St Ambrose –the saint we need, and want

Saint Ambrose presenting to God the letter of Emperor Theodore, Louis Lagrenée 1764, Paris, St. Marguerite Church

We have the liturgical memorial of Saint Ambrose, bishop, confessor and doctor of the Church.

Ambrose is quite an interesting person and one we ought to think about more often. His personal history is daunting to wrap the mind around: a convert, a motivating speaker, a provocative thinker, a reformer of civil and ecclesiastical works, an author, a composer (the Te Deum), a zealous preacher and valiant defender of the Christian Faith, a worker of miracles, a man of virtue, and a man of the people. He is the saint the Holy Trinity has given us, he is the saint I want and the one I need.

As said before in this forum that saints beget saints, one great example is that Ambrose baptized Augustine.

He was fast-tracked to the ministry of bishop. I merely point this fact out because he was acclaimed to be bishop of Milan prior to be baptized. One biographer noted that “He accepted holy Baptism from an Orthodox priest and, passing through all the ranks of the Church clergy in just seven days, on December 7, 374 he was consecrated Bishop of Mediolanum [Milan].” Today’s feast, hence, doesn’t commemorate a saint’s death as most often happens saint’s memorials, but Ambrose’s feast is on the day he was consecrated to the episcopal order.

Reading up on St Ambrose I realized that I hope this happens to me: St Ambrose, who departed to the Lord on the night of Holy Pascha. What better day than to make one’s transitus to the Lord of Life than that of the day we celebrate Easter! His death on Pascha encapsulated all that he believed, preacher and loved.

The Church’s liturgical hymns are key in our forming our own theological heart and mind. Below the Troparion and Kontakion tells us what the faithful and the magisterial church believe when thinking of Saint Ambrose.

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence; your humility exalted you; your poverty enriched you.Hierarch Father Ambrose, entreat Christ our God that our souls may be saved. (Troparion)

You shone forth with divine doctrine eclipsing the deception of Arius, shepherd and initiate of the mysteries, Ambrose.you worked miracles through the power of the Spirit, healing various passions; righteous father, entreat Christ our God to grant us His great mercy. (Kontakion)

Today I am praying for two monk-friends named for Ambrose, the Parish of St Ambrose and its pastor in North Branford, Connecticut, the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation whose origins is that of the Diocese of Milan and the Benedictine monks who colonized just outside the City of Milan. AND I am praying for my honey bees and fellow CT beekeepers.

St. Nicholas the Wonderworker

Today is the feast of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, archbishop of Myra in Lycia. 

The Byzantine Church honors Nicholas in several beautiful texts. This one taken from the sticheron from the Lamp-Lighting Psalms, teaches us: 

“What crowns of praise shall we confer upon the saintly Nicholas? Once present in the flesh in Myra, he is present in spirit to all who love him purely. He is the leader and defender of everyone, a comforter in distress, and a haven of all in danger, a pillar of piety and conqueror for believers. For his sake, Christ overcame enemies and shows us great mercy!”

Nicholas has captured the imagination of many through the years because of charity which morphed into gift-giving. He’s not remembered in popular culture as a teacher of the Christian Gospel, or the holy bishop who faithfully served the Divine Mysteries, or for saving the innocent from death, or calming storms, nor challenging the false teachers. And yet, he’s more than all these things. He allowed the Lord to speak eloquently through his life and thus comes to us in 2021 as a friend and disciple of the Lord Jesus.

Would that we could live and act as Nicholas did in the face of false teaching by a life of virtue and charity, by listening to sacred Scripture, and by worthily receiving the Divine Mysteries (the sacraments)? We prayerfully ask  St. Nicholas to beg Jesus Christ to save us.

As Knights and Dames of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre it seems that to be renewed for mission we have to consider what one of St. Nicholas’ biographers wrote of him:

“In serving the Lord the youth was fervent of spirit, and in his proficiency with questions of faith he was like an Elder, who aroused the wonder and deep respect of believers. Constantly at work and vivacious, in unceasing prayer, the priest Nicholas displayed great kind-heartedness towards the flock, and towards the afflicted who came to him for help, and he distributed all his inheritance to the poor.”

