April 5, Juliana of Mt. Cornillion, Belgium 1258

In the church there are physical martyrs and there are psychological martyrs.  Juliana was one of the latter.  At age five when her parents died, she and her twin sister were entrusted to the Norbertine nuns to be raised.  As a teenager she joined the nuns herself and eventually was elected superior.  Juliana had a recuring dream/vision.  She saw the moon with a piece like a slice of pie cut out of it.  Gradually she became aware that the moon was a symbol of the Liturgical year reflecting the life of Christ like the moon reflects the light of the sun. The missing feast was one dedicated to the Eucharist.  She had deep devotion to the Eucharist which she had shared with her friend the recluse Blessed Eve and one of the nuns in her convent, Isabelle. The three of them shared this devotion with Archdeacon John of St. Martin’s Basilica. He then shared it with the Bishop, and helped Juliana compose the Liturgical texts for a Feast of Corpus Christi first celebrated in the diocese of Liège.  The canonry where Juliana was prioress was a double canonry.  One side housed women, and the other side housed men.  A man named Rodger bought his way into power over the men and took up a campaign against Juliana saying that she had misused the funds for the leprosarium in which both the men and women took care of the sick and that she invented the feast of Corpus Christi to gain attention for herself.  She was expelled from the Community and fled to her friend, Eve.  With the help of John and the Bishop she was reinstalled in her position in the canonry.  Shortly thereafter the bishop died and in the intrigue surrounding who would be the next bishop, Rodger again gained control and again expelled Juliana.  This time she was taken in by women in other monasteries. She was provided a small room with a window on the Blessed Sacrament and after ten years died in seclusion. 

In the meantime, John Pantaleon had gradually moved up in clerical circles and was elected Pope taking the name of Urban IV.  Eva wrote to him asking him if he remembered Juliana and her vision.  He did and he then commissioned St. Thomas Aquinas to compose the liturgy of the Feast of Corpus Christi for the entire church and he sent a copy back to Blessed Eve.  Those with whom Juliana lived her last years of seclusion were convinced of her holiness. They buried her with their saints and kept her memory alive. Her friend, Eve, wrote the story of her life.

The shape of the Mandala is that of a Monstrance used to expose the blessed Sacrament.  The center is a host with the monogram of Jesus. The crosses on which the wheat and grapes are mounted represent the rejection and sufferings Juliana underwent.  The moon shapes represent Juliana’s repeated vision of the liturgical year with a feastday missing.  The outer rays represent the passion with which Juliana reached out in all directions to promote love of the Eucharist.

April 4, Benedict the Black, Italy, 1589

It seems that our most prevalent sins, like weeds in a garden, arise from deep roots of which we are not even aware.  The roots are unconsciously absorbed attitudes and preferences which cause us to look down upon those who are different from ourselves. The difference can be anything from gender, to forms of creativity, to musical preferences, to patterns of thinking, to skin color.  Jesus, in both words and actions, strove to point out the sinfulness of such thinking, but then we have just made use of the gospel to create another occasion for justifying our mistreatment of others by labeling them “non-believers.”  Benedict, the Black, became a saint by reason of enduring such mistreatment.  His parents were from Africa and taken to Italy as slaves.  They were told that because of loyal service, their firstborn would be granted freedom.  Even though he was born free, he had no means of education.  He was gentle and kindly by nature. He was also very dark-skinned and became the object of ridicule to those whose skin was lightly colored. He endured such mistreatment with so much patience and forbearance that it attracted the attention of a group of Christian hermits who invited him to come and live with them which he did.  After some years the members of the group were asked to join established Religious Communities.  Benedict chose to join the Franciscans. He was a humble cook for the community, but soon attracted attention because of his virtue and the fact that his dark face often shone with supernatural light.  He was chosen to be superior of the house which he protested. He could neither read nor write, however, he had a profound intuitive understanding of theology and the scriptures  as well as an ability to read men’s hearts. After his service as superior, he returned to being the cook for the community.

Photo by Jim Scully

April 3, Joseph the Hymnographer, Thessalonica, 886

Joseph was considered a saint in his lifetime for many reasons, his virtue, his gifts of discernment of spirits and teaching, the forbearance with which he endured exiles and imprisonment, but he is most honored for his contributions to sacred hymns. He fled his native Sicily in face of the Arab invasion. Then he was exiled from Constantinople by an iconoclast emperor and his bishop sent him to Rome.  On the way he was captured by pirates most likely hired by the emperor. He was held prisoner and began ministering to his fellow slaves.  After a year he experienced a vision of St. Nicholas of Myrna who asked him to sing his faith then showed him a way to escape. From that time on Joseph also devoted himself to writing hymns and creating new melodies for previous works.

Music has always been an important part of the expression of faith.  St. Augustine said that the one who sings, prays twice.  The oldest extant text of the Hebrew Testament we have is a verse from the hymn of Miriam in the book of Exodus.  The book of psalms is the longest book of the bible.  We now know that the psalms were composed mostly by ordinary people though some of them are borrowed from other cultures and a few are written by David.  An important part of worship and personal devotion was to visit the temple and hire a musician to compose a melody for a poem you had written which was your thanksgiving, or lamentation or petition.  You, along with your family and friends, would then enter the temple singing your poem to the melody provided. The psalms are songs of the heart.  St. Paul provides evidence in his letters of how hymns written by Christian converts contributed to the theology of the gospel.  None of the music for the psalms and hymns has come down to us but the texts have kept musicians of all ages busy writing musical settings for their own times thus keeping the old texts new for us. In the case of St. Joseph the hymnographer, he was commissioned by another saint, the famous Bishop, Nicholas, to sing his faith.   And Paul tells us:

“And do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father. Eph. 5:18-20

Music is to sound what poetry is to words, what dance is to motion, what the flower is to the bud.

Photo by Jim Scully

April 2, Blessed Mykolai Charnetskyi, Marytr, Lviv, Ukraine, 1959

Myolai was born on the feast of the Holy Cross and his life was very much an embrace of the cross.  He was ordained for the Greek Orthodox Rite of the church and joined the Redemptorists.  He taught and did spiritual direction in the seminary until he was given positions of administration which brought him into the radar of the occupying Russians. Russia was determined to make/keep Ukraine as part of its empire after the war.  He was arrested for teaching and activity contrary to Communism.  He spent 11 years at hard labor in Siberia. After he was released, he was kept under constant surveillance and frequently tortured.  He died as a result the abuse joining thousands, millions really, of Ukrainians who died then as now at the hands of the Russians.  The number of martyrs who are the ones portrayed in the book of Revelation, is beyond calculating Rev. 7:9.  They are like mountains of sand.

Photo by Chris Scully

April 1, Saint Stargazius, patron of the curious, 700’s location unknown

In the dark times of the 700s, Stargazius, like everybody else, feared to go outside at night.  The darkness was considered something evil and dangerous.  People prayed all night that the sun would come back.  Stargazius’ reasoned that if God had created both the day and the night, then night could not possibly be evil.  His chief characteristic was his curiosity, which drove him to slip out of the house one night just to see if what people were saying about the darkness was true.  It was a clear night, and the sky was full of bright stars.  Stargazius was amazed and thrilled to his core.  When he told people that the night was perfectly safe and beautiful in its own right, however, they refused to believe him.  They thought he had been possessed by a demon.  He was shunned.  Children threw rocks and garbage at him. 

Stargazius, however, was not deterred.  He went out every night.  He told everybody who would listen what a beautiful work of God the night was.  Gradually, a few people were convinced by his persistence and courageously ventured outside after dark to see for themselves.  This little group eventually became a kind of community, united in their joint discovery.   The elders of the town, none of whom were in the community, became alarmed.  They passed an ordinance that made it a crime to go out of the house at night. 

Stargazius’ little band, knowing that the night was beautiful and not dangerous, continued to study the stars.  One day the town policeman arrested Stargazius and locked him in a windowless dungeon.

After some time, his friends were allowed to visit him.  They smuggled into his cell a jar containing many lightning bugs they had caught.  Stargazius released the insects in his cell.  They flew around, blinking and winking.  It was a delight for Stargazius, since they reminded him of his beloved stars.

Story by guest writer, Jim Scully

Happy April Fools’ Day!

Photo by Tere Scully

March 31 Blessed Natalia Tulasiewicz, Teacher, Martyr, Germany, 1945

During these last days of March, the Catholic/Christian world is focused on the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.  This was especially true of the Polish teacher, Natalia, who was put to death on Easter Sunday in 1945 in a German Concentration camp. 

Natalia was a teacher.  She had a good Catholic education and close relationship with religious Orders of women but was convinced that her calling was to be a lay teacher. “I completely and exclusively live for God. It’s just about the form of life to realize this devotion. An inner voice tells me to follow my own path (rather, the one marked out by Christ for me), to remain in the world” (1st January 1942).   In the midst of the war, she volunteered despite poor health and grave danger, to go into Germany as part of a group of women assigned to hard labor in order to provide spiritual comfort to them.  Her mission was discovered, and she was sent to a concentration camp where she found her greatest fulfillment as she ministered to the inmates in her role of teacher inspirer even leading presentations on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus.  On Good Friday in 1945 she was selected for the gas chamber and on Easter Sunday she was put to death.  Two days later the camp was liberated.   

Photo by Jim Scully

March 30, Servant of God, Thea Bowman, Mississippi 1990

One of the most amazing things about Divine Providence is timing.  God sends a “woman of the hour” when what she says and does is what is most needed at that moment in history.  This is the case with Thea Bowman, born in 1937 in a small town in Mississippi, USA. the granddaughter of slaves.  Her charism was teaching. She converted to Catholicism when she was nine, then at age 15 joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.  After completing her education at the Catholic University of America she began her teaching career.  Her teaching role brought to bear all the beauty and dynamism of African cultures on American consciousness.  She used every cultural tool available: clothing, music, dance, retreats, theological reflection. Her talents were like a garden full of flowers of many kinds.  And this was in the wake of the civil rights demonstrations for social justice for people of color.  She was a spiritual and cultural dynamo infused with the joy and holiness of the Gospel. She developed breast cancer and prayed to continue her work to the time of her death which she did with loving brilliance.

Photo by Jim Scully

March 28, St. Hilarion the New, Abbot, Martyr, Ephesus 745

One of the ugliest events in church history is how Catholics turned against each other over the veneration of sacred images.  When it first flared up, Islam was in its ascendency and carried with it a ferocious depredation of any visual imagery of the divine.  The use of sacred images had been a feature of Catholicism  almost from the beginning with many images created using mosaic tiles and frescos.  The practice suddenly became a matter of controversy within Christianity as Christians faced the ideas put forth by Islam. 

Saint Hilarion was a holy hermit who was elected to be the head of Pelekete monastery in Asia-Minor.  He and his monks had great devotion to sacred images.  The Emperor at the time was against the use of images.  His military commander took troops and on the evening of Holy Thursday during the liturgy, they broke into the church disrupting the service and trashing the sacred elements.  Forty-two of the monks were arrested and taken in chains to Edessa where they were murdered.  The rest of the monks were horribly mutilated in their monastery.  They were burned,  their beards were set on fire, their faces covered with tar and their noses cut off.  St. Hilarion was among them.

At this same time St. John Damascene was living in Jerusalem under Islamic Rule and there he wrote his remarkable treatises on the concepts of “image” in Scripture which would settle the matter for Catholicism.  He was free to do this because he lived under Islamic rule not the Orthodox Christian Emperor.  But it would take a while for his writings to percolate in the Church.

In our time, studies of the brain have shown that our minds have several different forms of intelligence some verbal, some visual.  In a world where few people could read and write for much of Church History, visuals were a great aid in teaching the faith and telling the stories of the scriptures.  Even in a world where more people are educated to reading and writing, their visual intelligences may still predominate as is witnessed by the rise of visual media.  We often persecute one another out of ignorance and arrogance and label that religious righteousness.

