Category: Saints

St Gregory of Narek

Saint Gregory of Narek, a monk of the tenth century, knew how to express the sentiments of your people more than anyone. He gave voice to the cry, which became a prayer, of a sinful and sorrowful humanity, oppressed by the anguish of its powerlessness, but illuminated by the splendor of God’s love and open to the hope of his salvific intervention, which is capable of transforming all things. “Through his strength I wait with certain expectation believing with unwavering hope that… I shall be saved by the Lord’s mighty hand and… that I will see the Lord himself in his mercy and compassion and receive the legacy of heaven”

Pope Francis’ announcement proclaiming St Gregory a Doctor of the Church

St Theodosius of the common life (cenobite)

Today we liturgically recall our venerable father, Theodosius, called a leader of the common life.

At the end of the 5th century, Theodosius founded a cenobium near Bethlehem. In his day many had come from as far away as Georgia and Armenia to enter monastic life in Palestine. He accommodated his multi-ethnic community by having the Liturgy of the Word served in separate chapels in Syriac, Armenian and Georgian, after which all the monks came together for the Eucharistic Liturgy in Greek in the main church. His monastery was large enough to staff a hospice for the elderly, and for the poor and sick as well as one for the mentally ill.

His organizational skills were recognized in Jerusalem, where the Patriarch made him cenobiarch, the leader of all the monasteries of the common life under his protection. Theodosius along with Sabbas upheld the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon in the midst of the strife this council engendered, even in the monastic settlements.

He died in 529 at the age of 105. His monastery was sacked twice in the 9th century, and was completely destroyed in the 15th. (NS)

St Thomas Becket

“A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.” (Archbishop’s Sermon, “Murder in the Cathedral” by T.S. Eliot)

St Nicholas

The Troparion for today’s feast of the great St Nicholas, wonderworker, teacher, model of sanctity and bishop reads:

Nicholas, holy hierarch, your flock has recognized you by the brilliance of your works. You are a model of kindness and rule of faith, a teacher of self-control. Your lowliness has raised you to the heights of fame, and your poverty has filled your hands with riches. Beg Christ, our God, to save our souls.

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, the bishop who faithfully served the Divine Mysteries, for saving the innocent from death, and for 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 2020 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 worthily receiving the Divine Mysteries. Nicholas is asked to beg Christ to save us. May we, in fact, have our sins forgiven and be brought one day into perfect communion with the most holy Trinity.

St Catherine of Alexandria

Today’s patron saint of students, philosophers, lawyers, librarians, and unmarried women is liturgically venerated by the Latin Catholic Church. St Catherine of Alexandria has a remarkable following even with a sparse historical of her life. One will recall that she was banished from the Roman liturgical calendar at the reform of the calendar in the 1960s. As a well formed Benedictine monk said, “God measures our prayer by its sincerity, not by the historical accuracy of our knowledge!” Though banished now re-instituted by John Paul II in 2004 as an optional memorial. Catherine is included in the group called the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

St Catherine had reputation of learning. Tradition says that she defeated in debate fifty pagan philosophers assigned to her by the Roman emperor. The philosophers then embraced Christian faith and preceded Catherine in martyrdom. Iconography of Catherine included a spiked wheel on which she would have suffered death for Jesus Christ –except that it broke apart upon touching the saint. She was then beheaded.

An alive and thriving monastery today named in Catherine’s honor, the sixth century monastery was built on the site said to be where Mount Sinai was located. There rest her relics and an extraordinary collection of manuscripts and incredible icons. And by the way, those manuscripts are being preserved with the help of the Benedictines at St John’s Abbey in Minn.

My friend the Benedictine monk referenced above says, “She also played an indirect role in the Hundred Years War, by being one of the three saints (the others were St. Margaret and the Archangel Michael) to appear to the peasant girl who became France’s St. Joan of Arc. The trio of saints allegedly inspired Joan to the mission that played so large a role in the survival of a France independent of the English crown.”

While it may be true that Catherine’s historical path is a bit scant, historical biography is not the key we have in the saints. As John Paul realized the mistake of the liturgical reformers was to concentrate on an overly intellectualized approach to the spiritual life. Generations of Christians –nearly 1500 years worth– have a strong devotion to Catherine. Saints show us a path to Christ that is certain; saints like Catherine show us the face of Christ crucified and risen. Hers is a discipleship I am interested in imitating.

St Catherine, pray for us.

All Saints

We are called to be saints. “The saint is not an isolated individual. There is no sanctity without belonging.” Today is the feast proposed by the Latin Church by which we realize that sanctity is the vocation to which we all are called. (The Byzantine Church celebrates the Sunday after Pentecost as All Saints Day.)

From a sermon by St. Bernard: “Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so desirable in itself. We long to share in the citizenship of heaven, to dwell with the spirits of the blessed.

Come, brothers, let us at length spur ourselves on. We must rise again with Christ, we must seek the world which is above and set our mind on the things of heaven. Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us.”

Here’s the point of the Christian life on earth and in heaven, and the point of sanctity which we recognize in the saints: “a longing to enjoy their company” in the communio of the Divine Majesty.  But in order to get to the point of a communio with God there are things we have to work on. What are our desires? Are our desires purified or are they riddled with disordered affections? Do we have a poverty of spirit? Do we want to dwell with the spirits of the blessed? Or, are we satisfied with our current circumstances? Do we speak of divine things, things of God, or are we obsessed with the things of this world (gossip, self-centeredness, personal sin, anger, etc.)?