What more can be said of our eucharistic vocation and mission as members of the EOHSJ? What more can asked of us than to be keen witnesses of St. Nicholas in the world today? May we, in fact, have our sins forgiven and be brought one day into perfect communion with the most holy Trinity.

 St. Nicholas, pray for us.

Blessed Charles de Foucauld

Blessed and soon to be sainted in 2022 Charles de Foucauld failed in his efforts to found a religious community during his lifetime, and he experienced much sorrow and pain and spiritual darkness and obscurity even regarding his own work. How close he is to my own experience.

But in a letter of December 1, 1916 –never posted– “the universal brother” wrote these words: “When we can suffer and love, we can do much, it’s the most that we can do in this world: We feel our suffering, but we don’t always feel that we love and that’s an additional suffering! But we know that we want to love and to want to love is to love.”

In way I take Blessed Charles’ words to be similar to the pious sentiment of “offering it up.” What? The phrase indicates that we ought to connect our sufferings to those of Jesus Christ. He knows that our suffering does have meaning and for it to be fruitful, that is, to be generative of something new, we give our suffering and pain to God the Father. We are meant to give our sufferings Jesus Christ so that he can do something useful with them. St. John Henry Newman has written a brilliantly inspired discourse on the interior sufferings of Christ in which he posits that the interior sufferings were indeed much greater. (https://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse16.html)

Father James Brent, O.P. teaches us the basis of this practice. The video is a beautiful way to connect to a venerable spiritual practice.

Happy feast day of Blessed Charles de Foucauld!

St Silouan the Athonite

Today we celebrate the liturgical memory of the early twentieth century saint, Silouan the Athonite (+1938). For many Christians, East and West in the North America St. Silouan is an unknown personage but he is worth knowing as one his biographers writes he has “a sense of cosmic unity and the way that we are called to love and have compassion on all things:

He who has the Holy Spirit in him, to however slight a degree, sorrows day and night for all mankind. His heart is filled with pity for all God’s creatures…For them, more than himself, he prays day and night, that all may repent and know the Lord” (352).The Lord bestows such rich grace on His chosen that they embrace the whole earth, the whole world, with that love (367).

Once I needlessly killed a fly. the poor thing crawled on the ground, hurt and mangled, and for three whole days I wept over my cruelty to a living creature, and to this day the incident remains in my memory….One day, going from the Monastery to Old Russikon-on-the- Hill, I saw a dead snake on my path which had been chopped in pieces, and each piece writhed convulsively, and I was filled with pity for every living creature, every suffering thing in creation, and I wept bitterly before God (469).That green leaf on the tree which you needlessly plucked – it was not wrong, only rather a pity for the little leaf. The heart that has learned to love feels sorry for every created thing (376).The Spirit of God teaches the soul to love every living thing so that she would have no harm come to even a green leaf on a tree, or trample underfoot a flower of the field. Thus the Spirit of God teaches love towards all, and the soul feels compassion for every being (469).

Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus


Today is the liturgical memorial of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus. As Benedictines we have been celebrating all three together for a long time. They are models of the virtue of hospitality. A good application is the guesthouse at the Petersham (Mass.) Benedictines is named in honor of today’s saints.

Chapter 53 of The Rule of St. Benedict has two crucial lines: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35). Proper honor must be shown to all, especially to those who share our faith (Gal 6:10) and to pilgrims.” The Father of Western monasticism sets the stage to how we receive the other.


In January 2021, a Decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship on the celebration of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus (26 January 2021) was issued.


The Decree

In the household of Bethany the Lord Jesus experienced the family spirit and friendship of Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and for this reason the Gospel of John states that he loved them. Martha generously offered him hospitality, Mary listened attentively to his words and Lazarus promptly emerged from the tomb at the command of the One who humiliated death.