March 27, Blessed Giuseppe Ambrosoli, Ugunda, 1987

Giuseppe was born in Italy between the two World Wars of the 20^th century. His life was constantly interrupted in some way by war.  He wanted to be a physician but his schooling was constantly interrupted.  He helped a Jewish family escape into Switzerland to save them from concentration camps.  Then he was forced to serve as a military medic.  When the War was over, he was finally able to complete his medical studies with a specialty in Tropical diseases.

Giuseppe joined the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and was sent to Uganda as both parish priest and physician.  Giuseppe felt a special closeness to St. Charles de Faucauld, missionary to Africa before him.  He drew inspiration from Charles’ writings.   Giuseppe turned a simple clinic into the Kalongo Hospital which served everyone including those with Leprosy.  When civil war broke out the hospital and medical training school had to be moved for a time.  After his death it was returned to its original location.  In nearby exile while attending patients he became very ill himself and died of renal failure. His work continues to this day.

March 25, Annunciation to Mary, Conception of Jesus, Holy Land

Today we celebrate the most momentous moment (pun intended) in creation.  It is the moment when the self-emptying nature of the Godself takes on priesthood in the flesh as the Incarnate Word begins putting on the fleshly vestment of his sacrifice and Mary, the first priest of the New Testament, in similar self-emptying love, surrenders her body as the sacristy he uses to prepare.  Her words “be it done…” in Luke 1:38 are the equivalent of any priest who repeats Jesus’ words at the Supper: “this is my body.” In both cases Jesus, the self-emptying image of the Father, becomes present physically and the sacrament of his self-emptying love embraces us. That self-emptying love is the healing, the salve (salvation), for the effects of sin on creation.  When the priestly self-emptying sacrifice is fully accomplished, Mary will be there standing by him as he hangs on the cross even as she is here when the human self-emptying begins.

The title of the day is taken from the scripture passage in Luke about the angel Gabriel speaking to Mary.  It could equally be Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2:7) “…he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.”  Unfortunately, we pay little attention to this likeness at this first moment of its existence.  All of our attention goes to the celebration of his birth when we can physically see him.  We have the same problem with all the unborn.  We do not consider them human or made in the likeness of God because we do not physically see them.  Hopefully, celebrating the conception of Jesus can help our blindness.

March 23, Blessed Peter O’Higgins, Dominican, Martyr, Ireland, 1642

Just as every family has its own customs and ways of being family, so each “family,” or religious group known as an “Order,” has its own way of witnessing to the gospel.  Their way of witnessing to the gospel is usually taken from a Saint who first gathered the group together. Dominicans were organized and inspired by St. Dominic. One thing that the major Religious Orders have in common is that they have all given many martyrs to the Church.     Peter O’Higgins was born at a time of great turmoil and division. Protestants were persecuting Catholics and vice versa. Puritans were being persecuted by Anglicans and vice versa.  Peter who was born in Dublin was educated in secret in Spain and joined the Dominicans, then he returned to Ireland in hopes of reestablishing a Dominican house in Naas during a time of relative calm.  Peter had an attitude of non-judgmental calm in the midst of violent emotional turbulence.  More than once he risked his live to save the life of a Protestant.  He could see that nothing was gained by Christians putting one another to death.  Indeed that was itself contrary to the gospel.  But the same kind of tolerance and deep understanding was not accorded him.  He was arrested and his captors demanded that he renounce his Catholic Faith and pledge allegiance to the English Crown.  When he refused, he was publicly hanged over the protests of Protestants whose lives he had saved. His last words were to forgive his executioners.

March 21, Nicholas von Flue, Hermit, Switzerland, 1487

To understand Nicolas of Flue you have to know the background of his family at that time in the history of Switzerland.  His name Flue is taken from the river that runs through the valley where his family owned extensive land and farms dedicated to sustainable farming.  His mother was a member of the “Friends of God,” a democratic network of persons dedicated to living an intense spiritual life spread out over Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany.  There were some clerics in the network but mostly they were lay persons who honored different ways of life:  single, married and hermitic.  Some hermits lived in groups with separate hermitages some lived alone wherever they could establish a hermitage.   They were largely mystics, faithful to Catholic orthodox teaching nevertheless, some members of the association were burned at the stake because they clashed with clergy over the corruption of the clergy. Declaring them heretics and having them burned at the stake was a good way of silencing them.

From childhood Nicholas was a deeply prayerful person growing up on his fathers farm.  At seventeen he joined the army to fight in a neighboring dispute. Then at 30 he married a young farm girl.  It was a very happy marriage and they had 10 children.  During that time, he also served in many civil positions including that of judge. He became very disillusioned with some of the other judges and resigned.  Nicholas repeatedly refused to accept the office of Governor.  He began to feel the call to become a hermit.  He carefully discussed this with his parish priest and his wife.  His wife who shared his spirituality as a Friend of God understood and did not oppose him. His father was still alive, and his older sons were highly capable of caring for the farm.  The oldest would go on to become governor and the youngest would become a priest.

When Nicholas first embarked on his life as hermit he started out to join a group of hermits in Germany but on the way he was given clear signs that he should remain in Switzerland and become a hermit there.  Some hunters found him in a crude shelter he devised and built a little hermitage for him.  A few hours each day he spent receiving visitors who came to get his advice or seek prayers, the rest of the time he spent in contemplative prayer.  The hermitage was a short distance from his home and his wife and children would also visit him at times.

Nicholas is most famous for a dispute he settled which kept the Swiss Cantons from civil war and provided a pattern of governance that has endured to the present in the country of Switzerland. The Canton leaders meeting at Stans could not resolve their disputes and their meeting broke up on the brink of war when the parish priest went to Nicholas’ hermitage to consult him and came back with the plan that would satisfy everyone.  The coalition of Cantons was preserved and strengthened but outside national alliances were forbidden.  Each Canton could preserve  its own culture and governance.  The three languages, Italian, French and German were not seen as an obstacle to unity. The unity Nicholas proposed was not based on uniformity.  The Protestant Reformation did not divide the country and when Hitler threatened to invade the country its citizens attributed its preservation to “Bruder Klaus.”

A documented biography of Nicholas was written while he was still alive and another was written immediately after his death.  He predicted that he would die on his 70^th birthday.  A short time before that he had a vision of being in heaven with people in white robes.  He was greeted and thanked by each Person of the Trinity.  Eight days before his death he was stricken with a severe illness and terrible darkness of spirit.  As he was dying, he was surrounded by his wife and children.

March 20, Saint Cuthbert, Farne Islands, 687

When Cuthbert was 16 he witnessed something unusual in the sky on the night of August 31, 651.  He and some friends were out on a hillside when they saw a bright light descend from the sky then return having grown even brighter and accompanied by music.  Cuthbert told his companions that it must have been some saint being taken to heaven.  The next day they learned that the evening before St. Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne.  Cuthbert knew that he was being called to follow Aidan.  He immediately entered the Monastic community at Melrose and after a few years he was sent to Lindisfarne.

He became famous for his preaching, his pastoral work and performing miracles.  As in our own time, there was intense controversy over liturgical practices.  The Celtic Church (Ireland, Scotland, Wales) was used to its own liturgical practices which included setting the date of Easter.  There was a strong movement to bring the Celtic practice in line with the liturgical observances of the Church in Rome.  The situation was not helped by the fact that the proponent for the Roman Rite had a cankerous personality.  A Synod of Bishops and Abbots was held at Whitby in 664.  The King and the Synod decided to embrace the Roman Rite: “Peter, has spoken.”  Some monks refused to accept the decision and withdrew to the Island of Iona (which later accepted the decision).  Cuthbert chose to adapt to the Roman Liturgy.  He could see that Church unity was more important than the Celtic customs he had grown up with.

Cuthbert retired to the Island of Farne in 676 to live as a hermit.  He loved the animals there and became a protector of the Eider ducks making the island a sanctuary for them.  They came to be known as “Cuddys.”  In 685 Cuthbert was elected Bishop and the King himself came to the Island to beg Cuthbert to accept.  Reluctantly he did so.  For two years he served as bishop of Lindisfarne but sensing his death was near, he resigned and returned to the Island.  He was overtaken by a grave illness and died on the Island in 685.

March 19 St Joseph, Patron of Fathers, Holy Land, First Century

St. Joseph’s Day is the Church equivalent of Father’s Day in American culture. However, the celebration of Joseph’s fatherhood is hundreds of years old. The most recent official writing about him is Pope Francis’s Patris Corde. In the last two centuries the devotion has mushroomed.  This coincides with the struggle of masculinity to rediscover itself and be freed from the shackles of  toxic machoism.  For centuries the masculine role was portrayed as the ideal warrior, containing, controlling, converting.  As the church moved away from being  the heir of the Roman Empire, and a military world power, it had to rediscover itself in light of the gospel. 

St. Joseph has moved into his own as a model for masculinity in recent times.  He is strong, capable, enterprising, and recognizes that his role is not to dominate or control Mary but to enable her to be faithful to her destiny which becomes his own also. He is able to plan for the family, to provide for them and to protect them.  In all of this Joseph reflects the role of God the Father, who plans and arranges our destinies without in any way violating our freedom.  The Father provides for us seeing to our needs in ways of which we are not even aware. The Father also protects us from what could keep us from his love.  As St. Thomas points out, Joseph was the one chosen by the Father to reflect his presence during the childhood of Jesus.  It is not until Mary is espoused to Joseph that the angel makes her aware of God’s plans.  Joseph’s presence is like that of the rainbow which God says represents his covenant with flesh.  It over arches the childhood of Jesus with beautiful virtues and protective love and then is quietly gone as Jesus matures into manhood.

March 18, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Doctor of the Church, Jerusalem,386

Cyril is a patron for Bishops who suffer abuse at the hands of other bishops.  He came into his ministry at the time when the Arian heresy was rampant in the Church.  Cyril who was a native of Jerusalem and educated there, was ordained by the bishop of Jerusalem, and then succeeded him.  It is from Cyril that we learn the most about how the early Church prepared would-be Christians for Baptism and then encouraged them to share with one another and others their experiences of the Sacraments of Initiation—Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist.  He suffered jealousy from Arian bishops who also resented the prominence of Jerusalem over the areas of their jurisdiction. He was falsely accused, deposed, and exiled twice.  Each time he was reinstated when the accusers either died or were deposed themselves. He was accused of heresy by the hot-headed St. Jerome who could be very quick to jump to judgement.  Centuries later the Church declared him a “doctor,”  that is someone whose teaching immensely enriched our understanding of the basic truths of Catholic Christianity.  This was done to honor his great contributions in the form of instructions to those studying the faith. He wrote them in both Greek and Latin.  It was also done to acknowledge that his teaching was orthodox.

It was a long time before the sun set on the Arian heresy within Christianity.  There are even sects today outside mainline Christianity which still profess its teachings. The difficulty is that there are a few biblical texts which can be interpreted along Arian lines of thought.  The Church had to work through the process of biblical interpretation and define the principle that to understand biblical revelation ALL texts on a given topic must be considered and weighed before one or two can be correctly understood.  The Spirit speaks to the whole Church and speaks through Scripture –all of it.

The amazing thing about Cyril is that he never showed resentment or sought vengeance on his accusers. “Our actions have a tongue of their own; they have an eloquence of their own, even when the tongue is silent. For deeds prove the lover more than words.” – Saint Cyril of Jerusalem

March 17, St. Patrick Bishop, Ireland, 464

Among the many gifts of the Irish there is blarney, the gift of light-hearted exaggeration given to phantasmal flights of verbal imagination somewhat similar to modern day visual flights of special effects.  This has created a very knotty situation for biographers of St. Patrick who strive to sort out historical facts from legends.  But with the luck of the Irish, we do have Patrick’s own written “confession” which is a sort of personal apologetic.  St. Augustine in the same time period wrote his famous “Confessions” as testimony to his conversion.  Patrick’s writing is not only a testimony to what led to his full embrace of his faith but also a testimony to the activity of God in his life as a defense against his jealous detractors.

