“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,” Hebrews 12:1.
“It is a great good to think that if we try we can become saints with God’s help. And have no fear that He will fail if we don’t fail. Since we have not come here for any other thing, let us put our hands to the task.”
St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church
“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. … No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” (John 15:18.20)
Bishop Kallistos Ware [+2022] said that today is truly the age of martyrs. More people are giving witness to Christ than ever before.
Today, the Byzantine Catholic Church remembers Blessed Theodore Romzha, who was killed by the Communists as he performed his pastoral duties. In the epistle read today, St. Paul reflects on what Christians have always had to do to follow Christ, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church. (Colossians 1:24)” This, St. Paul, comes from the great mystery of the Church: Christ in us, our hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) We do not give up our lives for our own purposes, but because we know that our life is in Christ. We die not only for some ideal, but in witness to a person -the Jesus Christ, our Lord, “light from light, true God from true God.” This is why in history Christians have been persecuted by all kinds of organizations and ideologies and economic systems which perceive Jesus, the Giver of Life, as a threat.
Sadly, even in our history, Christians have persecuted other Christians. However, today we proclaim the glory of all those who proclaim Jesus as Lord. Indeed, the feast is ecumenical, celebrating the Byzantine Catholic bishop who died for Christ in 1947, Theodore Romzha, and the Russian Orthodox priest, John Kochurev, who had served as a pastor in Chicago, but was the first Orthodox priest to be martyred by the Communists in Russia in 1917. Both Catholic and Orthodox therefore bear united witness to the one Lord Jesus Christ in the face of his enemies.
Meditation by Archpriest David Petras
Today, as Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, we honor Mary, the Mother of God under the title of Our Lady of Palestine. It’s a daily prayer Our Lady for the people of the Holy Land and for members of the Order.
With Church we pray:
Heavenly Father, we humbly ask you, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Palestine, to help us overcome all the difficulties which face us in this Holy Land, the land which your Son has made Holy for it is in this land where our Savior took flesh and brought the entire world to Redemption. We beseech you Father, strengthen us in faith, service, and perseverance so that we may be witnesses to that unending act of love, you who live and reign forever and ever.
Read about the importance of the Shrine of Our Lady as a spiritual home for the Patriarchate.
http://www.oessh.va/content/ordineequestresantosepolcro/en/dalla-terra-santa/luoghi-e-comunita/luoghi/il-santuario-di-deir-rafat.html
Today, the Melkite Patriarch enthroned Bishop François (Beyrouti), 51, as the new eparchial bishop for the Eparchy of Newton at the Annunciation Cathedral in West Roxbury, MA. His motto is Becoming Disciples, Making Disciples.
Bishop François was ordained bishop last Wednesday, October 12, at the co-cathedral of St Ann in Los Angeles by Patriarch Joseph, Bishop Nicholas and Archbishop Borys Gudziak.
After 11 years of service as bishop of the Eparchy of Newton, Bishop Nicholas retires. He’s served the eparchy with great interest, prayer, pastoral insight and a pastor’s heart.
Prayers for Bishop Francois and the eparchy!
The Church gives us Teresa of Avila to lead us into the arms of Jesus. Fr. Matthew MacDonald expounds on some of the ideas given by Saint Teresa. He states,
“…we celebrate the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila, founder of the Discalced Carmelite Reform, mystic, and Doctor of the Church. Teresa’s life and spirituality are at the heart of the call that the Lord has placed upon our hearts – to live, light, and lead the way of contemplation for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Teresa of Avila, in her life and her teaching on prayer and contemplation, reminds me of the importance of allowing my entire life to abide in the true vine, Jesus Christ.
“Teresa lived during a time of great chaos in the Church and the world not unlike our own. The Protestant reformation was raging in Europe. Evangelization and colonization efforts were being launched by the Portuguese and the Spanish Empires in the Americas. Souls were falling left and right from the faith. Ignorance and corruption were in abundance. The joys and trials of her age and her own life offered Teresa motives for prayer, love, and sacrifice. It was in this desire for intimacy with Jesus that she became a branch of He who is the true vine (Cf. Jn 15:1). Teresa’s life and teachings would become an inexhaustible fountain of joy, intimacy, and salvation through the contemplative life that would become a bedrock in the mystical tradition of the life of the Church. How then did Teresa seek to bring souls to Christ? Through the spousal union of prayer and the sanctification of her soul. This divine intimacy and union with Christ was the desire of Teresa’s heart above all else and was the fuel behind the Discalced Carmelite reform:
Anyone who has not begun to pray, I beg, for the love of the Lord, not to miss so great a blessing. There is no place here for fear, but only desire. For even if a person fails to make progress, or to strive after perfection, so that he may merit the consolations and favors given to the perfect by God, yet he will gradually gain a knowledge of the road to Heaven. And if he perseveres, I hope in the mercy of God, whom no one has ever taken for a Friend without being rewarded; and mental prayer, in my view, is nothing but a friendly way of dealing, in which we often find ourselves talking in private with Him whom we know loves us. (Vol. I of Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Allison Peers (Sheed & Ward, London, 1950) ch. 8, p. 50.)