The traditional uncertainty of the Latin Church about the identity of Mary (the Magdalene to whom Christ appeared after his resurrection, the sister of Martha, the sinner whose sins the Lord had forgiven), which resulted in the inclusion of Martha alone on 29 July in the Roman Calendar, has been resolved in recent studies and times, as attested by the current Roman Martyrology, which also commemorates Mary and Lazarus on that day. Moreover, in some particular calendars the three siblings are already celebrated together.


Therefore, the Supreme Pontiff Pope Francis, considering the important evangelical witness they offered in welcoming the Lord Jesus into their home, in listening to him attentively, in believing that he is the resurrection and the life, and accepting the proposal of this Dicastery, has decreed that 29 July be designated in the General Roman Calendar as the Memorial of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus.


Mass collect

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that the example of your Saints may spur us on to a better life, so that we, who celebrate the memory of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus, may also imitate without ceasing their deeds.Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

Prophet Elijah (Elias): pray, discern, experience

In the Gospels, Elijah appears with Moses on the Mount of the Transfiguration, bearing witness to Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. Elijah is venerated above all in the monastic tradition as a model of prayer and unshakeable faith amid trials. Prayer and contemplation sustained the Prophet not only in moments of great success but also in the face of adversity and persecution. Elijah teaches us that fervent prayer and union with God cannot be separated from concern for the needs of others. In prayer, he grew in discernment of the Lord’s will and found the courage to denounce injustice, even at great personal cost. Elijah’s experience of God in prayer culminated, as we know, when the Lord appeared to him not in wind and fire, but in a quiet whisper. May we too, like the Prophet, persevere in prayer, strive to discern God’s will every day of our lives, and come to experience, even at times of uncertainty and trial, the consolation of his presence and providential care.

Pope Francis
Catechesis, 7 October 2020

Blessed Otto Neururer

Today is the feast of Blessed Otto Neururer: Austrian Catholic priest, opponent of Nazism, and martyr—tortured to death at Buchenwald concentration camp on this day in 1940, for performing a baptism but also for defending the sacrament of Marriage. He endured 34 hours hanging upside down, during which he prayed continually.

Though unknown to many in the USA, Blessed Otto stands out not only because of his opposition to Nazism, he is a clear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and doing the right thing for the sheep under his care. Blessed Otto showed himself a pastor in to his fellow prisoners even baptizing a man due to die. Otto was killed in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith). He was beatified by St John Paul II in 1996.

Read this brief biography of Blessed Otto Neururer.

Blessed Maria Assunta Pallotta

Today’s the liturgical memorial of Blessed Maria Assunta Pallotta (1878-1905), a missionary sister with the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. A biographer notes that Blessed Maria Assunta was happy to be assigned to do farmwork —working with chickens, goats and the pigs. I can relate to her happiness in this service. What was striking was her letter to her parents where she wrote of her mission: “I ask the Lord for the grace to make known to the world purity of intention—which consists in doing everything for the love of God, even the ordinary of actions.”

May we follow Blessed Maria Assunta’s lead.

St Patrick

The Churches honor the great missionary bishop and preacher of Jesus Christ, Patrick. His famous Litany is noted below which is rich scope and detail reflecting a deep relationship with the Holy Trinity. Most Christians only acknowledge one member of the Trinity forgetting the perichoresis which exists. We Catholics and Orthodox, as a point of fact, always pray addressing God the Father, through the Son under the power of the Holy Spirit.

Blessed feast to my family (on the maternal side) and to the people of Ireland.

The Lorica

I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness, of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today, through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism, through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial, through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension, through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today, through the strength of the love of the Cherubim, in obedience of angels, in the service of archangels, in the hope of the resurrection to meet with reward, in the prayers of patriarchs, in prediction of prophets, in preaching of apostles, in faith of confessors, in innocence of holy virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of heaven; light of sun, radiance of moon, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of earth, firmness of rock.
I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me: God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak to me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me, from the snares of devils, from temptations of vices, from every one who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a multitude.

I summon today, all these powers between me and those evils, against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of pagandom, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of women and smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today, against poisoning, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so there come to me abundance of reward. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me, Christ in the eye of every one that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness, of the Creator of Creation. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord be ever with us. Amen.

Icon: Marek Czarnecki, 2020