There are special things we can learn from the document.  The first is the story of a young man moving from familial knowledge of his faith to personal profound commitment to it –a coming of age spiritually. In his case this included as for many youth, a curiosity about the rituals of other faiths and some very hard knocks. As a teenager he was captured in one of the many raids made by Irish pirates along the shores of Scotland and England. In Ireland he was sold as a slave whose master put him to work tending sheep in a desolate, isolated area. In this situation of hardship, separated from his family he had to come to grips with his  faith, to reach deep within himself and make faith his own or abandon it.  He discovered his faith as he had never known it simply reflected from parents.  He gave himself to prayer and developed a profound spiritual life even advancing to mystical experiences (favors).  When this prayerful formation was complete he had a dream telling him it was time for him to go home.  He escaped his captor and went to a seaport willing to work on board a ship to pay for his way.  They offered him passage as a male prostitute to be used for the pleasure of the sailors which he refused.  Finally, he found passage with honorable men.

Back in Ireland he was determined to become a priest.  He had a dream/vision.  He saw a messenger and people of Ireland bringing him letters they begged him: “Come back, holy youth, and teach us your faith.”  Eventually he did just that.  He was neither the first nor the only missionary to Ireland but he was the one who had a unique spiritual preparation for his ministry.  He had been immersed in their culture for six of the very formative years of youth. He understood them as it were, from the inside out. And he had a spiritual commissioning from them to bring them the faith.  The spark of his deep faith struck against the native stone of their belief in “threeness,” leapt up into flame and spread.  Much of the rest of his life was in administration consecrating other bishops, solidifying the merger of Catholicism and pre-Christian indigenous beliefs within the culture. St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus became the driving engine of Paul’s apostolate.  Patrick’s spiritual experiences in the wilds of Ireland as a captive became the driving force of his apostolate and it is thus that he is known as “the Apostle of Ireland.”

March 16, Saint John de Brebeuf, SJ, Martyr, Canada 1649

John Brebeuf is a patron of linguists.  He was a very large, handsome man who felt a desire to be a priest from an early age.  He was almost rejected by the Jesuits because of Tuberculosis but amazingly he recovered and because of his linguistic skills was sent to Canada to help evangelize the Native Peoples.  His special mission was to the Huron Nation.  It was a huge challenge for the missionaries because of the difference in languages.  John wrote back to France describing missionary life. “If you are a great theologian in France, you will be a humble scholar here.  The Huron language will be your St. Thomas Aristotle.  For a long time, you will need to be mute.”  But, in time, John’s linguistic skills enabled him to analyze the Huron language and produce works which helped other missionaries.  He even translated the Catechism into Huron.  John gave the Indian game known as La Crosse its name.  The sticks used in the game reminded him of a Bishop’s staff or crosier called La Crosse in French.

The Huron village where John lived was raided by the Iroquois tribe.  Gabriel Lalemant, a fellow Jesuit, and John were taken captive.  They were horribly tortured and finally burned to death along with the Natives who had become Christian. John was 55 years old.  The Jesuits knew that becoming a missionary most likely meant also becoming a martyr and they regarded this as a sign that their ministry was being blessed.  The martyrs were the seed pods from which the faith would grow.

 

March 15, Servant of God, Eusebio Kino, SJ, Mexico 1711

The saints are really far more present to us than we realize.  We are so occupied with daily business and media influences that we can scarcely recognize their presence.  But once in a while we have a story about a saint who was close to a previous saint who lived before them.  Such is Eusebio Kino. Born in northern Italy, he attended Jesuit schools in Germany.  When he was in college, he became gravely ill.  He made a vow that if he recovered, he would follow in the footsteps of the great Jesuit Missionary, Francis Xavier.  He recovered, added Francis to his name, and joined the Jesuits.  He begged to be sent to the mission in the Orient where Francis Xavier had died.  Eusebio was a very gifted mathematician and had studied astronomy –talents which he thought would be very useful in China at the time, given the Chinese interest in those subjects.  The choice of where he would go came down to a decision between himself and another Jesuit.  The Provincial left it up to them to decide.  As they both wanted so passionately to go to China, they decided to draw lots and agreed to accept the results.  Kino drew Mexico to his great disappointment.  However, in the designs of God, it was there that his talents were most useful.  He was sent to northern Mexico the farthest boundary where the missionaries had been. Kino had an extraordinary love for the Native people he served.  He expounded great efforts to protect them from being enslaved and exploited by Spanish miners and businessmen. He once rode for 24 hours as fast as each horse he exchanged would carry him to defend a Native man falsely accused.  Kino attended conferences of Native American tribes and sat among them listening humbly.  He was deeply loved by the Native peoples.  When he and the Jesuit Visitor were in one of the northern missions, Natives from the village of Tumacacori, miles away, came carrying crosses decorated with flowers to beg him to come and found a mission there. 

The skills Kino acquired on his father’s farm in Italy turned out to be as useful as his math skills.  He brought sheep, cattle, fruits, and wheat to the people to enrich their lives and taught them how to incorporate these into their lifestyles. Kino clearly understood the difference between proselytizing and evangelizing.  The former being getting followers to blindly follow what you want and the latter being the art of bringing Good News to enrich people while honoring their common sense and indigenous cultures.

Kino’s map-making skills were put to great use as well.  He mapped out regions not yet explored.  He was certain that Baja California was not an island and he explored the mouth of the Colorado river to prove from land what had already been observed by ship—the Baja was attached to the mainland.  There is a delightful story about this exploration.  He wanted to cross the river but was concerned about his boots–that they would get so wet they would be ruined. His Native guides and companions told him not to worry they would take him to the other side perfectly dry.  They put a large water-proof basket they had made on a raft and had him sit in it. Thus, they ferried him safely across and back.  The Natives created a large cross to which they attached beautiful abalone shells from the Pacific coast.  They carried this cross as a symbol of him and his work among them.

Kino taught the Natives devotion to St. Francis Xavier.  A special chapel in honor of St. Xavier was built attached to the Mission at Magdalena, one of the 21 missions Kino established over 24 years.  Kino went there to dedicate the chapel on March 15.  As his missionary life had begun with a vow in honor of St. Francis Xavier, a celebration of St. Francis Xavier saw the close of the life of this great missionary.  He became very ill and died that night. The saint who chose to follow a saint was taken home as he celebrated the man who had inspired him and to whom he felt so very close.

March 14, Blessed Eve of Liège, Anchoress Belgium, 1265

Blessed Eve is a patron of confidants.  She was born into a wealthy family but decided to give up the wealth and become an Anchoress—that is, live alone cloistered in a little room attached to St. Martin’s church in Liege, Belgium.  While anchoresses do not leave the cell where they live, the do receive visitors through a window.  People frequently came to them to ask for prayers and advice.  Eve became a confidant of St. Juliana who was a sister and then prioress at the local Norbertine Canonry.  Juliana repeatedly had a haunting vision which she gradually came to realize referred to something missing in the Liturgical Year celebrated by the Church in it cycle of celebrations.  Juliana confided her experience and her understanding of it to Eve.  When Juliana became prioress she began promoting a Feastday in honor of the Eucharist celebrating what the Eucharist was in the lives of Christians.  It was well received by her community, however, a less than honorable and very ambitious man, Rodger, managed to get control of the Canonry and accused Juliana of inventing the celebration to get fame for herself and to make money.  He deposed her and exiled her from the community. She fled to Eve.  When the bishop found out what was going on, he deposed Rodger and reinstated Juliana.  The Bishop also had the new feast of the Blessed Sacrament celebrated in the Diocese.  Bishop Robert died later that year and a new Bishop, Henry, was put in place.  Rodger managed to convince the new bishop that Juliana was a fraud and once again she was expelled from the community.  This time Eve used her extensive network of spiritual friends to help Juliana find shelter with other religious groups.  Eve and Juliana had also confided in the Archdeacon of the diocese, Pantaleon, when he was in Liege.  After Juliana was expelled a second time, she died in seclusion in Namur.  Meanwhile, the Archdeacon was elected as Pope Urban IV.  Eve wrote to him asking him if he remembered Juliana and her vision and if he would consider the feast in honor of the Eucharist.  His response was Yes, he remembered Juliana! Further he would have the feast celebrated by the whole Church and he asked Thomas Aquinas to write the text of the Office of Hours.  Eve, then set about writing the life of Juliana in French making her one of the first women authors of Europe writing in the vernacular.  Because of her role as confidant and friend to such a wide circle of highly spiritual persons she was able to bring the vison Juliana had confided to her to the whole church. Eve was like a fountain of life in an enclosed garden.

March 13 Saint Leander of Seville Bishop, Spain 600

If you have ever wondered how the custom of reciting the Nicene Creed at Mass got started, St. Leander provides the answer. The Creed was composed by the First Council of Nicea in 325 to clearly state the Church’s belief about the relationship of the First and Second Persons of the Trinity—their equality.  There was at the time, a group of Christians who held the belief that the Son was not equal to the Father within the Trinity.  The official teaching of the Catholic Church was made clear in this declaration of the faith based upon the New Testament as a whole.

St. Leander lived some 250 years after the Council at Nicea and in Spain there was a civil war between those who believed the Arian version of Christianity that Jesus was not equal to the Father, and the Orthodox version of Christianity which believed in the equality of the Persons of the Trinity.  Leander belong to a family of four siblings, three boys and one girl.  The three boys all became monks then Bishops, the girl became an Abbess overseeing several convents.  Leander who championed the Orthodox faith was sent into exile from his Diocese of Seville, Spain.  He went to Rome and there became the close friend of Pope Gregory the Great. When circumstances permitted, he returned to Seville and in order to be sure that his people heard and understood the true teaching of the Church he introduced the custom of reciting the Nicene Creed at Sunday Liturgies.  The practice was adopted by the rest of the Church everywhere and continues today.

There are some modern Christian Theologians even a Catholic spiritual writer who criticize the Creed and this practice saying that the Creed does not mention social justice and does not have a “mission statement”.  These are unworthy criticisms that do not do justice to the nature of the document.  It contains the basic essence, the foundation of the Catholic/Christian faith which is belief in the Three divine Persons, everything else in Christianity is commentary.  Proclaiming the Three is the mission Jesus left us “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature” Mark 16:15.  Everything else flows from the recognition of the Three and Their relatedness.  Leander got it right!

Pope Gregory the Great and Leander wrote letters to each other after Leander returned to Spain.  Some of those letters still exist and some have been turned into works of art.

March 12, Rutilio Grande, SJ, Martyr, El Salvador, 1977

Rutilio Grande could be a patron saint of teachers, of seminar professors, of social justice activists, but perhaps he is best considered patron of those who are profoundly aware of carrying their treasure in an earthen vessel.  He suffered profoundly from depression and self-doubt yet managed to serve the persecuted and needy heroically.  He was blessed with understanding superiors who worked with him gently to ease his stress and see that his assignments provided companionship.  Rutilio was also a close friend to Archbishop, now saint, Oscar Romero.  They were seminarians together.  Later Romero became the Archbishop under which the Salvadoran Jesuits served.  Romero was profoundly shaken by Rutilio’s murder.  As he stood over Rutilio’s dead body he felt the mantle of Rutilio’s work of standing up for human rights in the face of an evil regime fall on him and he knew that a similar fate most likely awaited him.