Saying ‘yes’ to Christ is saying yes to being in communion with Him, to love Him above all else, to follow in the footsteps of the saints. Having the companionship of the saints shows us the path to the beatific life. The saint is the ‘the saint is the true man.’ Do you want to be true?

St Paul of the Cross

St. Paul of the Cross is likely one of those saints who gets overlooked a bit while his spiritual children are more recognizable. St. Paul of the Cross, in my opinion, needs our closer attention. We know that he had devoted his life to the service of the poor and the sick; we know his apostolic zeal in Italy, and his great penances. We know his charism overflowed to the point of founding the congregation of the Passionists: the nuns, sisters, brothers and priests dedicated to the preaching the Lord’s passion. As the Mass Collect (see below) says keenly, Paul, whose only love was the Cross, did so with courage. May we beg the Spirit for the same grace.

Next time you are in Rome, be sure to visit St. Paul at the Church of Sts. John and Paul in Rome.

The indefatigable missionary of Italy it is said that God lavished upon Paul many graces of the supernatural order. One of the stimulating pieces of Paul’s life, however, was the rigor with which he lived a life: of penance –understanding himself to be a useless servant, a great sinner. Sound familiar? The self-perception was the same as that of the Apostle Paul; this viewpoint is also similar to other saints and blesseds who lived in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries (and before and after). Today, we give ourselves a pass on this matter. Not that we ought to beat ourselves up but we could use a good dose of humility and that’s probably one of the things we can take away from Paul: how do we understand ourselves before the Lord and do we bear our cross with simple joy and honesty. In 1867, Pius IX canonized Paul of the Cross.

The Mass Collect reads:
May the Priest Saint Paul, whose only love was the Cross, obtain for us your grace, O Lord, so that, urged on more strongly by his example, we may each embrace our own cross with courage.

St Bruno embraced love

What is the vocation of the Carthusian monk/nun founded by St. Bruno of Cologne?

“The mystery of vocation, by which God calls certain people to a purely contemplative life and all-embracing love; the mystery of hidden lives of self-effacement with Christ who effaced himself; the mystery of the prayer of Christ in the wilderness during the nights of his public life and at Gethsamene; that prayer of Christ that continues in certain privileged souls at every period in the history of the Church; the mystery of being solitary while remaining present to the world, of silence and the light of the Gospel, simplicity, and the glory of God.” (Andre Ravier, Saint Bruno the Carthusian, 14)

St Augustine and the Order of Preachers

Today, we are liturgically recalling the feast of St Augustine of Hippo. The Byzantine Church also honors Augustine today along with St Moses the Black. Augustine is a masterful theologian, preacher and pastor that no series Christian can dismiss or avoid. He is the Preacher of Truth.

St Augustine’s Rule is the source for various religious orders such as those who carry his own name, the Sisters of Christian Charity, the Trinitarians, the Pauline Hermits, the Order of Mercy and the Norbertines and not least the Order of Preachers who regard him as their father (alongside St Dominic and St Francis!). It is speculated that about 150 religious congregations follow Augustine’s Rule.

Pope Benedict XVI is a great loved of Augustine and said the following:

“In this regard, through the two rightly famous Augustinian formulas (cf. Sermones, 43, 9) that express this coherent synthesis of faith and reason: crede ut intelligas (“I believe in order to understand”) believing paves the way to crossing the threshold of the truth but also, and inseparably, intellige ut credas (“I understand, the better to believe”), the believer scrutinizes the truth to be able to find God and to believe.

“The harmony between faith and reason means above all that God is not remote: he is not far from our reason and our life; he is close to every human being, close to our hearts and to our reason, if we truly set out on the journey.

“Precisely because Augustine lived this intellectual and spiritual journey in the first person, he could portray it in his works with such immediacy, depth and wisdom, recognizing in two other famous passages from the Confessions (IV, 4, 9 and 14, 22), that man is “a great enigma” (magna quaestio) and “a great abyss” (grande profundum), an enigma and an abyss that only Christ can illuminate and save us from. This is important: a man who is distant from God is also distant from himself, alienated from himself, and can only find himself by encountering God. In this way he will come back to himself, to his true self, to his true identity.”

Concerning the Augustinian Rule, Blessed Humbert of Romans, 5th Master of the Order of Preachers said: “There are many rules which impose a multitude of physical observance; but the Rule of Saint Augustine is built more on spiritual deeds, such as the love of God and neighbour, the unity of hearts, the harmony of customs, and other such things. Who does not know that spiritual deeds are of more importance than physical exercises? The more a rule deals with spiritual matters rather than physical ones, the more worthy it is of greater praise. Likewise the Rule of Saint Augustine observes such moderation that it avoids the dangerous extremes of too many or too few regulations. It takes the middle way where all virtue lies…

Since under this Rule Saint Dominic, father of the Friars Preachers, acquired perfection in every good and bore fruit as far as the salvation of souls is concerned, how fitting it is that his sons imitate him in this and so come to a similar perfection.”