Today, we celebrate Blessed Gerard, founder and first Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta.
Fra’ Gerard has embodied the motto Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum, which inspires over nine centuries of members and volunteers of the Order of Malta around the world.
Fra’ Gerard, pray for us.
Vilmos (William) Apor, born 1892, was a Hungarian bishop who earned a special reputation for his service to the poor, especially during the months of hardship that came toward and at the end of World War II. Named Bishop of Gÿor in 1941, he chose as his motto: “The Cross strengthens the weak and makes the strong gentle.” During the many air raids he opened his home to those whose houses had been destroyed. When Russian troops entered the city in 1945, many women including religious took refuge in his episcopal residence. On Good Friday 1945 three Russian soldiers came to the residence and demanded that the women be taken to their barracks. Bishop Apor refused and placed himself in front of the women. One of the Russians shot and wounded him. Out of fear they then fled, leaving the women unmolested. Bishop Apor lived in great agony for three days and died on 2 April, Easter Monday.
Blessed William Apor, Bishop and Martyr, was a Conventual Chaplain ad honorem of the Order of Malta.
Collect: Almighty and Eternal God, through your grace, Bishop William, by courageously shedding his blood for his flock, earned a martyr’s crown. Grant that we, despite the difficulties of our daily lives, may do your will and offer our good works for the salvation of our brothers and sisters. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Blessed Vilmos Apor, PRAY FOR US!
*from the biography
Today we are given the liturgical memorial of the often overlooked saint who has led by an experience of Christ, a man of deep desires to serve the Church, and a man who is a model of service to faith and the poor. St Vincent de Paul, the 17th century French priest is recalled not only for personal holiness and for what has become known the Vincentian charism. The importance of the Vincent’s influence is likely more important to our era than I dare say the Ignatian heritage. While Loyola’s real gift to the Church is not necessarily the least Society of Jesus and the educational system, but really the Spiritual Exercises and the method of discernment. Vincent’s gift to the Church is the integration of evangelization and charity.
What is also key to understanding and appreciating what Vincent did for us –and continues to do for us– is the spiritual bond he had with St Louise de Marillac. Vincent and Louise worked in complement to each other. Three Vincentian values that are often spoken of are spirituality, friendship and service. For me, the key value is friendship. Friendship is the sun to which one’s spiritual life and service orbit. What is the quality of our relation to God, others, the Church, the poor, to seminarians, and to ourselves? Without a flourishing and mature relationship with others, and principally with the Lord, then all else falls apart or doesn’t even get off the ground. As a young man and student under the Vincentians, I was taught that by example, Vincent indicated that our service to the poor is first nourished by our spiritual life, by personal and corporate prayer. Time spent praying before the Most Blessed Sacrament has an abundance of grace. Short of spending hours in prayer our friendship with those we work and serve is banal. In the end, we recall a gem in the crown of saints and blesseds in the crown of the Church.
St Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
Today is the feast of Saint Gabriel Urgebadze, monk, a Confessor of the Faith and Fool of Christ.
Saint Gabriel is well-known in Georgia, less known in this part of the world.
Read this link to know more about Saint Gabriel.
“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
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
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).
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.
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
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)