“For Teresa, prayer begins and is fruitful by abiding in Jesus. It starts with vocal prayer and passes through the heart and our way of living our faith by means of meditation and contemplative recollection until it attains perfect loving union with Christ and with the Holy Trinity (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, “St. Teresa of Avila,” February 2, 2011).
“This call to prayer is at the heart of being a disciple of Jesus and is meant for everyone. Teresa then goes on to describe how prayer grows in the normal life of faith:
Oh Lord of heaven and earth, how is it possible that even while in this mortal life one can enjoy you with so special a friendship?… May you be blessed, Lord, because we do not lose anything through your fault. Along how many paths, and how many ways, by how many methods you show us love! With trials, with a death so harsh, with torments, suffering offenses every day and then pardoning; and not only with these deeds do you show this love, but with words so capable of wounding the soul in love with you that you say to them in this Song of Songs and teach the soul what to say to you…My Lord, I do not ask you for anything else in life but that ‘you kiss me with the kiss of your mouth,’ and that you do so in such a way that although I may want withdraw from this friendship and union, my will may always, Lord my life, be subject to your will and not depart from it ( Meditations on the Song of Songs 3:14-15. Taken from Drink of the Stream: Prayers of Carmelites. Translated by Penny Hickey, OCDS (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2002) 73-74.).
~Fr. Matthew C. MacDonald, homily for a Mass for the Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila for the Apostoli Viae Connecticut Chapter at Saint Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut, October 15, 2021.
The Church recalls the French saint who very evangelical in the face of pagan belief arguing for the worship of the One, Triune God. He was a persuasive preacher and teacher.
Remi was elected bishop of Rheims in 459 when he was only 22 years old, and guided his flock for more than 70 years. Clovis ruled northern Gaul in those days and despite the constant urgings of his wife, St Clotilde, whose father was the Christian king of Burgundy, he refused to abandon his tribal gods. When bishop Remi joined his power of argument to the efforts of the queen, and after an impressive military victory, the king finally agreed to be baptized. But as St Remi led Clovis into the font, he warned him to be humble and “worship what you have burned and burn what you have worshipped!” Following this event Remi was quick to spread the good news among the Franks, and tradition relates many miracles that accompanied his preaching.
St Remi was also a supporter of Nicaean Orthodoxy and was vigorous in opposing Arianism. France honors this saint on October 1. (NS)
IMAGE BY FR LAWRENCE LEW, OP
In Rome and Jerusalem especially, and especially for me in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, we celebrate today Saint Helen (d. 327 A.D.), empress, mother, pilgrim of the Holy Land, who made worship places and relics of the history, the mystery of salvation.
Several years ago I was privileged to live at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome where the relics of the Lord’s passion reside. It was a beautiful thing to have some daily prayer in this holy place.
Let us pray for the Church and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
Image of St Helena at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome.
The hagiographers for this feast write:
This feast originated in the fourth century at the dedication of a temple in honor of the Mother of God. This church was located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which tradition hallowed as the place where Mary and Joseph stopped on their journey to the city of David.
By the fifth century in the Byzantine East, and by the sixth century in the Roman Church, this day celebrated the death of Mary, her dormition or “falling asleep” as it is called in liturgical poetry.
Apocryphal accounts, iconography, and texts of the feast are embellished with a persistent pious tradition that all the apostles returned to her deathbed from their missionary journeys.
Through the feast of the Dormition, the Church regards Mary as the first to participate in the final deification of all creation. This is only fitting for the Mother of Life, through whom God became one of us, to die and, by his rising, make the passage from death to life an eternal reality. (NS)
The spiritual fathers and mothers frequently advise their juniors to look to the saints as examples of those who adhere closely to Jesus Christ. The saints and blesseds of our Catholic Church –East and West– show us that living the gospel fully is possible, is reasonable, is beautiful. I also look in the canon of saints and blesseds for the complements: Benedict and Scholastica, Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal, Dominic and Catherine of Siena. Today, it is Clare’s feast day and it is entirely appropriate to think of her in light of her spiritual friendship with the great Francis. The Lord has given to us the virtue of complementarity to see the brilliance of holiness. Hence, we honor our venerable mother, Clare of Assisi.
“Clare was born in 1193 into a noble family. Her marriage had been arranged, according to custom, since childhood.
When St Francis began to preach, she followed his intense career with growing interest. Eventually, at the age of eighteen, she left home secretly and took refuge in the broken-down chapel of San Damiano, where Francis received her into monastic life and clothed her in the habit. They decided that she would stay with nearby Benedictine nuns until the chapel could be made into a monastery for her.
Clare herself soon had a following, and the life she charted for these nuns stressed simplicity and poverty according to the ideal of Francis.
Clare’s rich admiration and clear understanding of Francis gave her the spark and drive to persevere. She outlived Francis by 27 years, and during this time she guided her community with such compassion and discretion that her life can be seen as the most authentic expression of evangelical perfection as understood by St Francis.
The relationship between Clare and Francis is, perhaps, the best reflection in the western monastic tradition of the Orthodox tradition of spiritual father and disciple. (NS)
