Benedictine saints & blesseds – Page 18

Saint Mechtild (of Magdeburg)

“Then shall I leap into love”

I cannot dance, Lord, unless you
lead me.

If you want me to leap with abandon,

You must intone the song.

Then I
shall leap into love, From love into knowledge,

From knowledge into enjoyment,

And from enjoyment beyond all
human sensations.

There I want to remain, yet want also to circle higher still.

According to some scholars, this Cistercian-Benedictine nun and poet, theologian and mystic was the inspiration of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Interesting that her liturgical memorial comes at the end of the liturgical calendar given her visions of heaven, hell and purgatory! Some people register a doubt about her status as a canonized saint in the Church but she is remembered in the Roman Martyrology (2004) and venerated as such by many, including the Cistercian-Benedictines and that’s good enough for me. The Martyrology speaks of Saint Mechtild as a woman of exquiste doctrine and humility, and supernatural gifts of mystical contemplation.

The prayer for Saint Mechtild may be found here and her biography here.

Saint Gertrude the Great

As the Church prays:

O Lord, You loved to dwell in the pure heart of Your virgin Gertrude. Through her merits and prayers please wash away the stains from our hearts so that they, too, may become worthy dwelling places for Your divine Majesty.

Even though Saint Gertrude is little known in the US, her optional memorial is observed today; in Germany her feast day is November 17th. Saint Gertrude is one of the few saints with the title “the great” as she is most known for making the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus available to us. She, there is a precursor to Saint Margaret Mary and Saint Faustina. Saint Gertrude also wrote a method of prayer called the Spiritual Exercises. More on Saint Gertrude can be read here and here.

All Saints of the Benedictine Order

Blessed shall you be when men hate you, and when they shut you out, and reproach you, and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and exult, for behold your reward is great in heaven.

We beseech Thee, O Lord, grant that the example of the holy Monks [and nuns] may stir us to a better life, so that we may imitate the actions of those whose solemnity we celebrate.

Saint Wilfrid

O God, by Whose grace blessed Wilfrid Thy Bishop did shine with such evident signs of holiness: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may ever be defended by his protection as by his teaching we have been taught to desire heavenly things.

The 7th century Benedictine saint, Wilfrid, who was abbot of his community, elected of bishop of York and who was a wildly talented man and influential is commemorated today. While relatively unknown in this part of the world, he is well-known in England because his tireless zeal for God’s Kingdom. He is credited for acquiring land, building monasteries and churches, patronage of secular and sacred art, and for moving the Church in England from an independent Church to one more obedient to the authority of Rome. The veneration of Wilfrid ought not to be forgotten. Today, let us pray for the Church in England, including the bishops and Benedictines there. Regarding the Benedictines, I am particularly thinking of the monks of Ampleforth, Douai, and Downside Abbeys and the nuns at Stanbrook and Tyburn.

Blessed Columba Marmion

God, our Father, you called your servant, Columba, to the
monastic life. You bestowed on him the grace to understand the mysteries of
your Son and to make him known as the ideal for all who have been baptized.
Grant that we may learn from his example to live in Christ by opening our
hearts in joy to the Spirit of your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, One God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Church observes
the feast of Blessed Columba Marmion today. He was an Irishman who became a monk in Belgium,
a diocesan priest who fell in love with the Benedictine way life, its emphasis on seeking God and who served as abbot. Dom Columba died on January
30, 1923. Marmion’s liturgical memorial, however, is observed not on his anniversary
of death but on the anniversary of receiving the abbatial blessing, October 3,
1909. At that time the first Sunday of October was the Solemnity of the Most Holy Rosary
of the Blessed Virgin Mary; in this era the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is
observed on October 7th.

Two pieces to reflect up on…

The
whole of the Christian life consists in carrying Christ to birth within us and
in having Him live there’. This, of course is nothing more than a paraphrase of St. Paul’s
injunction in Gal. 4:19: ‘until Christ is formed in you’. For Marmion this is not just our
final goal, it is our daily, essential task: to form Christ within us, through the Graces of the
sacraments and our daily encounter with God in prayer. (Mark Tierney O.S.B,
“The Life and Times of Columba Marmion”)

And

… Revelation teaches us that there is
an ineffable paternity in God. God is a Father: that is the fundamental dogma
which all the others suppose, a magnificent dogma which leaves the reason
confounded, but ravishes faith with delight and transports holy souls. God is a
Father. Eternally, long before the created light rose upon the world, God
begets a Son to whom He communicates His nature, His perfections, His beatitude
His life, to beget is to communicate [By the gift of a similar nature ] being
and life. You are My Son this day have I begotten You [Ps 2:7; Heb 1:5; 5:5],
from the womb before the day – star, I begot you [Ps 110:3]. In God, then, is
life, life communicated by the Father … Creatures can only lisp when they
speak of such mysteries… the Father, and the Son, with one same and indivisible
Divine Nature, and both, although distinct from one another [on account of
their personal properties, ‘of being Father’ and ‘of being Son’] are united in
a powerful, substantial embrace of love, whence proceeds that Third Person, Whom
Revelation calls by a mysterious name: the Holy Ghost.

Such is as far as faith
can know it, the secret of the inmost life of God; the fullness and the
fruitfulness of this life are the source of the incommensurable bliss that the
ineffable Society of the three Divine Persons possesses.

And now God – not in
order to add to His plenitude, but by it to enrich other beings – exceeds, as
it were, His Paternity. God decrees to call creatures to share this Divine
life, so transcendent that God alone has the right to live it, this eternal
life communicated by the Father to the Only Son, and by them, to the Holy
Spirit … To these mere creatures God will give the condition and sweet name
of children. By nature, God has only one Son; by love, He wills to have an innumerable
multitude: that is the grace of supernatural Adoption. (Dom Columba Marmion,
OSB, Spiritual Writings. Ed. P.
Lethiellex. Maredesous Abbey, 1998.)