March11, Saint Marcus Chong Ui-Bae, Catechist, South Korea, 1866

Marcus is a remarkable example of the power of martyrdom! He was raised in a non-Christian family, married and became a teacher.  His wife died before they had any children.  He witnessed the martyrdom of three Catholic priests and was so taken with the joy and calm with which they faced death that he decided to read more about Catholicism.  Like any good teacher, he examined his subject carefully. The books he read won him over completely. “I had always believed that a Christian could not possibly be a good man, but now I know that in order to be truly a good man, one must be a Christian.”  At age 42 he was baptized and then began to devote himself to teaching Catechism and caring for orphans and the sick.  At age 72  when Christians were fleeing persecution, Marcus stayed to help those who could not flee.  He was arrested for being a Christian.  He was imprisoned, tortured and beaten by members of his own family but refused to give up his faith.  He was beheaded with some of those he had catechized and two priests.  Marcus was converted by the witness of martyrs, became a martyr and helped others to embrace faith to the point of martyrdom. Their lives are linked together like leaves on the stem of the beautiful fern of faith.

March 10, Saint John Ogilvie, SJ, Scotland 1615

John was born into a family torn apart by the Protestant Reformation when Catholics were being put to death for refusing to acknowledge the King of England as head of the Church.  His father was strongly Protestant but wanted his son to have a broad education and sent him to Europe to study.  There he carefully examined the arguments of both Catholics and Protestants.  The Catholic scriptural scholars, in particular the Jesuit scholars, led him to accept Catholicism and further to become a Jesuit himself.  He begged his superiors to allow him to go back to Scotland to minister to the hidden Catholics there.  He was finally allowed to do so.  He had to disguise himself as a horse trader and thus move about among the people.  He was betrayed and imprisoned.  After months during which his captors tried to get him  to accept the King of England as head of the Church which he refused, he was condemned to death. As he swung from the platform, he threw his rosary to the crowd. The man who caught it became a Catholic. It was the usual practice after hanging to publicly tear the body apart and leave it on display but in this case, they quickly took his body down and buried him because his preaching and martyrdom had created a lot of sympathy among the people.

One of the gravest dangers to the gospel is to confuse it with earthly power and kingdoms.  Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world” which means that while Christians can and should contribute to public life and politics, they must keep their allegiance to Christ alone not to any earthly power or political party.  John gave his life for his Scottish people and their right not to be forced to acknowledge an earthly king in place of Christ. Before the Protestant Reformation took place, Catholicism had been the form of Christianity for a thousand years in Scotland brought there by Roman soldiers.  And the Reformation was never able to eradicate it.  Today the Catholic Bishops of Scotland, England and Wales recognize each of those cultures as unique. The fires of faith often burn in the darkness of confusion and political upheaval but like all fires they prepare the way for new expressions of life.

March 9, St. Frances of Rome, Widow, Benedictine Oblate, 1440

Oblates are persons who seek to embody the spirituality of a particular Religious Order (group) in their lives without taking the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience taken by persons living in a religious community.

At age 12 Frances became the child bride of a man much older than her.  This arranged marriage, however, would be a very happy one and last for 40 years.  Lorenzo Ponziani was commander of Papal troops, and their lives would be disrupted by the Napoleonic wars as Lorenzo defended the Pope.  At one point their son, Battista was almost taken hostage to Frances immense grief.  The couple would also suffer from the plague to which they lost two children. Lorenzo was gravely wounded in one of the battles and became an invalid for the last seven years of his life.  Frances devotedly cared for him all during those years.

The couple had been extremely generous to the poor and needy.  Frances would go out riding in the back of a cart and gather the sick to take them home and nurse them.  She founded the first orphanage for abandoned children in Rome.  She is patroness of motorists because her guardian angel went before her in the dark streets to light the way for her like the headlights of a car (although no one else could see the angel).  After her husband’s death she went to live with the community of Oblates she had founded in Rome but continued her charitable work in a city with wolves roaming the streets because of the chaos and collapse of civil order.  She was a ray of hope in a time of darkness.

March 8, St. John of God, Granada 1550

The search for one’s destiny can be an arduous journey.  Some people know from an early age what they are called to do with their lives.  Others only find it through long and hard experience.  That was the case with John.  He was orphaned at an early age and finally taken in by a man who needed someone to tend his sheep.  As an adult he joined the military where he spent twenty years.  As he grew increasingly discontent, he left the military and began a life of severe penance.  John had several religious experiences which contributed to a nervous breakdown.  St. John of Avila became his spiritual director and advised him against such severe penances, telling him to focus instead on the needs of others.  John of God then took this name given him by the Infant Jesus in a vision and began to find himself by losing himself for others.  He cared for the sick and poor founding a hospice for them with special emphasis on mental illness.  Other men were deeply impressed with his work and joined him.  After his death they founded the order of Hospitallers dedicated to caring for the sick poor. After a hard journey, John truly found himself by pouring himself out for others.  He died of pneumonia after jumping into freezing water to save a drowning man.

March 7, Perpetua and Felicity, Carthage, Africa,203

Of all the early Christian martyrs, no story so rocked people as the story of Perpetua and Felicity.  They were not virgins but young mothers and refusing to give up their faith meant that they also had to face being torn away from spouses and children.  Perpetua’s child was only a few months old. Felicity gave birth a few days before her death.  Perpetua who was from the nobility and very well educated kept a diary which dramatically tells the story of their imprisonment, of the terrible conditions and the coarseness of the guards. Felicity was an enslaved woman.

Both women and three men were thrown to the lions in the area for the sport of spectators.  When the lions did not finish them off. They were cut through with swords.  Perpetua’s diary was saved and with her child was turned over to her father and brother. The story so riveted Christians that two centuries later Augustine (354-430) pointed out a problem for Catholics. It was to be so enchanted with the stories of saints that we do not give sufficient attention to the gospels. Somehow it is often easier to read the gospels through the lives of those who totally embrace it than the text itself.  Saints, martyrs in particular, are closer in time to us and writings by them or about them are more culturally comprehensible.  Nevertheless, we need to become close to Scripture itself and thankfully modern Christians have the aid of scripture scholars who help us approach the texts. The importance of Perpetua and Felicity is shown by the fact that their names were placed in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Liturgy.

March 6, Saint Rose of Viterbo, Italy, 1252

Saints who had mystical experiences have always been suspect to others.  People do not know how to handle something they are not familiar with and there are mentally unstable people who profess to having visions as well as those who will claim to have such experiences because they are searching for attention.  And if in addition to mystical experiences someone gets involved in church politics or secular politics as Joan of Arc did, then they have to expect still greater rejection.  Rose had visions from a young age.  As a teen ager she became involved in defending the Pope. Her city was in rebellion against Papal influence.  Her family was exiled because of her public defense of the Pope.  Eventually, the supporters of the Pope won the day.  Rose wanted very much to belong to a religious community and sought entrance into the Poor Clares founded by Sts. Francis and Clare but the community in Viterbo wanted nothing to do with a visionary who meddled in city politics. She died shortly thereafter, and the Pope insisted that she be buried in the convent of the Poor Clares which had refused her entrance.

March 5 St. Piran, Cornwall, 480

Culture is the vessel that enables faith to grow and endure. It becomes like flesh  to the soul—its external manifestation.  St. Piran is to Cornwall what St. David is to Wales and Patrick to Ireland.  Piran was an Irish monk who was captured and set adrift on the sea by Irish brigands.  He drifted to Penhale Beach on the Cornish shore. There he became a hermit renowned to the local people whom he taught Christianity.  He died in his little hermitage near the beach.  Five centuries later, the site was being erased by sand dunes when the towns people moved the hermitage inland leaving a lone Celtic Cross as an obelisk marking the original spot frequented by pilgrims.

For centuries St. Piran has been celebrated by local people and pilgrims.  The festival begins five days before the 5^th of March.  The celebrations include ringing church bells to announce events. 

There is a procession across the dunes to the Celtic Cross.  Processions have been an event in most cultures world-wide for millennia.  They are used for marriages, for funerals, to celebrate triumphs, to make protests.  In this case they celebrate Piran’s journey/pilgrimage in life to Cornwall and then his procession to eternal life.  The pilgrims carry yellow daffodils one of the first flowers of spring to decorate the Cross.

Celtic Crosses have distinctive features.  They are configured with an orb. Sometimes it is solid with holes in it, sometimes it is a circle between the arms and joining them. This orb represents all of creation.  In Celtic spirituality creation is held in high esteem and God’s activity in creation is never separated from that of redemption.

The pilgrims carry Cornish flags also.  The flag is black on which is embedded a white cross.  According to legend, Piran used a black stone as a hearth stone and the heat caused the tin metal in it to melt and form a cross.  This event reenkindled the industry of tin mining which became a major source of income for the people of Cornwall.  Tin mining along with copper and arsenic had been done there for a couple thousand years, fading and returning periodically. Piran is the patron of miners.

Another feature of the celebration of St. Piran involves a contest of throwing pastries.  The women of Cornwall developed a pastry which provided a meal for the miners underground.  They enclosed meat and vegetables cooked into a gravy inside a circle of dough then folded it  in half and crumpled the edges.  This could be easily carried into the mines or even thrown down to the miners. The mines are no longer in use but there are pastry throws celebrating St. Piran. His first companions at his hermitage were animals beginning with a fox. Dog owners bring their dogs to enjoy the broken pieces of pastries made especially for them at the throws during the festival.

Religious ritual and fun events preserve both the Cornish faith and the culture of Cornwall.

March 4, Martyrs of Albania 1945

With the end of World War II during which so may persons of faith were put to death, a new era of persecution for believers began.  Russia was part of the Allied forces which finally defeated Hitler, but communist Russia had its own hatred of faith and in the immediate wake of the war sought to establish its own systems of government and philosophy everywhere it could as quickly as it could.  Albania was one of the main areas for Communist attention. At the end of the year 1945 a group of outstanding men were put in prison and tortured, then in March they were lined up in a cemetery, machine gunned to death and buried in a common grave which was disguised as a garbage dump.  But God had other ideas about how they would be remembered.  All have been beatified.  Included in the group were two prominent Jesuits, Blessed Giovanni Fausti, and Blessed Daniel Dajani.  Blessed Kolé Shllaku was a Franciscan, Blessed Mark Çuni a seminarian, Blessed Fran Mirakaj a farmer, Blessed Qerim Sadiku a married layman and Blessed Gjelosh Lulashi a soldier whose only child was born six months later.

Throughout history, by far the greatest number of those recognized as saints have been martyrs.  There is always some regime which despises Christianity or is jealous of the loyalty Christians have for their faith. Martyrdom is the crowning glory of the Mystical Body of Christ.

March 3 Blessed Benedetto Sinigardi da Arezzo, Italy, 1280

As a young noble man Benedetto went to hear one of Francis of Assisi’s sermons and was moved to join the Franciscans.  He was sent to the Holy Land were he served as provincial of the Franciscans living there and caring for the holy sites for twenty years before returning to Italy. Benedetto realized that just being physically present where Jesus had been, was not adequate for union with the Lord.  Hearts and minds had to cultivate a consciousness of the omnipresence of the Lord.  He created a simple scripturally based prayer which can be said in less than three minutes but which encompasses the whole Christ event—incarnation, death and resurrection. And he had a bell rung at noon to remind all within hearing range to take a moment with the Lord.  Bells have been nicknamed “the tongue of the Lord” which calls us to prayer.  There is an exchange between the voice of the Lord and our voices for a few moments each day.  People’s schedules are so varied in our modern society that time for prayer gets crowed out.  However, it is possible to set ones cell phone to chime at a time convenient for each person to remind us to take a moment with the great events of our salvation. We can do that anywhere.  God is always present.

