Saints – Page 54

Saints Andrew Kim Taegon and Paul Chong Hasang and companions

Today is the feast of the 19th century Saints Andrew Kim and Paul Hasang and their 103 companions. Kim is the first Korean born Catholic priest! He also followed his father as a martyr for the faith. Andrew was beheaded after being tortured in 1846. These saints were raised to the altars by Pope John Paul II in 1984.

Why ought we be concerned about this today? One reason is that these witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ were mostly lay people. The faith in Korea is a Catholic faith that has its roots not primarily in the work of clergy but by the work of the laity. This is not a feast that proclaims the greatness of the laity over the clergy but it is a feast that speaks to the faithful and fruitful work of the Holy Spirit in priesthood of the all the baptized to make disciples of all nations. Surely, the ministerial priesthood was utilized in discrete ways because of the anti-Catholic sentiment of this geographic region. How else would the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist be given? What the Church in her wisdom following the guidance of the Spirit has given us are models of holiness in serving the Lord in fullest sense possible: the correspondence of the ordained and lay priesthood.

Father Scott Hurd posted a brief piece on today’s feast.

Let us pray for the Church in Korea!

Saint Moses

Today is the feast of Saint Moses. Indeed, the very same Moses who gave us the Ten Commandments and led the Israelites to the Promised Land. In the Mass and Divine Office we currently pray, that is the Ordinary Form, Moses is not commemorated in the sacred Liturgy. But he is remember in the liturgical anamnesis.

The Roman Martyrology tells us:

Commemoratio sancti Moysis, prophetae, quem Deus elegit, ut populum in Aegypto oppressum liberaret et in terram promissionis adduceret; cui etiam in monte Sina sese revelavit dicens: “Ego sum qui sum”, atque legem proposuit, quae vitam populi electi regeret. Ille servus Dei in monte Nebo terrae Moab coram terra promissionis plenus dierum obiit.

Saint Gregory the Great

For Gregory the Great, a hinge figure between the ancient world — the Senate of Rome last met while Gregory was the city’s bishop — a hinge between the ancient world and the grand experiment called Christendom, for Gregory this awareness that to look upon the face of Christ brought knowledge of God inspired an extensive exploration of Scripture to discern how God would have us live, how the Church and its leaders could best serve those seeking to know Christ Jesus and the Father. Since rightful authority comes from God, Gregory reasoned, its exercise must ever include a pastoral intent.

Father James Flint, OSB

Saint Procopius Abbey

3 September 2011

Let us pray for the Benedictine monks of Portsmouth Abbey, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on this their abbey’s patronal feast day. May God prosper the work of their hands!

You may also be interested in the 2010 blog post that has a hymn to Saint Gregory the Great by J. Michael Thompson.

Saint Joshua

The Roman Martyrology notes Saint Joshua’s feast day today. You remember him, Joshua, son of Nun, servant of the Lord, who became inspired by the Holy Spirit after Moses laid hands on him and who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. The Righteous Joshua is said to have lived for a 110 years reposing c. 1440 BC.

Saint Jeanne Jugan

Today’s feast is probably of a little known saint, Saint Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879). Her’s a remarable life of grace and heroic virtue.

“…Jeanne Jugan was concerned with the dignity of her brothers and sisters in humanity whom age had made more vulnerable, recognizing in them the Person of Christ himself. “Look upon the poor with compassion,” she would say, “and Jesus will look kindly upon you on your last day.” Jeanne Jugan focused upon the elderly a compassionate gaze drawn from her profound communion with God in her joyful, disinterested service, which she carried out with gentleness and humility of heart, desiring herself to be poor among the poor. Jeanne lived the mystery of love, peacefully accepting obscurity and self-emptying until her death. Her charism is ever timely while so many elderly people are suffering from numerous forms of poverty and solitude and are sometimes also abandoned by their families. In the Beatitudes Jeanne Jugan found the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love, founded on unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her whole life. This evangelical dynamism is continued today across the world in the Congregation of Little Sisters of the Poor, which she founded and which testifies, after her example, to the mercy of God and the compassionate love of the Heart of Jesus for the lowliest. May Saint Jeanne Jugan be for elderly people a living source of hope and for those who generously commit themselves to serving them, a powerful incentive to pursue and develop her work!

Pope Benedict XVI

Canonization homily

11 October 2009

A feast day slide show done by the Little Sisters of the Poor. You can read more about Saint Jeanne Jugan here.

Beheading of Saint John the Baptist

O God, who willed that Saint John the Baptist should
go ahead of your Son both in birth and in death, grant that as he died a Martyr
for truth and justice, we, too, may fight hard for the confession of what you
teach.

There is no
doubt that blessed John suffered imprisonment and chains as a witness to our
Redeemer, whose forerunner he was, and gave his life for him. His persecutor
had demanded not that he should deny Christ, but only that he should keep
silent about the truth. Nevertheless, he died for Christ. Does Christ not say:
“I am the truth”? Therefore, because John shed his blood for the truth,
he surely died for Christ.

Through his birth, preaching and baptizing, he bore
witness to the coming birth, preaching and baptism of Christ, and by his own
suffering he showed that Christ also would suffer. Such was the quality and
strength of the man who accepted the end of this present life by shedding his
blood after the long imprisonment. He preached the freedom of heavenly peace,
yet was thrown into irons by ungodly men. He was locked away in the darkness of
prison, though he came bearing witness to the Light of life and deserved to be
called a bright and shining lamp by that Light itself, which is Christ.

Father Pius Parsch

The Church’s Year of Grace

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Christ humbled himself, you have something, Christian,
to latch onto. Christ became obedient. Why do you behave proudly?

Saint
Augustine

When you read what the Pope has to say about Saint Augustine, you can tell that he really loves and knows Saint Augustine…as we all ought. He’s given us a lot to think about using Augustine’s thinking. Here’s the 2008 discourse of the Pope on the saintly Bishop of Hippo.

Given what is said above, pay close attention to the second half of the Pope’s talk.

Saint Monica

And when the Lord saw [the mother of the deceased
young man], he had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ And he
came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young
man, I say to you, arise.’ And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he
gave him to his mother” (Luke 12:13-15).

The Holy Spirit saw to it that Monica’s son Augustine was baptized in 387 by Saint Ambrose, after he resisted her for 17 years.

A blessed feast day of Saint Monica, especially two friends who bear the name of Monica, the parish of Saint Monica, Northford, CT.

I also remember Mother Monica, OP, a former Prioress of Our Lady of Grace Monastery, North Guilford, CT. She made me a 15 decade rosary in 1983.

Saint Monica is often known as the patron saint for those who have difficult and abusive marriages, of troubled youth, the conversion of relatives. She might as well be the patron saint of the virtues of patience and perseverance.

Saint Louis of France

O God, who
brought Saint Louis from the cares of earthly rule to the glory of a heavenly
realm, grant, we pray, through his intercession, that by fulfilling our duties
on earth, we may seek out your eternal Kingdom.

Saint Stephen of Hungary

On this feast of Saint Stephen of Hungary let us pray for civil leaders, especially for Hungary, for missionaries and for those who work with stone.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.