyr with a sense of humor, St Lawrence is honored today by the Church. He was roasted on a gridiron. This little piece of Chant gives voice to the saint:

“Blessed Lawrence, while burning on the grid-iron,
said to the impious tyrant:
‘This side is done, turn me over and then eat;
the riches of the Church, which you demand,
have been carried into the heavenly treasury by the hands of the poor.'”

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (in history she is known as Edith Stein). The Church honors her with the title of Virgin and Martyr due to her vocation as a nun and one killed for belief in Christian faith.

Stein was born on October 12, 1891, in Breslau, Poland. Her family was Jewish. By 1922, after reading the saints, in particular, Saint Teresa of Avila, and on matters in the Catholic faith, she was baptized at the Cologne Cathedral. Eleven years later she entered the Carmelite Order in Cologne before being sent to the Carmel in Echt, Holland. With her sister Rose, Teresa was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. There she died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of fifty-one. Stein was beatified in 1987 and canonized on October 11, 1998.

It is said that she made a claim about Husserl that “Whoever seeks truth seeks God, whether he knows it or not.” Professor Husserl was not one to speak about his religious faith because he wanted to maintain a separation between faith and reason. Yet, we know from experience, that faith and reason go hand-in-hand. Catholics ought to take a lesson here: a person who claims Christian faith faith can not be diffident reading the same. One can say with a degree of certainty that Stein’s philosophical research was one of a constant quest for God. Saint Teresa Benedicta’s witness is that whoever seeks truth through philosophy seeks God, because God is Truth. We therefore hold that that whoever seeks truth is, in fact, seeking God. There is a primacy of faith and reason in the Catholic mind.