V/. The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,
R/. And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you;
blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

V/. Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
R/. Be it done unto me according to your Word.
Hail Mary…

V/. And the Word was made flesh,
R/. And dwelt among us.
Hail Mary…

V/. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
R/. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray. Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts: that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen. (USCCB)

March 2, Lucas Casali, Abbot, Sicily, 800

Lucas was a humble, loving monk who did not seek any kind of power over others.  He reluctantly accepted the office of Abbot at the monastery of St. Philip in Agira.  He was beloved by local people as they attributed relief from an outbreak of the plague to his prayers.  In the last years of his life, he became blind.  On a trip to Nicosia he was being led by the other monks when one of them decided to play a trick on him.  The monk told Abbot Lucas that some local people were following them and wanted to hear him preach.  The kindly abbot innocently turned in the direction he was told the people were waiting and began to speak for them.  When his homily was over, the stones along the road shouted “Amen” to the chagrin of the jokester.  Other monks took note of this and later a church bearing Lucas’ name was built there.

March 1, Saint David, bishop, Wales, 589

There are some persons who rise above the normal human scape like mountains rise above the surrounding landscape.  They become a source of inspiration and courage.  The psalmist cried out “I lift my eyes to the mountains from which comes my help in the name of the Lord.” (cf. Ps. 121). David of Wales, born in the beautiful mountainous terrain of coastal Wales, was a person like that.  He was reputed to be a tall imposing man with a very gentle disposition.  He became a monk, then Abbot of his community and finally was chosen as Archbishop when a dove settled on his shoulder while he was presenting to the assembly which was debating who should be the next bishop. He was born in the “middle ages’ that is the middle of the first millennium in 500.  In addition to being a gifted administrator of his community, he traveled in England to bring the gospel to Celtic tribes not yet evangelized.  He and his monks lived a very simple life of work and prayer.  They were vegetarian farmers famous for the leeks they cultivated.  His last words were “Be joyful! Do the little things…”  David’s strong influence on the surrounding culture continued after his death.  He is the patron saint of Wales.  Vikings repeatedly raided the monastery in the following centuries.  King Henry the VIII also tried to wipe out David’s memory by raiding the monastery and confiscating his relics but David’s devotion to the gospel, his gentleness, austerity and simplicity continue to be celebrated.

February 28, Black “Servants of God,” America 1800-2000

“I am black and beautiful,” is how the woman in the Song of Songs proudly describes herself.  She speaks of the shepherd’s tents which were made of black goats’ hair.  The tents were symbols of both hospitality and nuptial sexuality. The canticle was most likely written in the third century before Christ and represents a comingling of the Romantic elements of at least three cultures:  Jewish, Egyptian and Mesopotamian.  Blackness was held in esteem in those cultures which the Wisdom literature celebrates.  The Wisdom literature invites us to move beyond racial prejudices. There are Black saints who are beautiful in Catholic Culture who deserve to be celebrated as ”black and beautiful.”

Henriette Delille and Mary Elizabeth Lange were founders of religious orders for black women who were not welcomed by most religious orders and whose members were not allowed to wear religious habits outside of their convents.  They had to endure all the hardships of other religious women and on top of that racism. Augustus Tolton was the first Black man to become a priest in the United States.  His was a life of loneliness because he did not fit into the culture of the white clergy. Sr. Thea Bowman was a Black Sister who became a professor, revivalist of African Cultures and a prophet to the American Bishops.

Henriette, Mary Elizabeth, Father Tolton and Thea are all honored as “servants of God” –persons who are being considered for canonization.  They are Black and beautiful!

February 26 Saint Irene, Lay Missionary 490

There are at least four saint Irenes in Catholic history.  The one celebrated today was a laywoman not born or raised a Christian. We should never doubt that the Spirit is at work in any person even those who are not baptized.  Irene was born in Afghanistan.  The place of her death is unknown.  She was not raised as a Christian but when she was 14 years old, she had a profound experience.  She came upon a scene where a non-Christian gang was abusing and beating bishop Porphyrius for his Christianity.  She was so appalled by this that she stepped in and confronted his tormentors, shaming them into retreating.  She then assisted him to recover, and he bore witness to her of his faith which led to her embrace Christianity herself. We know nothing else about her except that she worked in Italy and died in 490, place unknown.  The courage and kindness with which she, a mere teenager, a woman at that, faced a situation in which many other people would not dare to interfere, was remarkable.  That she would be drawn to join a group which was despised and persecuted indicates that she had unusual perception as well as courage. Beautiful flowers grow in unexpected places.

February 25, Saint Luigi Versiglia, Bishop and Saint Callistus Caravario, Martyrs, China 1930

It seems that sex trafficking has been a favorite form of slavery from time immemorial.  The two men honored today were Italian and members of the Religious Order of St. John Bosco.  They were among the first missionaries of the Salesians to be sent to China.  Luigi became a bishop and Callistus often accompanied him as an assistant.  They were traveling by river boat to visit one of the Salesian missions when the boat was boarded by pirates who wanted to abduct three girls traveling on the boat and make them slaves.  Luigi and Callistus put themselves between the pirates and the girls.  This enraged the pirates who beat the two and dragged them ashore where they shot them. Their bodies were discovered two days later.  The girls were released very quickly. Pope John Paul insisted that Luigi and Callistus be honored with the Martyrs of China as they were killed because they were Christians and because they defended the girls against being sex trafficked.

February 24, Blessed Josef Mayr-Nusser, layman, martyr, Germany 1945

When St. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles giving us the story of the first martyr, Stephen and the story of Paul’s conversion, he doubtless knew the value of such stories, such examples for the faith of others. Drawing close to such persons enables us to follow their example. Josef was a student of saints who became a saint himself.  Born into a humble but devoted Italian family as a young man he became interested in the lives of Fredrick Ozanam and St. Vincent de Paul.  He determined to follow their example of caring for the poor in direct ministry.  He became director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Italy serving the poor by administering the organization, having direct personal contact and advocating for them in the political arena. 

Josef also took up studying two great Thomases, Thomas More and Thomas Aquinas.  He studied their letters contending that the best way to get to know them was by reading what they wrote in personal relationships. He would find himself in a position similar to that of Thomas More. As the Germans took over Italy he was drafted into the SS toward the end of World War II.  He publicly declared that he could not fight for Hitler.  He was sentenced to be shot at the Dachau concentration camp, but died while being transported there.

The question often arises about how Catholics/Christians are to relate to government.  In Baptism we are clothed with Christ and therefore our first loyalty, before any patriotism, let alone any political party, is to the Kingdom of God which is not a kingdom of this world.  We must imitate Jesus who never sought to have political power over anyone.  We have a responsibility to support just government but also to be a prophet to governments when they are morally corrupt.  Josef is a beautiful example of this kind of commitment to Christ first while courageously standing up to lies and immorality. He stood tall defying a satanic regime like rock defying the forces of erosion.

February 23, Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr, Smyrna, 155

For those who are interested in ancestry—personal family history or church history, Polycarp is a winsome figure.  He is the strong branch connecting the apostles and church of the next generation.  He was a disciple of John the Beloved, author of the Gospel of John. St. Irenaeus in turn, was Polycarp’s disciple.  From them we get a clear picture of how the faith is transmitted. Polycarp is the patron of people who suffer earaches.  Not because he cured someone with an earache, but because he so vehemently exhorted people to block their ears, to cover their ears and not listen to distortions of truth.

 The acts of martyrdom of Polycarp are the first authentic documents we have detailing a martyr’s death.  He had a dream in which his pillow was on fire and from it he understood that he would face martyrdom by fire.  However, it was not fire that killed him.  When he was threatened with hungry lions he said “bring them on” but the circus manager in Smyrna said that the lions had been put away for the day.  So the spectators and goalers together gathered materials for a fire and had him stand in the midst.  To everyone’s amazement the flames spread out around and above him but did not touch his body.  Finally, the order was given to run him through with a sword.

February 23, unnamed martyrs of the Dead Sea, 305

 From the first centuries of Christianity, there have been Christians who longed to live in the land where Jesus lived and those who longed to live a secluded life where they could give their time to prayer away from the distractions of city life. Many settled in the desert areas near the Dead Sea where they believed Jesus had spent time in the desert.  The holy land was under the control of the Roman Empire from before the time of Jesus until its demise in the fifth century.

Valerius Maximianus Galerius who had married Emperor Diocletian’s daughter became Cesar in 293 and Emperor in 305.  Like his father-in-law he initiated violent persecutions of Christians which he carried on until he was challenged by Constantine in 311.  During that time he had all the Christians living in the Dead Sea area put to death without even recording the numbers or names.  He wanted to wipe them out without any memory.  A few centuries later the same fate would befall another Christian community in that area who were put to death by the conquering Muslims.  But the Church has not forgotten them and continues to celebrate them.  They are as numerous and beautiful as golden leaves in the autumn even if we cannot name each leaf.

February 21, Blessed Claudio di Portaceli

In the long history of Catholicism, religious Orders, communities of men or women, have arisen depending on the needs of the time.  As Islam spread from Arabia into Asia and Europe 700-1400, many Christians were imprisoned so they could neither practice nor spread their faith. They were kept in prison or as slaves. This became a huge concern for the rest of the Church. In some places the prisoners were left without food or water.   In the gospel of Matthew Jesus says, “I was in prison and you visited me.” Prison ministry became a large scale ministry in the wake of Islam. Blessed Claudio joined a Religious Order in his native France, the Mercedarians, who were dedicated to finding ways of freeing the Christian slaves.  In 1318 he began public begging on the streets to collect money to ransom Christians being held as slaves in Muslim areas.  His name “di Portaceli” means “gate of heaven” and he carried a flag with an image of Our Lady of Mercy as a door to heaven freeing slaves.  In 1330 he traveled to North Africa in person to rescue Christian Slaves. 

Claudio became known as a miracle worker and eventually became the Cardinal of Santa Pudenziana.

February 20, Blessed Stanislawa Rodzinska, Poland, 1945

The life story of Stanislawa known as Mother Julia, was told after World War II at the insistence of one of her fellow prisoners who survived the concentration camp largely due to Mother Julia.

Stanislawa was born into a poor but very loving family.  She, her sister and her two brothers were orphaned when she was 10.  She and her sisters were taken in by the Dominican Sisters in her parish.  The sisters gave her a good education and loving care.  She wanted to become like them and joined the order herself in 1916 taking the name Julia.  She was a loving mother to the orphans  and a devoted administrator of the convents she was charged to oversee.  In1922 she was sent to Vilnius (now in Lithuania) to establish an orphanage/school.  She developed many creative art programs to make learning more interesting for the children.  She developed after school activities and summer camps, which were innovative programs ahead of the times. Always she taught prayer.

 But her greatest achievement came in the concentration camp where she was sent after the German Gestapo took over the city and disbanded the sisters.  She was kept for a year in solitary confinement in Vilnius then shipped via cattle car on a journey of 400 miles to the concentration camp of Stutthof.  Once there she became like a guardian angel to the other prisoners taking care of any physical needs she could and teaching them to pray which was her source of strength.  Julia was given the number 40992, then badged with a red triangle as a “political criminal.” In 1945 typhus became rampant in some of the barracks.  The infected were isolated into one barrack and left to die.  She insisted on caring for them providing what little comfort she could and praying with them as they died.  She contracted typhus herself and died among them very shortly before the end of the war. Eva Hoff, who survived the camp and had received physical and spiritual help from Julia, insisted that Julia’s story be written so that people would know what she had been for the prisoners. She who had lost her mother and lived as an orphan became not only a mother to other orphans and to sisters in her order, but finally to the imprisoned, tortured prisoners in a concentration camp.

February 19, prisoner p22099, Dachau Concentration Camp 1945

Blessed Jozef Zaplata, known as p22099, was born to Polish parents who were quite poor.  He was never able to attend school beyond elementary grades.  After serving in the army, he joined the brothers of the Sacred Heart.  He served in humble positions as an office boy then a sacristan in the church of St. Elizabeth in modern Lviv, Ukraine. The Gestapo arrested him and sent him to the concentration camps.  Józef volunteered to minister to the prisoners who contracted typhus which led to his getting the disease himself and dying in the last months of World War II.  The little boy who was never able to get an education, had nevertheless profoundly learned to imitate Christ!  He is considered a martyr for what he suffered in the camps.

