Martyrdom of St John the Baptist

head-of-st-john-the-baptist-1600-1650-cleveland-museum_of_artOur remembrance today of the Baptist’s martyrdom calls to mind that we are baptized not only with water but also in the fire of the Holy Spirit. Today, I keenly recall that we are in fact, unfit to untie the Lord’s sandals. That we need the Spirit to cry Ecce in front of the person of Jesus. What further does this killing of the cousin of the Lord teach us? What value does our memorial have in reality for us today?

Benedict XVI said, “celebrating the martyrdom of St John the Baptist reminds us too, Christians of this time, that with love for Christ, for his words and for the Truth, we cannot stoop to compromises. The Truth is Truth; there are no compromises. Christian life demands, so to speak the “martyrdom” of the daily fidelity to the Gospel, the courage, that is, to let Christ grow within us and let him be the One who guides our thoughts and actions” (August 29, 2012).

St Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy.

Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 in Tagaste (modern-day Souk Ahras, Algeria) to a Christian mother and a pagan father, raised in Roman north Africa, educated in Carthage, and employed as a professor of rhetoric in Milan by 383. He followed the Manichaean religion in his student days, and was converted to Christianity by the preaching and example of Ambrose of Milan. He was baptized at Pascha in 387, and returned to north Africa and created a monastic foundation at Tagaste for himself and a group of friends. In 391 he was ordained a priest in Hippo Regius (now Annaba, in Algeria). He became a famous preacher (more than 350 preserved sermons are believed to be authentic), and was noted for combatting the Manichaean heresy.

In 396 he was made coadjutor bishop of Hippo (assistant with the right of succession on the death of the current bishop), and remained as bishop in Hippo until his death in 430. He left his monastery, but continued to lead a monastic life in the episcopal residence. He left a Rule (Regula in Latin) for his monastery that has led him to be designated the “patron saint of Regular Clergy,” that is, parish clergy who live by a monastic rule.

Augustine died on August 28, 430, during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals. He is said to have encouraged its citizens to resist the attacks, primarily on the grounds that the Vandals adhered to heretical Arian Christianity. (NS)

Blessed Guerric of Igny

Blessed Guerric of Igny (1070-80 – 1160) is a stellar example of someone who followed in the example of St Bernard of Clairvaux’s ministry of preaching. Abbot Guerric is remembered for his preaching (see the collections of sermons published by Cistercians Publications). He was skilled at the coalescing sacred Scripture and philosophy, taking biblical types and making the application to Christ and Christian discipleship. It is said that Guerric was the medieval preacher of “God’s grace in biblical imagery.”

The intellectual and spiritual formation of Guerric happened first in a cathedral setting as the master of the school, and then in the Clarivaux Abbey. He was in a short time elected the second abbot of the Cistercian community at Igny.

Brethren, it is the command of our gentle and peace-making Master that we should be at peace with one another. Yet before that he says: Have salt in yourselves. He knows well that peaceful gentleness nourishes vices unless the severity of zeal has first sprinkled them with the sharp taste of salt, just as mild weather causes meat to grow wormy unless the heat of salt has dried it out. Therefore be at peace with one another, but let it be a peace that is seasoned with the salt of wisdom; try to acquire gen­tleness, but let it be a gentleness filled with the warmth of faith. (Blessed Guerric of Igny, Sermo IV in festo S. Benedicti: PL 185,111-112).

The value of knowing Guerric of Igny is first as a Cistercian monastic father, but also as an eloquent preacher of Grace calling us into deeper communio with the Most Blessed Trinity.

St Bernard Tolomei

“God is love… and in the strength of that blessed love
All goods are obtained and everything is shaped by it,
And the man in his midst becomes God.”
~Bernardo Tolomei

On the Benedictine liturgical calendar, the commemoration today is for St. Bernard Tolomei (1272-1348), the Siena born monk who founded what is today is known as the Olivetan Benedictine Congregation. This monastic foundation follows the Holy Rule of St. Benedict and is under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Angels, hence their wearing of a white habit. One tradition of the Olivetans is to fast on Monday to honor the Archangel Michael (the secondary patron of the Congregation). Bernard is recalled as the “hero of penance and martyr of charity.”

St. Bernard Tolomei, teach us the meaning of true penance and charity.

St Maximilian Kolbe

We liturgically honor one of the 20th century’s greatest saints, Maximilian Kolbe, who points out for the meaning of the “the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.”

“Father Maximilian voluntarily offered himself for death in the starvation bunker for a brother, and so won a spiritual victory like that of Christ himself. This brother still lives today in the land of Poland and is here with us” (John Paul II, June 7, 1979).

Saint Maximilian, pray for us.

Only the Lord can help

Today, on the 19th Sunday through the Church Year, we hear the gospel reading where Jesus walks on the water. We are moving through the summer…and what the Church gives to us to meditate upon is keen these days.

St. Augustine reminds us, “If you feel your foot slipping beneath you, if you become a prey to doubt or realise that you are losing control, if, in a word, you begin to sink, say: Lord, I am drowning, save me! Only he who for your sake died in your fallen nature can save you from the death inherent in that fallen nature.”

Jesus, I trust in you.

St Clare of Assisi

The Church honors the memory of St. Clare of Assisi (1193/94-1253), liturgically, today. She is known as the first woman to join St. Francis and his companions in their new form of living the Gospel in a radical way.

Clare met Francis who impressed upon her the virtue –not just a value– of being a part of what he determined to be a life of penance and “life according to the Holy Gospel”. Called by God, Clare decided to abandon her family and social status, like Francis and his companions, in 1211 or 1212 be a part of the new movement. Her “Franciscan” life first was lived in her family home but later moved to a more fitting environment. It was Francis who taught:

“Since by divine inspiration you have made yourselves daughters and servants of the most High King, the heavenly Father, and have taken the Holy Spirit as your spouse, choosing to live according to the perfection of the Holy Gospel, I resolve and promise for myself and for my brothers always to have the same loving care and special solicitude for you as I have for them.”

As she wrote to St. Agnes of Prague: “If so great and good Lord, then, on coming into the Virgin’s womb, chose to appear despised, needy, and poor in this world, so that people who were in utter poverty and want, suffering hunger for heavenly nourishment, might become rich in him by possessing the kingdom of heaven, then rejoice and be glad! . . What a great and praiseworthy exchange: to leave the things of time for those of eternity, to choose the things of heaven for the goods of earth, to receive the hundred-fold in place of one, and to possess a blessed and eternal life!”

The early sisters of Clare lived simply and prayerfully at the Church of San Damiano for over 40 years, sustained by their own work. The her monastic Rule was finally approved by Pope Innocent IV shortly before her death in 1253. She was canonized two years later in 1255.