Saints – Page 39

Saint Roch

Saint Roch (+1327) is a patron of the sick. He knew first hand the sufferings sick people face, and how the illness, though a cross, makes a bridge to something greater.

Saint Roch was a layman who followed the good example of Saint Francis of Assisi, and it is said that he was a member of the Secular Franciscans though there are no records attesting to this and yet the Franciscans observe his liturgical memorial on August 17.

Catholic healthcare was emboldened in the time following Roch’s death with various hospice works and groups gathering as a confraternity to assist the professionals and families. Many were healed of their diseases through Saint Roch’s intercession.

Blessings on my friend, Father Matthew Rocco Mauriello and his parish, Saint Roch, Greenwich, CT.

Saint Arnold of Soissons, patron of hop pickers, beer brewers

I didn’t know until I saw the following post on the Daylesford Abbey FB page:

Today we remember Saint Arnold of Soissons (1040–1087), the patron saint of hop-pickers and beer brewers. Arnold, born in Belgium, founded the Abbey of St. Peter in Oudenburg. At the abbey, he began to brew beer, as essential in medieval life as water. He encouraged local peasants to drink beer, instead of the contaminated village water, due to its “gift of health.” During the process of brewing, the water was boiled and thus, unknown to all, freed of pathogens.

As one would have thought, a Benedictine monk perfected beer making. Saint Arnold did good work for the health of his people through brewing beer.

Saint Arnold, pray for hop pickers, beer brewers, and for all of us who enjoy a good beer.

Saint Lawrence

The liturgical and pious legend tells us that when the Deacon Lawrence was asked by the Emperor Valerian and civil authorities to turn over the Church’s treasures (money, vessels, chalices, clothing, etc.), Lawrence gathered the poor, elderly and weak presenting them as the Church’s as the treasures. The holy deacon had the ecclesiastical position that today we would call archdeacon, the one deacon who attended to the material affairs of the Church. Like his mentor Sixtus II and bishop (whose feast was celebrated a few days ago), Lawrence was met his Lord and God with a martyr’s love. Tradition tells us that he was martyred on a grid iron over flames, i.e., BBQ.

Like our current Holy Father, based on the gospel and the Jesuit charism, he has lifted our awareness for the marginalized showing us how very central to our gospel living these gifts are. Let us pray for a deeper love for the poor.

Saint Lawrence is buried in a basilica church dedicated to him outside the original walls of Rome. It’s also the place where Pope Pius IX is buried.

On this feast of the Sainted Deacon Lawrence, let’s pray for all deacons.

Saint Lawrence, pray for us.

Blessed Martyrs of Nowogrodek, the 70th anniversary of their murder

A group of eleven Sisters of he Holy Family of Nazareth were murdered by the Nazis in exchange for 120 condemned citizens of Nowogródek, current day Belarus.

Sister Stella and her companions were murdered on this date, 1 August 1943 by the Gestapo in Novogródek, Hrodzyenskaya voblasts’, Belarus.

Invited by the bishop of the area to come serve the Church in the village of Novogródek in 1929, the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth were well received by the people.

Tensions ran high with the Nazi occupation. When it became clear that the sacrifice of life was imminent, the Sisters in conversation with their chaplain, Father Zienkiewicz, said, “My God, if sacrifice if life is needed, accept it from us and spare those who have families. We are even praying for this intention.”

Blessed John Paul beatified the sisters on 5 March 2000.

The Blessed Martyrs are stilled remembered with devotion.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori

O God, who constantly raise up in your Church new examples of virtue, grant that we may follow so closely in the footsteps of the Bishop Saint Alphonsus in his zeal for souls as to attain the same rewards that are his in heaven.

The following text is taken from a sermon by Saint Alphonsus Liguori (September 27, 1696 – August 1, 1787), bishop, founder of a religious order and a Doctor of the Church. You and I would do well to take stock of how much we really live a life of virtue and how much we are concerned with our final end, hopefully, heaven.

Saint Alphonsus:

All holiness and perfection of soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ our God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good. It is part of the love of God to acquire and to nurture all the virtues which make a man perfect.

Has not God in fact won for himself a claim on all our love? From all eternity he has loved us. And it is in this vein that he speaks to us: “O man, consider carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved you.”

Since God knew that man is enticed by favours, he wished to bind him to his love by means of his gifts: “I want to catch men with the snares, those chains of love in which they allow themselves to be entrapped, so that they will love me.” And all the gifts which he bestowed on man were given to this end. He gave him a soul, made in his likeness, and endowed with memory, intellect and will; he gave him a body equipped with the senses; it was for him that he created heaven and earth and such an abundance of things. He made all these things out of love for man, so that all creation might serve man, and man in turn might love God out of gratitude for so many gifts.