February 18 Blessed Fra Angelico, Rome, 1455

John Peter kept John as his name when he became a Dominican Brother. He was naturally a very gifted painter but also received training from professional artists beginning with illuminating manuscripts of the scriptures and progressing to painting biblical scenes.  There is such a beauty in is paintings that soon people began to call him Angelic or Fra Angelico.  Fame did nothing to change his personality.  “He who does Christ’s work must remain with Christ always” was his motto.  While he created beautiful paintings using gold and expensive, bright colors for wealthy patrons, his preference was for humble work that focused more on the humanity of the heavenly persons he painted.  Painting the crucified Christ was a deeply spiritual experience for him.  A second favorite was painting the Annunciation.  His paintings were not simply the product of his great talent, they are an expression of his deep spirituality.

February 17, Blessed Isabel Sánchez Romero, Spain 1935

Isabel is remarkable in that she joined the Dominican Nuns at age 17 and lived as a humble, hardworking sister for 60 years then added to that martyrdom. During the Spanish civil war, Communist forces dragged her from the convent and demanded that this 76-year-old woman denounce her faith.  She refused. They proceeded to shoot each of the Christians they had captured in front of her.  When she still refused, they decided to beat her to death using a rock which enabled them to physically vent their hatred more violently.  Martyrs come from all age groups and professions of life.   Their blood asks us, if they can die for Christ can we live for him?

February 16, Saint Juliana of Nicomedia, Italy, 305

 Juliana is the patroness of dragon slayers.  Regarding dragons, Chesterton once commented:

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”  In the Christian version of the fairytale taken from the book of Revelation chapters 12 and 13, the dragon is those who would control their lives and the dragon slayer is faith in Christ.

For Juliana the dragon was her own father determined to force her into marriage with a non-believer who despised Christianity.  Her father subjected her to dreadful torture for defying his will.  Then the would-be groom denounced her as a Christian.  She was arrested, had boiling oil poured over her and was beheaded.  In Christian art especially stained glass, she is portrayed as slaying a dragon. Her faith was the sword with which she defeated it.

February 15, Claude La Colombière, France,1682

Claude joined the Jesuits in his native France when he was only 17 years old.  He spent his early years both studying and teaching as a tutor and in the classroom. The heresy of Jansenism was raging in France at the time.  It was based upon a Calvinistic interpretation of the writings of St. Augustine and was characterized by ascetic rigor giving it an aura of superiority over common spirituality.  The Jesuits were its main adversaries during the two centuries in which it was popular. The heretical teaching of the Jansenists was condemned many times by the Popes but persisted for more than 200 years.  In the confusion and tension caused by Jansenistic teaching, Jesus appeared to a simple nun in the remote town of Paray-le-Monial asking her to promote devotion to his heart as a source of mercy and compassion.  The emphasis was on love and compassion in contrast to the rigorist program of the Jansenists. Claude was sent to this remote place as the head of the Jesuit community there and as confessor to the Visitation nuns nearby. Sr Margaret Mary was being largely rejected by her community which considered her delusional.  The first time the nuns met Claude in their parlor, Jesus said to her interiorly “Here is the one I have destined to support you.”  She confided in him about her spiritual experiences and visions.  Claude who had studied Jansenism could see how Margaret Mary’s experiences were a corrective to Jansenistic thinking.  After careful consideration he took her part and validated her experiences.  He continued to be her spiritual director via letters in the following years when he was sent to England as special chaplain to royalty.  Things took a downward turn for him in England and he was accused of plotting against the crown.  He was imprisoned and tortured.  The King of France finally won his release but his health was so broken he was dying.  He was sent back to Paray-le-Monial in hopes of a recovery, instead he died there considered a “white” martyr not dying during the torture and imprisonment but because of it after the fact. The situation of Jansenism was not the first nor the last time that certain scholars and/or popular preachers in the church develop trends of teaching that upon close examination prove to be contrary to the gospel.  Sometimes heaven intervenes ever so gently to correct the thinking.  The revelation to a simple person like Juan Diego, Margaret Mary and Bernadette prove to be God’s way of restoring the Gospel perspective. In this case Claude proved to be the one whom God carefully prepared and then positioned to validate the revelation.

January 14, Valentine Martyr, Rome,  269,

Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum.  And the lack of historical details about the life and death of a martyr becomes a magnet for tantalizing legends.  All we know for sure about St. Valentine is that he was a martyr in the third or fourth century.  There is one legend about him being a bishop who was visiting Rome when he was imprisoned and before his execution he wrote letters back to his flock.  Upon this slim thread has been built since the middle-ages down to the present, a huge industry of writing to friends and then to spouses to declare undying affection.  What was an act of pastoral care has become a monumental testament to romantic love.  Our challenge is to put romantic love into the appropriate context.  All love is a gift of God who is love.  Gratitude for the loved one is appropriate and it is also appropriate to acknowledge other kinds of love especially that of friends.

February 13, James Miller FSC, Guatemala, 1982

James who was a four pound preemie, grew to be over six feet tall with a great gift of humor to match.  He joined the Order of St. Jean de la Salle, the Christian Brothers after being taught by them in high school.  He was a remarkable teacher, handyman and football coach but he wanted to be a missionary.  He was sent to Nicaragua. When the civil upheavals in the country became violent the brothers were recalled to the US.  After four years he was allowed to return to Latin America to Huehuetenango, Guatemala in 1980.  His influence over the boys he taught was resented by the rebel gangs who wanted to recruit them.  On February 13, three hooded armed men came on campus and in front of many of his students shot him while he was on a ladder doing repair work.  Irrational anger and jealousy is the hallmark of the work of the demonic.  James is one of the most recent American Saints.

February 12, 159 Martyrs of Douai 1584-1680

There are no wars or persecutions uglier and more shameful than those fueled by religious persecution. For more than a hundred years in England Catholics, priests in particular, were put to death just for being priests.  Today we celebrate some of the158 priests all of whom went to France to the college/seminary in Douai to study and be ordained.  All returned to England and ministered undercover until each was betrayed, imprisoned, and tortured then hanged drawn and quartered.

February 11, Our Lady of Lourdes

Mothers can be characterized as “wise hearts.”  They have a certain wisdom that comes with experience and endurance.  They have a fierce bonding with their offspring.  Mary, the Mother of the mystical body of Christ, overwhelmingly displays these qualities in our history.  Mothers discern the scope of ailments.  They know how to administer correction/medication gently.  It often happens that mankind in its attempts to cure the ills of society behaves like an immune system gone wild.  Revolutions create as many problems as they attempt to correct. Such was the case with the French Revolution of the late 1700’s.  Both the government of the King and the clerical leaders of the Church failed to make the changes needed to alleviate the ills that had overtaken the society.  There were no taxes for the rich and no relief from taxes for the poor.  There was grave inequality between the royalty and ordinary citizens, there was sanctioned slavery.  Society reached a breaking point which resulted not only in the over-throw of the monarchy but also the rejection of the Church which had been complicit with the monarchy.  Bloodshed and wild anarchy followed.  The revolutionaries sought to abolish Christianity.

Fifty years later, the poor were still oppressed, and the French people were still trying to find their soul as a nation.  Bernadette’s family were immigrants from the Basque region of Spain and as such were despised as immigrants so often are.  She did not have the advantage of a good education and her faith was rudimentary in knowledge, when she was chosen by Our Lady to be a messenger of hope and restoration of faith.  There is a common theme of prayer in the apparitions of Our Lady:  in Mexico she asked for a chapel to be built where the Native people could come to pray, at Lourdes the Lady asks Bernadette to pray with her, at Fatima she urges the children to pray.  There is something very important about prayer.  When we pray, we acknowledge that there is Someone greater than ourselves.  We acknowledge that of ourselves and our own intellects and efforts we cannot solve all problems. Humility is needed to pray, a humility that is based upon truth.  Prayer and humility compensate for human hubris and set things back into balance.  The Lady of Lourdes does not threaten, she does not condemn, but simply offers the remedies of prayer and physical healing.

It is important to note that Our Lady identified herself as “The Immaculate Conception.”  The importance of this title goes far beyond notions of sinlessness at the moment of conception, to the importance of conception itself as the moment of the creation of both body and soul in the human person.

When Bernadette first heard the stirring of the wind, the wild rose bush in the stone grotto moved.  Moments later when the Lady appeared in the grotto she had “a yellow rose on each foot.”  Yellow is the color associated in most cultures with hope and optimism.  The French nation was in much need of hope at that moment.  The Lady had carefully chosen a place where there was water under the surface of the ground, and she urged Bernadette to dig for it.  Water in Christianity is the symbol and physical agent of Baptism.  We could say that the Lady of Lourdes urges each of us to dig for the meaning and healing of our baptism.  Lourdes water can be found in every baptismal/holy water fount which reminds us of our baptism!

February 10, Saint Scholastica, Italy, 543

Scholastica is considered the patroness of holy conversations.  In the gospel we see that women traveled with and worked with the male disciples.  In John’s gospel they are presented also as evangelists in the Samaritan Woman at the well and Mary of Magdala who is the first to see the Risen Jesus and is commissioned by him to give the news of the Resurrection to the little community of Jesus’ followers.  In the next centuries when Christianity encountered the Roman Empire head on, the promiscuity seen there brought about a reaction which included secluding women from public life and the formation of groups of Christians living together for mutual support, but apart from the general society.  Scholastica and Benedict were siblings raised and educated together until he left home.  She apparently cared for their father until his death.  After that she founded a group of women who lived close to the male community which Benedict had founded.  At least once a year they would spend a day together reading scripture and discussing spiritual things.  They had one such day together when her life was nearing its end.  Benedict prepared to return to his community as evening fell.  She begged him to stay longer, but he refused.  She then prayed and such a terrible storm broke out that he was unable to leave.  “You would not listen to my request” she said, “but God did.” They spent the night in conversation before he left in the morning.  Scholastica died three days later.  The Lord took Scholastica’s part as he did with Mary in the gospel story when her sister Martha complained about her.  No human activity is more precious than sharing our faith with each other.  This reflects the very nature of our God who is a communing in love. 

February 9, Saint Miguel Febres Cordero Muñoz, Spain, 1910

Franscisco Luis Febres was born in the high Andes mountains in Ecuador.  At 13 he joined the Brothers of Christian Schools, a teaching order, founded by St. Jean Baptist de la Salle which had recently arrived in Ecuador.  He took the name Miguel. He became a schoolteacher in Quito.  Miguel proved to be a very gifted teacher.  He wrote his own textbooks starting at age 17.  His textbooks were even adopted by the government and used all over the country of Ecuador.  He went on to write poetry and hymns, then manuals on how to teach.  He was recognized by the teaching Academies of Ecuador, Spain, France, and Venezuela and became an effective retreat master as well.

The Order sent him to Europe in 1905 to translate texts from French to Spanish.  He worked in Belgium but when his health became fragile, he was sent to Barcelona.  He died there of pneumonia in 1910. Miguel is patron of teachers. He was a model for them in his gentleness with students and concern to help find ways for students to learn.  Miguel was also a pathfinder for teachers creating textbooks and outlining teaching methodologies.

February 8, Saint Josephine Bakhita, Italy, 1947

St. Josephine is remarkable for many reasons.  She is apparently the first saint to come from Sudan.  She was a trafficking victim. She was kidnapped as a child of 9 and then sold and resold in the trafficking markets in Africa.  At times she endured terrible suffering at the hands of those who owned her.  She described some of the suffering herself:

One day I unwittingly made a mistake that incensed the master’s son. He became furious, snatched me violently from my hiding place, and began to strike me ferociously with the lash and his feet Finally he left me half dead, completely unconscious. Some slaves carried me away and lay me on a straw mat, where I remained for over a month.  …a woman skilled in this cruel art [tattooing] came to the general’s house. Our mistress stood behind us, whip in hand. The woman had a dish of white flour, a dish of salt and a razor. When she had made her patterns; the woman took the razor and made incisions along the lines. Salt was poured into each of the wounds. My face was spared, but six patterns were designed on my breasts, and 60 more on my belly and arms. I thought I would die, especially when salt was poured in the wounds…it was by a miracle of God I didn’t die. He had destined me for better things. 