A very brief note on the canonization
process of Dom Columba can be read here.

Saint Gregory the Great

Gregory was a mirror for monks, a father to the City, beloved of all the world.

O God, Who did bestow upon the soul of Thy servant Gregory the rewards of eternal happiness, mercifully grant that we who are oppressed by the weight of our sins, may be relieved through his intercession.

“Son of man, I have set you as a watchman over the house of Israel.” The Lord here calls the preacher a watchman. A watchman stands on a height so that he can see what is coming. So, too, those who set as guardians over people ought to stand on a height by their manner of life so that their watchful care may benefit others.

It is hard for me to say these words. They wound me, for my speech is not worthy of my role as preacher, and my life does not measure up to what I preach. I do not deny my guilt; I see my sloth and negligence. Perhaps a loving Judge will be moved to pardon me because I admit my fault.

When I lived in the monastery, I could avoid idle talk and keep my mind almost continuously fixed on prayer. But once I accepted the pastoral burden, many things required and divided my attention, so that my former recollection became impossible. I am forced now to discuss the affairs of churches and monasteries and even quite often, the lives and actions of individuals. I must deal with civic business, barbarian invasions, and the wolves that prey on the flock committed to my care.

When the mind is so divided and harried, how can it return to itself and recollect itself for preaching? How is it to avoid withdrawing from that ministry?

Who am I, then? What kind of watchman am I, when I myself do not stand on the heights for preaching but lie low in the valley of weakness? Still, the omnipotent Creator and Redeemer of humankind can give me, unworthy though I am, lofty inspirations and an effective tongue; for it is out of love of Christ that I do not spare myself in speaking about him.

(from the Homilies on Ezekiel by Pope Saint Gregory the Great)

And one more comment by Gregory us …on sacred Scripture,

The Holy Bible is like a mirror before our mind’s eye. In it we see our inner face. From the Scriptures we can learn our spiritual deformities and beauties. And there too we discover the progress we are making and how far we are from perfection. (Gregory the Great)

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard, the mellifluous Doctor, a friend of the Spouse, wonderful herald of the Virgin Mary, shepherd in this bright vale, did shine brilliantly.

O God, Who did give Thy people blessed Bernard as a minister of eternal salvation, we beseech Thee; grant that we may deserve to have him as an intercessor in heaven, whom we had as a teacher of life on earth.

“Take away free will, and there is nothing left to be saved. Take away grace, and there is no way of saving. Salvation can only be accomplished when both cooperate.”

Saint Alice of Schaerbeek

Saint Alice of Schaerbeek, a 13th century
Cistercian-Benedictine nun, was known for her intense love of Christ. Since
1702 the Cistercians have been remembering Saint Alice liturgically.

She’s the
patron saint of those living with leprosy, the blind and paralyzed.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury

O God, Who by the preaching and wondrous deeds of blessed
Augustine, Thy Confessor and Bishop, did vouchsafe to enlighten the English
nation with the light of true faith; grant that his intercession the
hearts of the erring may return to
the unity of Thy truth, and that we may be one mind in doing Thy holy will.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604), was the first bishop
of Canterbury, sent by Pope Saint Gregory the Great to evangelize the pagan
English peoples.

Saint Augustine had been a monk of Saint Gregory’s monastery
on the Caelian Hill in Rome. In 595/596 he was sent to England first as the abbot of a group of
monks. He established himself at Canterbury, the capital of the then powerful
Kingdom of Kent, and in time baptized King Ethelbert.

Augustine is credited for laying the very foundation of the Ecclesia Anglicana because of his pastoral vision. That he was a close associate to Gregory the Great one thinks that the friendship had some role in the former’s zeal for the Kingdom. Augustine’s method of evangelizing England was not notable: he sent missionaries to all parts of England –how else would you preach the Gospel. But what was notable was his establishing Benedictine monastic life there, especially adjacent to the cathedral. So, looking at English ecclesial life you will notice the pattern of cathedrals have abbeys attached to them.

Saint Bede the Venerable

O God, Who has glorified Thy Church by the learning of
blessed Bede, Thy Confessor and Doctor; mercifully grant to Thy servants that
they may ever be enlightened by his wisdom and aided by his merits.

Catholics in America are generally unfamiliar with Saint
Bede the Venerable. The Venerable Bede as he is often called, is rightly known as the “Father of English
History” and his lasting work, History of the English Church and People,
remains the basis of modern knowledge of the early period of the Church in
England. Church has honored Bede with the titles of Confessor and Doctor of the
Church.

Bede’s History is a decisive synthesis of the Celtic,
Gregorian and ‘Benedictine’ heritage.

The medieval scholar Mary R. Price said: ‘Under Bede’s
eyes, as he toiled away in his cell,the divided peoples of the “island
lying in the sea” were being welded into a nation, and through his
eyes and by his pen we can see this happening. We see also the fusion of the
free-lance monasticism of the Celtic monks with the more regular
discipline of the Benedictine rule, of the Celtic Church with the
Roman.’

Another scholar who knows Bede’s work well says: ‘The
centuries on which Bede concentrates are a crucial and formative period
in our island history, during which the future shape and pattern of the
English Church and nation were beginning to emerge.’

The Church universal is grateful for Bede’s interpretative
and synthesizing work that these key formative centuries are coherent and present to us as they give us a light on the form, life and significance without
parallel.

The rigorous approach to the facts of history in his
narration is widely acknowledged. He explicitly offers his own
theological interpretation of the history he is treating, and clearly offers
a monastic reading ecclesial history in the light of salvation history.
But what else would you expect of a monk?