But he did not wish to give us only beautiful creatures; the truth is that to win for himself our love, he went so far as to bestow upon us the fullness of himself. The eternal Father went so far as to give us his only Son. When he saw that we were all dead through sin and deprived of his grace, what did he do? Compelled, as the Apostle says, by the superabundance of his love for us, he sent his beloved Son to make reparation for us and to call us back to a sinless life.

By giving us his Son, whom he did not spare precisely so that he might spare us, he bestowed on us at once every good: grace, love and heaven; for all these goods are certainly inferior to the Son: He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for all of us: how could he fail to give us along with his Son all good things?

Saint Peter Chrysologus

The reflection of Trappist Father Dominic (Spencer Abbey) is the best I can do today for Saint Peter Chrysologus (380-450), bishop of Ravenna, and Doctor of the Church. One Chrysologus’ famous lines that gets retold, “Anyone who wishes to frolic with the devil cannot rejoice with Christ.”

Father Dominic preached:

Saint Peter Chrysologus, whom we honor today, puts the following words on the lips of the Risen Lord Jesus, who still bears his wounds as he appears to his disciples:

In me, I want you to see your own body, your members, your heart, your bones, your blood. You may fear what is divine, but why not love what is human? You may run away from me as the Lord, but why not run to me as your father? Perhaps you are filled with shame for causing my bitter passion. Do not be afraid. This cross inflicts a mortal injury, not on me, but on death. These nails no longer pain me, but only deepen your love for me. I do not cry out because of these wounds, but through them I draw you into my heart. My body was stretched on the cross as a symbol, not of how much I suffered, but of my all-embracing love. I count it no loss to shed my blood: it is the price I have paid for your ransom. Come, then, return to me and learn to know me as you father, who repays good for evil, love for injury, and boundless charity for piercing wounds.

Indeed we are called to recognize our own humanity in both the Crucified and Risen Lord. In the incarnation Jesus reflects back to us, actually reveals to us, our own humanity. St. Leo the Great will add in a Lenten homily: “Is there anyone whose own weakness is not recognizable in Christ’s?” And he assures us: “The body that lay lifeless in the tomb, that rose again on the third day, and that ascended above the heavens to the Father’s right hand, belongs to us.”

Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus: Christian examples of friendship and hospitality

The Church universal celebrates the liturgical memorial of Saint Martha today. However, for those who live the Benedictine charism, the ordo (notes for Mass and the Divine Office) is much more expansive by observing the feast of Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Even though these holy siblings predate Benedict and his blessed Rule, they are easily considered Benedictines.

The reason being is that Benedictines see all three siblings as Christian examples of interpersonal friendship and mutual obedience, hospitality (openness) and friendship with the Lord. But there is a deeper meaning in keeping the holy siblings together in the liturgical act. Each of the protagonists represent a fullness of the Christian life: penitence, service and contemplation (awareness). You could easily include confession of faith as when Martha declares her belief in Jesus’ radically claim of resurrection.

As Brother Emmanuel, a newly ordained Deacon at St Joseph’s Abbey (Spencer said),

Our Father, Saint Bernard, compares the monastic community to a family, like the one Jesus visited at Bethany. In the monastic community we find Lazarus, the penitent; Martha, the active servant and Mary, the contemplative. All three are necessary to make the monastery what it ought to be. For Saint Bernard true monastic perfection consists in ‘the union of all three vocations: that of the penitent, the active worker and the contemplative.’ (Sermon for the Assumption) Thomas Merton agreed that while the contemplative life was to be preferred to the active life, the ‘most perfect souls’ would combine the vocations of Lazarus, Martha and Mary.

Benedictine monks, nuns, sisters and oblates are known for offering hospitality to pilgrims. In the Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 53 on The Reception of Guests, we read: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for him himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matthew 25-35).” You could easily include, You must honor everyone (1 Peter 2:17). This chapter is a manner of being, a path of meeting the Lord through a relationality with the person in front of us. Hence, hospitality is way of living communio, as way of engaging in friendship, as way of extending and receiving invitation to be a better person, as way to walk a journey with the other given to us to care for.

So, the feast of Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus is a feast of friendship and hospitality. We are friends with Christ he first called us His friends, and friends open us to Him.

We need Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus to show us how to live. They open show us to be Christians. Mary, Martha and Lazarus show us how to be a new Benedict and Scholastica.

Saints Joachim and Anne, grandparents of Jesus

Today, is the liturgical memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, the remembrance of Our Lord’s maternal grandparents. Here we are able to relate to the humanity of Jesus, and not just His divinity. The genius of God that we are able to trace a genealogy!