The better things she survived for was that the Italian Consul purchased her and took her back to Italy giving her freedom and a job in his household. Bakhita (Lucky,) the name given her by her kidnappers, converted to Catholicism and took the name Josephine. “I received the Sacrament of Baptism with such joy that only angels could describe.”   She later joined the Canossian Sisters.  She said of her captors that should she meet them she would kiss their hands because if it were not for them she would never have been brought to Italy, taught her Catholic Faith and become as Sister.  Like Joseph in the Hebrew Testament, she could see that God had used them for God’s own designs.

Feb 7, Blessed Rosalie Rendu, France, 1856

Rosalie, the name given to her when she joined the Sister of Charity in her home country of France, was highly gifted with organizational skills, common sense and profound compassion.  Her apostolate was in the slums of Paris where she worked for 54 years. In addition to the usual work of the Sisters in caring for the sick and poor and teaching catechism and reading, Rosalie created models for social ministry embracing all ages.  She started a free clinic, pharmacy,  trade school, orphanage, child-care-center, youth club for young workers, and a home for the elderly poor.  She oversaw the ministries of young people to the poor and facilitated discussion and apostolic reflection on their experiences. She counseled priests and religious in psychological crises and mentored such remarkable persons as Fredric Ozanam.  Any male who accomplished such a web of social services would/has been canonized already!

“Never have I prayed so well as on the streets!” Sr. Rosalie

February 6, The Memorial of St Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs, Japan, 1597

Example is the most powerful form of evangelism.  Francis Xavier gave that kind of example to the people of Japan in the 1540’s.  In the next generation Paul Miki was born and raised in the faith. By then there were some 200,000 converts and the emperor became alarmed he banished the Jesuit missionaries.  Paul Miki who had become a Jesuit and 23 companions became Japan’s first martyrs.  They were forced on a death march of 600 miles to Nagasaki.  Their ears were cut off and they were beaten before being tied to crosses and stabbed to death.  Paul forgave his executioners as Jesus had.  Today Nagasaki has the largest Christian population in Japan. The next generation of converts included a samurai warrior, Takayama he and his companions were exiled, and he died a martyr as a result of the abuse he had suffered.

February 5, Saint Jesús Méndez-Montoya, Musician and Martyr, Mexico, 1928

St. Jesus Mendez was among those martyred in the Mexican Communist revolution. He was musician and a Priest.  He lived humbly with the people of small villages.  He loved music and composed, played and also directed choirs for his people.  When the soldiers came to arrest him, he calmly consumed the consecrated hosts and said farewell to the sisters before the soldiers took him outside and shot him.  The communists are long gone from Mexico, but the memory of their martyrs lives on for the Mexican people.

February 4, Saint John de Brito, Martyr,  India, 1693

John de Brito was a Jesuit who understood the value of inculturation in the work of evangelization. He was born into an aristocratic family in Portugal.  At 15 he entered the Jesuits and wanted to imitate St. Francis Xavier.  He asked to be sent to Goa. John realized that in order to reach all the people in the caste culture of Hinduism, he would have to assume the cultural habits of the holy men of India.  He imitated their dress and took the name, Arul Anandar while living very ascetically.  He was highly successful in bringing many to faith in Christ so much so that the ruler of the area expelled him.  He went back to Portugal for four years after which he persuaded his superiors to let him return to India and he took 24 more Jesuit missionaries with him.   This time he converted a prince of Maravar, but baptism required the prince to have only one wife.  The prince was willing to do that but one of his wives, vehemently objected.  She was the relative of an neighboring prince and when she complained to him, he arrested John with many of his converts.  After a short imprisonment John was taken out to the seashore and beheaded. The seashore as a place of transition between land and water has long been a symbol for the transition between this life and the Resurrection. The spot where John was killed became a pilgrimage site. John wrote his farewell to his brother Jesuits: “I await death and I await it with impatience.  It has always been the object of my prayers. It forms today the most precious reward of my labors and my suffering.”

February 3, St. Blaise, Physician, Bishop, Martyr, Armenia, 316

Legends have so overlaid St. Blaise that it is nearly impossible to uncover the authentic person.  A few facts stand out: he was a physician who became a bishop who then retired to live as a hermit in the forest.  His physician’s career spread from the care of physical bodies to spiritual ailments, to the care of wild animals who came to him on their own.  Soldiers searching out Christians who were to be put to death under a new emperor found Blaise by following the trail of animals visiting his hermitage where he cared for them.  He was tortured using wool combs but would not renounce his faith.  As a prisoner he healed a child who had a bone caught in his throat.  A woman whose pig he had healed brought him two wax candles to light his prison cell.  For centuries wax candles have been used to bless people’s throats in his honor. Most likely the stories about animals coming to him on their own is not legendary as animals have strong instincts about who will help them.  They also carry that memory and will return to a helper.

February 2,  Alfred Delp, Jesuit Martyr,  Germany, 1945

After World War II the German bishops published a list of 900 names of persons who had been martyred by the Nazis for their faith and their support of the Jews.  In that list was the name of the Jesuit, Alfred Delp.  He was hanged in the last months of the war.  Alfred was falsely accused of involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler.  He was found not guilty of that but guilty of being a Jesuit in opposition to Hitler!  He was even offered freedom if he would renounce the Jesuits.  Instead, he was able to secretly arrange with his provincial for a representative of the province to visit him in prison.  Due to the fact that the guard did not understand what was happening, Alfred made his final vows as a Jesuit.  All during the war he and his provincial had supported an underground resistance and kept the faith of the people alive.  He was imprisoned during Advent and the Christmas Season and wrote beautiful meditations on the Incarnation which were smuggled out of the prison. “All of life is an Advent” he wrote.  It is a season for us to prepare for the encounter with God, and God’s full revelation. He saw his own approaching death as the fulfillment of an Advent longing.  The hearts of the martyrs are like blood red leaves which both nourish and express the tree of faith.

February 1, St. Brigid, Ireland 525

When two cultures merge, the need to preserve heroes and/or personalities who have been admired, can lead to the creation of legendary persons as the features from one culture are superimposed upon another.  Something like that happened with the merger of Celtic Spirituality and Catholicism in the case of Brigit of Ireland.  Her feastday is also the Celtic celebration of Imbolc, an ancient Celtic celebration of the arrival of spring and the festival of the Celtic goddess, Brigit.  It is important when we approach another religion not to think in terms of “us against them,”–Christians against pagans.  We  need to acknowledge that God was there in the other ahead of us, and the Holy Spirit was with them as with all peoples. There are elements that are pre-Christian rather than anti-Christian in their practices.  In Celtic religious thought there was devotion to the feminine and to the nurturing qualities of mother.  In Celtic devotion these traits were summed up in the goddess, Brigit.

In catholic thought it was the virtues of a young woman determined to dedicate herself to God that merited recognition.  She was recognized for her domestic capabilities (which were critical for the survival of her communities) and her organizational skills which allowed for the flourishing of a double monastic structure, one for women and one for men headed by a saintly hermit, who later became a bishop. 

The priest historian of the 12^th century, Gerald of Wales, reported that the nuns of Brigid’s convent kept a perpetual fire burning at Kildare in her honor. The site had, it seems, a fire in honor of the goddess Brigit before the time of the Catholic saint.  Perpetual fires like the one prescribed in the Hebrew Book of Leviticus are common to many cultures. It is another example of the conversion of a pre-Christian practice into a Christian ritual.

One of the legends about Brigid is that she changed water into beer for a gathering of Bishops!  It is quite possible that Brigid was skilled in the art of brewing beer and had enough of a supply on hand for a few of bishops.  But it makes a great story.  Another legend has Brigid visiting a sick man on his death bed.  He had no religious items to comfort him. She took straw from the floor and wove a cross for him to hold.  One of the ways of celebrating her feast over the ages had been the making of “Brigid’s Cross.”

One of the reasons for the great success of Christianity in Ireland is how Patrick, its main evangelizer, recognized that the Celtic practices were foreshadowings of Christianity and could be used to assist people in understanding basic Christian truths such as the Trinity and the Motherhood of Mary.   A preliterary time allowed legends to thrive and we must approach those with a sense of discernment but without an attitude of contempt for “pagans.”

January 31, St. John Bosco, Italy 1888

John Bosco was the last child in a very poor family.  His father died when he was only two leaving his mother to support him and his brothers.  He began doing humble jobs as soon as he was old enough.  He was a born entertainer and would go to the circus to watch jugglers and magicians then put on a one-man show of his own after which he would repeat by heart the homily he had heard at Mass.  He is the patron of magicians.

All his life he was visited by special dreams which guided him.  The first came very early at age 9 and indicated to him his work with boys.  He wanted to become a priest but there was no money for education and his older brother strongly opposed him saying that he should be content to be a humble farmer like the rest of his family.  He left home at 12 because of this conflict and sought work on his own. He tried many things.  He was a tailor, baker, shoemaker and carpenter.  Finally, he found a priest who believed in him.  With his help and that of his mother who also believed in his vocation, Don as he was usually called was able to attend seminary.

After ordination, he found that parish work was not reaching young men, poor boys on the streets so he began trying to help them.  After two failures when the boys he took in robbed him, he and his mother began taking in just a few at a time and gradually they came to trust him and return his kindness with loyalty. John would help them find jobs and drew up contracts of apprenticeship to assure that the employers treated them fairly.  The Oratory as it was called had to move several times because of protests about the boys being too noisy.  Many clergy thought that John was crazy.  One day a church official showed up at his door in a closed carriage.  He asked John to go with him for a ride.  John knew that this cleric wanted to have him institutionalized as mad.  He graciously agreed to go with him.  When they approached the carriage door, John politely stepped aside and said, “after you.”  Once the cleric got into the carriage.  John slammed the door and yelled to the driver on top “Quickly, off with him!”  Away went the carriage and cleric to the asylum.

John’s work was often very dangerous as he trudged through the city slums of Turin in the dark searching out abandoned and abused boys.   For some 30 years a large gray dog, “Grigio” would appear and walk beside John to discourage any would be attackers.  Later the dog sometimes appeared to protect the Salesian sisters.

John gathered a fellow priest, some seminarians, and a layman about him to form the Salesian Order named after St. Francis de Sales whom he greatly admired. The group was joined by some of the boys he had helped. They continue to be dedicated to work with youth and to the missions. He began writing and distributing a newsletter about their work. Don also wrote the biographies of St. Joseph Cafasso, his patron and spiritual director, and St. Dominic Salvio, a boy he mentored.

John wanted very much to help young girls as well.  He heard of the work of Mary Mazzarello and went to visit her, her companions and the girls they were caring for.  It was a very happy meeting and the two groups joined forces expanding the outreach for both. Next Don set about founding an organization of lay persons associated with his work.

He created a system of “preventive” education for the boys and girls in the care of the Salesians.  It emphasized reason, religion and kindness in contrast to punitive measures. Don Bosco was someone who transformed the harsh world around him. Don died of natural causes in 1888.  One of his students, Blessed Michele Rua, became Don’s constant companion in his last years and after his death, at the request of the Pope, became the second leader of the Salesians.

