Category: Saints

St Stephen –archdeacon

The Martyrdom of St. Stephen the Archdeacon

This day marks the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the Archdeacon and the first martyr (protomartyr). St. Luke testified about him in the Acts of the Apostles saying, “Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8). The Jews envied him and seized him and brought him to the Council. They also set up false witnesses who said, “This man does not cease to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:12-13). And all who sat in the Council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel (Acts 6:13).

Then the high priest said, “Are these things so?” St. Stephen answered with convincing words and told them the history from Abraham to Moses. The coming out of Abraham from Haran, the birth and the circumcision of Isaac, Jacob and his sons and their selling of Joseph, and how Joseph revealed himself to his brothers. St. Stephen continued to narrate to them all the events until the building of the temple. He concluded by saying, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of Whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers; who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it” (Acts 7:51-53).

When they heard these things they were cut to their hearts, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran toward him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him.

They stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus receive my Spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he said this, he fell asleep (Acts 7:51-60). Devout men carried St. Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him.

May his prayers be with us. Amen.

(Coptic Synaxarion)

The Massabki Brothers

Today, the Pope canonized the Massabki Brothers, martyrs. They are called martyrs of faith and unity.

The Massabki Brothers are Maronites: Blessed Emanuele Ruiz and 7 Companions, of the Order of Friars Minor, and Francesco, Abdel Mooti, and Raffaele Massabki, Lay Faithful, killed in hatred of the Faith in Damascus, Syria between July 9 and 10, 1860. The brothers and companions refused to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam. The 11 were brutally killed, some beheaded with sabers and axes, others stabbed or clubbed to death.

July 10 is the liturgical memorial for the Massabki Brothers on the Maronite calendar and that of the Custody of the Holy Land.

Saint Massabki Brothers and Companions, pray for us.

Blessed Bartolo Longo

Today is the liturgical memory of Blessed Bartolo Longo (1841-1926).

Blessed Bartolo is dear to the Knights and Dames of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. To date, he’s only lay member of the Order to be beatified. He’s an example for us because of his practice of constant prayer, active charity, and love for the most needy. From the Italian City of Pompeii, a city that he helped regenerate thanks to the grace of recitation of the Rosary, Blessed Bartolo continues to inspire initiatives of prayer and charity worldwide.

Let’s ask him to intercede for the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Blessed Bartolo Longo, pray for us.

St Ignatius of Loyola

“God freely created us so that we might know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him forever. God’s purpose in creating us is to draw forth from us a response of love and service here on earth, so that we may attain our goal of everlasting happiness with him in heaven. All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully.”

—St. Ignatius Loyola

Blessed Vilmos Apor

Vilmos (William) Apor, born 1892, was a Hungarian bishop who earned a special reputation for his service to the poor, especially during the months of hardship that came toward and at the end of World War II. Named Bishop of Gÿor in 1941, he chose as his motto: “The Cross strengthens the weak and makes the strong gentle.” During the many air raids he opened his home to those whose houses had been destroyed. When Russian troops entered the city in 1945, many women including religious took refuge in his episcopal residence. On Good Friday 1945 three Russian soldiers came to the residence and demanded that the women be taken to their barracks. Bishop Apor refused and placed himself in front of the women. One of the Russians shot and wounded him. Out of fear they then fled, leaving the women unmolested. Bishop Apor lived in great agony for three days and died on 2 April, Easter Monday.

Blessed William Apor, Bishop and Martyr, was a Conventual Chaplain ad honorem of the Order of Malta.

Collect: Almighty and Eternal God, through your grace, Bishop William, by courageously shedding his blood for his flock, earned a martyr’s crown. Grant that we, despite the difficulties of our daily lives, may do your will and offer our good works for the salvation of our brothers and sisters. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Blessed Vilmos Apor, PRAY FOR US!

*from the biography

Cyril of Jerusalem keeps our eyes on salvation

There’s no reason we would know about Cyril of Jerusalem, a bishop and a liturgical theologian and ultimately a saint. For those of us who make the claim to be liturgical historians, Cyril’s a big deal. Liturgy people know the 4th-century pilgrim Egeria who happened to be in Jerusalem to witness the Holy Week and Easter liturgies led by Bishop Cyril. Egeria is the earliest record we have of the liturgical rites of the time. Her descriptions has long fascinated and puzzling. Egeria’s eye-witness account was a progression (and a procession) of several days of liturgy as it was lived then; the witness she gives the nature of the promise of life given be the Lord. What Egeria and thus Cyril did was to recount the narrative of creation and salvation history as known through the lens of the Lord’s Paschal Mystery, i.e., the Lord’s passion, death, resurrection, and ascension.

The people in front of Cyril were reminded that by Easter all was done. No, he pointed us to think differently about the questions of life and the longing for God in a different way. Cyril reminds us, even in 2024, that we are made for a Promise –that is, eternal life– that they we are now just getting started. Cyril tells us that with Jesus Christ, Love incarnate, is here to redeem us.

As it is stated elsewhere, we should never think of Lent as a stand-alone season. When Lent is over it’s not really over; Lent is the preamble to a lifetime of reflection on Jesus, his Gospel and the sacred duties (Tradition) to which he calls each of us.

The importance of Cyril for us today is that he brings to the table the awareness that we are a people of a promise, of expectation and desire. The awareness is that of truly living, fully flourishing as human being. We are human beings where desire, expectation, promise give us the power, the stimulus to move ourselves forward out a negativity or a nihilism to truth and life. He makes me look at myself with wonder.

St Peter Damian

Today is the feast of the fascinating Saint Peter Damian, monk, theologian, bishop and doctor of the Church. He was a reluctant abbot of his community; by 1057 Stephen IX twisted Peter’s arm hard enough for him to give up his monastic desert and made him Cardinal-bishop of Ostia. Never could Peter give up church governance.

One Peter’s biographers writes:

“St. Peter Damian fought simony with great vigor, and equally vigorously upheld clerical celibacy; and as he supported a severely ascetical, semi-eremitical life for monks, so he was an encourager of common life for the secular clergy. He was a man of great vehemence in all he said and did; it has been said of him that “his genius was to exhort and impel to the heroic, to praise striking achievements and to record edifying examples…an extraordinary force burns in all that he wrote”. In spite of his severity, St. Peter Damian could treat penitents with mildness and indulgence where charity and prudence required it.” Not what you hear too often. We need confessors to be better of their craft: mild, charitable, smart, AND prudent! St Peter, helps us.

My friend J. Michael Thompson wrote this hymn for the feast.

1. Preach the Word! Proclaim the Kingdom!
Whether welcome or disdained,
Tell the world of Jesus’ coming—
Patiently proclaim His Name!

2. When sound teaching is deserted,
When all novelties are sought,
When the Truth is scorned for fables,
Then this lesson must be brought:

3. Bravely work in face of trials;
Make the Lord’s Good News your life!
Serve the Lord by serving others,
Faithful bide through ev’ry strife.

4. Thus Saint Peter, in his teaching,
Sought to follow Paul’s command.
Hearing him, we seek to follow,
Holding to the Master’s hand.

5. Glory be to God the Father,
Glory be to God the Son,
Glory be to God the Spirit:
Ever Three and ever One!

J. Michael Thompson,
Copyright © 2010,
World Library Publications