While the secular world has a grandparents’ day, the Church has one too. Today. The feast of Saints Joachim and Anne could serve well as an occasion to recall the fact of our grandparents, and also be the occasion to consider the grace of having an extended family.

I am grateful for both the paternal and maternal grandparents God gave me. It was a privilege to have both sets of grandparents until 1987, when my paternal grandfather died; I was further graced by having a grandmother in my life until I was 33. Thanks be to God! My grandparents were wonderful and brilliant people who nurtured me and the family. It was my maternal grandmother, Marion, who taught me my prayers. Grandparents can be great models of a life of discipleship.

The Ordinary Form of the Latin Church observes today as the feast day for Joachim and Anne while the Extraordinary Form celebrates today as Saint Anne’s feast and then Saint Joachim on August 16; the Byzantine Church observes the feast on July 25 and claims the feast being observed as early as AD 550; in Rome some say the feast was observed in the 8th century. The Orthodox Church honors Anne with the title of “Forebearer of God.” Catholicism is a historical religion but here we have not concrete evidence to give except to say it is the sacred tradition of the Church that what liturgically recall today is in fact true. This is so because we believe that not only does God act reasonably but He acts in history. What we know about Saints Joachim and Anne does not come from the canon of sacred Scripture (the Bible) but from a source outside the approved biblical narrative in a text called the Protoevangelium Jacobi –or, the Gospel of James– written about AD 150-170. This text is not terribly reliable but it is referenced by the Church. In many ways Joachim and Anne reflect the experience of Abraham and Sarah, the narrative of Samuel and his mother Hannah (I Kings), and later John and Elizabeth. In Hebrew, Anne is translated as Hannah.

I am happy to say that the image above is that of a friend, Adrienne M. Keogler.

Saint James, the apostle that teaches us a lesson about selfishness

Today we liturgically remember a witness of the Lord, Saint James the Greater, Apostle.

Sadly, we also must pray for the 77 people killed, and countless others injured, in a train accident on the 24th in Compostela; some headed home, many going for the annual feast.

James was one of the witnesses of the Transfiguration and one of those who slept through most of the Agony in the Garden. He was the first of the apostles to be martyred. The Tradition of the Church says that the relics of Saint James were brought to Spain sometime after his martyrdom. The shrine at Compostela is one the greatest pilgrimage center in western Europe. One of the symbols of Saint James is the scallop-shell, is also the emblem of pilgrims generally.

As Dom Alban Hood said in his homily today at his Abbey in England:

It’s easy for us to criticize James and John and their mother, as if none of us at some time or another have not been guilty of having made selfish requests of God! Yet the lives of these people give us hope that as our relationship with God matures, human selfishness might be replaced by service. For his part, St. James did indeed achieve that greatness he desired. But he did so only through service- by drinking the chalice of Jesus, and giving his life for him.

Today’s feast is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves: Are we selfish, or are we servants? St Paul reminded us a moment ago that the treasure of God’s power within us belongs to him, not us and is carried through this life in earthenware vessels. We may yearn for status and a sense of importance, even an entry in Who’s Who but Jesus and the scriptures remind us that God’s way is radically different from human standards and values.

James truly was a Son of Thunder and had learnt bravely that to be on the right hand or the left hand of Jesus in glory, was to experience something of the pain and ignominy of Calvary.

Saint James, pray for Spain, and pray for each of us!

Prophet Ezekiel

The Church commemorates the Prophet Ezekiel (born c. 622 BC) today. His name means “God will strengthen.” God’s strength will be explained by the prophet’s persistent and clear call for repentance, purity and holiness.

The Prophet is remembered on various dates among others:

Latin Catholics 23 July
Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox and some Lutherans on 21 July
Armenian Apostolic Church on 28 August
It must be noted that Ezekiel, though not named in the Islamic holy Book, is honored.

Ezekiel is said to have been a great teacher and that his lessons were about the renewal and reform of the whole nation through the renewal and reform of each person. But more than a great teacher he was born into a born into a priestly family, meaning that his family was a family of priests in the line of Levi. Ezekiel was a priest who offered sacrifice on behalf of others.

He is remembered for many important things but many will say they are drawn to the miracle he performed of the resuscitation of the dead found in Book of Ezekiel 37. Dry bones are reassembled and live again. An evident foretelling of the Lord’s own resurrection from the dead. But aside from brilliant miracles the prophet utterances of Ezekiel’s book speak of a vision of God’s glory (the heavens opening) and the restoration of that glory will happen in a dramatic way even though Jerusalem would fall, unbelief of the people in the one God would lead to their destruction (the Jews would understand the abandoned faith was akin to committing national suicide), and that God required the people to do penance for their wandering away from His truth, beauty and goodness.

Continue reading Prophet Ezekiel