January 30 Abbot Columba Marmion, Belgium, 1923

Today is the hundredth anniversary of Blessed Dom Columba’s death. Dom Columba had two remarkable gifts.  He was a gifted speaker and a gifted spiritual director.  He felt a vocation to the priesthood and was ordained for his diocese in Ireland.  However, some of his studies were in Rome and on his way back to Ireland, he visited the Benedictine Abbey of Maredsous in Belgium and felt an immense desire to be a monk there.  His Irish archbishop was determined to have him serve the diocese that had sponsored him for priesthood and paid for his education before allowing him to join the Benedictines.  The time he spent in ministry in Ireland in parishes and teaching gave him valuable experience with ordinary people and he soon became a noted spiritual director. 

Finally, his Archbishop allowed him to join the Benedictines in Maredsous.  He took the name Columba after the great Irish missionary.  In many ways he was following the example of the Irish monks who  helped to re-established Christianity in Europe in the late middle ages with their monastic way of life. He was 27 by then and found that he had huge adaptions to make embracing a different culture, a new language, and learning the ways of monastic life.  The other novices were all much younger and so there was also a generation gap. It was a tremendous exercise in humility and adaptability.  Monastic life is built around prayer done in common many times a day with periods of work in between the chanting the psalms and listening to scripture readings.  Praying the scriptures in this manner has a way of embedding them in one’s consciousness.  The scriptures passages in turn revolve around the life of Christ in the liturgical year.

Dom Columba became a sought after preacher because of the way his homilies spoke of the scriptures and the life of Christ.  Sometimes religious people get preoccupied with other topics.  At the time in Church life there was an obsession about “modernism.”  Dom Columba’s homilies came as a refreshing breeze in the life of the Church.  They were copied down especially by religious sisters who unfortunately, left out his humor.  He once said that there are two kinds of saints—thin ones and fat ones and he hoped to become a fat one since he struggled with overweight issues.  The collections of homilies became bestselling books translated into many languages. 

Columba and his monks suffered hardship during the first World War.  At one point German soldiers even invaded their church.  He went in after them and scolded them to the point of their withdrawal.   During a flu epidemic, he became ill and died on this day a hundred years ago.

January 29, Saint Dallan Forghaill, Ireland 640

St. Dallan was one of Ireland’s most famous Bards.  In Celtic life the Bard was the guardian of culture.  That was done by memorizing history, writing poetry and composing songs.  Like the ancient Hebrew culture, it had no original written form.  Oral history, music, poetry, and storytelling were the means of keeping it alive.  Dallan lived at a time when Christianity was at a peak in Ireland co-mingling with Celtic culture.  Reading, writing, and the Latin language of Europe had become added highlights of the country.  Dallan who came from a lineage of Bards treasured his role as historian and poet.  He was never ordained but helped found many churches and had a thriving school.

During this time of the mingling of two cultures, the role of the Celtic Bard was being questioned for its appropriateness for Christianity.  Dallan attended Conferences to discuss the issue. Patrick had defended the Bards and Saint Columba, Dallan’s contemporary, strongly defended the Bards again. Dallan composed a poetic version of Columba’s life shortly after his death.  Over time, the telling of history would be entrusted to written form. But poets, musicians and storytellers would always be needed to express the Celtic form of culture and spirituality.

In addition to Dallan’s historic poem on Columba, he wrote a funeral oration for Senan of Iniscattery.  Both pieces have been used in Irish schools.  The most beautiful piece attributed to him, however, which has worldwide acclaim is “Be Thou my vision.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my Father,  and I Thy little one;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle-shield, sword for my fight,
Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight.
Thou my soul’s shelter, Thou my high tower.
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always;
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s son,
Heart of my heart, whatever befall
Still be my vision, O ruler of all.
– Saint Dallan

The poem is a marvelous combination of an ancient Celtic prayer for protection in the genre of Patrick’s Breastplate on the one hand and the Ancient Hebrew prayers for protection in the psalms.

Dallan was visiting his friend, St. Conall Cael at his monastery on the small island of Inishkeel just off the mainland when it was raided by pirates.  Dallan was killed and buried there.  Later, Conall was buried in the same grave.

January 28, Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, Italy, 1274

Thomas Aquinas is a giant who stands at one of the thresholds of history and culture.  He was both a remarkable intellectual and a mystic.  His writings are in the style of classical philosophy.  It is in his beautiful hymns written for the Feast of Corpus Christi that his mysticism shines forth. At the end of a long career of teaching and preaching Thomas had a mystical experience during Mass and he stopped writing his masterpiece, the Summa.  His secretary begged him to continue to which he responded that he had experienced such things in prayer that all he had written seemed like mere straw.

His education was initially with the Benedictines but then as a teenager he had some Dominican professors and that was a decisive factor for him.  He knew that his calling was with them. At nineteen he joined.  His mother was determined to prevent this so she had his brothers kidnap him. For a year she kept him prisoner in their castle.  Unable to break down his determination, she finally let him escape rather than lose face by admitting defeat.

University education was just coming into its own and beginning to incorporate Greek Philosophy.  The books of the Greek writers had been lost during the chaos that enveloped Europe as a result of climate change and raids of vandals.  The Irish missionary monks brought the books back to Europe and Islamicists were embracing them with such vigor as to stir interest in all arenas of thought.  Thomas encountered them at the University of Paris. He realized as did his mentor, Albert the Great, that there was tremendous potential for Catholic theology in association with philosophy.  He was faithful to the Tradition in this because the Cappadocian Father of the Church had used philosophy as an aid in formulating their doctrine of the Trinity.  However, because the clergy had not been familiar with the use of philosophy for at least five hundred years, and it was the Islamicists who were putting it to popular use, Thomas and Albert encountered opposition even from other saints.  St. Bonaventure told Thomas he was watering down the Tradition to which Thomas replied that rather than watering it down, he was changing water into wine!  In effect, Thomas was leading the Church back to the realization that the Spirit is the source of all truth no matter where it is found, and truth wherever it is found, can be used to help us understand the Christian Revelation.

Thomas had other struggles in addition to clerical opposition.  As a child in the same bedroom with his sister lightening had come through a window and killed her.  He never got over that.  He had struggles with weight gain all his life.  Fellow students called him the “dumb-ox” to which St. Albert replied: “Someday that ox will bellow and it will be heard all over the world.”   On a horseback trip to Rome, Thomas accidently hit his head on a tree branch.  This caused a head injury from which he never recovered and died a short time later.

“Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you.” – Saint Thomas Aquinas

January 27 St. Angela Merici, Foundress, 1549 Brescia

Education has always been a feature of and a concern for Christianity. The Evangelists were persons of considerable learning.  They had to navigate three languages: Aramaic, Greek and Latin. Paul was highly educated. Early on, Justin martyr set up a school of Philosophy.  Many of the nobility of Rome who were converts were highly educated like Paula, the linguist/translator and friend of Jerome.  The Fathers of the Church, the Theologians of the first centuries were highly educated.  But education took a downturn after the fall of Rome.  It was a hard time for all of Europe and the northern regions of that continent in particular due to severe climate swings caused by volcanic eruptions and the outbreak of plague.  Monasteries and cities where copies of books had been kept were raided and destroyed in the chaos and struggle for survival. But before the worst set in the monks from recently converted Ireland took copies of both the scriptures and other great books back to Ireland after their own education in Europe.  There they copied the books for themselves and then they began carrying them back to Europe and returning education there to devastated areas.  Brigid of Ireland had set up a school for youth which became a model for education.  That pattern was repeated in monastic and cathedral schools in Europe with the Irish monks. The school systems developed into the first European universities shortly after the first millennium.  Cultural differences kept girls from attending those schools despite the fact that women like Catherine of Alexandria and Ursula were honored as patrons of the universities.  Nevertheless, the Spirit was mindful of women despite the situation and Angela Merici stands at the threshold of women’s education in the European Catholic Church.  She founded a group of women who, while living in their own homes, were dedicated to educating girls.  Over time as the church took on some of the attitudes of Islam toward women, they were constricted to living together in semi-cloistered communities and wearing habits and veils.  Angela called her community “Ursulines”, the name of the legendary St. Ursula.  They were the first group of religious women in Catholicism dedicated to education of other women.  This organization spread all over the world being especially strong in North America.  They helped to change the culture regarding women and became a foundation and example from which other women rose into the positions of educators and professors.

January 26 St Paula, Widow

It is to St. Paula that we largely owe the theological principle that the bible needs to be accessible to the faithful in their own language.  She was a noble woman of great wealth being married to a Roman senator.  They had five children two of whom also became saints.  She was widowed at 32.  Three years later, through her friend, St. Marcella, she met St. Jerome the scholar, writer/preacher who was visiting Rome.  Theirs was a complicated relationship.  Jerome was highly irascible and opinionated as well as extremely ascetic.  Paula tempered some of those in his personality.  He in turn influenced her to embrace a monastic form of life.   Their relationship and his harsh treatment of her daughter who died as a result of extreme asceticism, turned the roman clergy against them.  Then Jerome’s patron, Pope St. Damasus I died.  Jerome and Paula decided to move to the Holy Land.  In Bethlehem they founded a double community.  Jerome presided over the men and Paula over the women.  Paula, who spoke the common language of Latin, was also fluent in Greek and Hebrew.  She saw the need for people who spoke only the common language (by then Latin), to be able to read/hear the scriptures (written in Hebrew and Greek) in their own language.  There were some translations of the bible, but none were complete or satisfactory.  She persuaded Jerome to undertake the task of translating the whole Bible into Latin.  She herself did a great deal of the work. She and one of her daughters made copies of the Latin text. In addition to supporting the two monastic style communities, Paula founded a hospital. She and her daughter, St. Eustochium, both died before Jerome and were buried in the church at Bethlehem.

January 25 Conversion of St. Paul

The lives of the saints are fully of conversion stories. Conversion can have two meanings in this context.  First a change of heart from being mediocre to giving Christ a central place in one’s life.  Secondly, the change from one religious affiliation to a different one.  In the lives of Christian saints only this particular conversion, the conversion of Paul, is given a special feastday in addition to celebrating his person elsewhere in the calendar with Peter.  This is a truly momentous event in the history of Christianity. It is told several times in the New Testament by Paul himself and by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles.  Next to Jesus, Paul is the most important figure in the spreading of the Gospel.  His conversion enabled him to grasp that everything including the Law of the Hebrew testament was summed up in and subject to the Risen Jesus whose presence he experienced on the road to Damascus where he was going to persecute Christians.

Scripture scholars tell us that a great deal of the New Testament is the writing of those who did not experience the events themselves but were close to someone who did. However, we have two direct, eyewitnesses:  John (the Beloved) who was with Jesus in person during Jesus’ lifetime and at his death/resurrection; secondly, Paul who tells us firsthand of his experience of the Risen Christ. The testimony of these two eyewitnesses is foundational to Christianity and predates the New Testament while being recorded there.

The story of Paul’s conversion is an example of how people read back into gospel stories their own interpretation based upon the times in which they live. If you ask anyone to tell the story of Paul’s trip to Damascus, you will almost always get a version that includes “he got knocked off his high horse.”  But the story as told in the many versions in the New Testament says nothing about a horse.  Most likely Jews of the time did not ride horses. 

January 24 St Francis de Sales, France 1622

Francis de Sales is the patron of writers, spiritual directors and the deaf.  His writings –two treatises (one on the devout life and one on the love of God), his pamphlets explaining the Catholic Faith and multitudes of letters giving spiritual direction –gained for him the title of Doctor of the Church. He was a person of great gentleness.  Francis gave up a life in court to become a priest.  He was assigned as a missionary to the Calvinists in Switzerland where his life was threatened many times. He was later made a bishop.  Francis became the spiritual director of St. Jane Frances de Chantal and together they founded the Visitation Order for women.

Francis had a gentle humorous way of getting across correction.  His brother was an irascible personality type unwilling to recognize his character faults.  One day Francis said to him.  “There is one woman whom you made very happy!” “Who was that?” the brother retorted.  Francis replied, “The one you did not marry!”

We must fear God out of love, not love Him out of fear. – Saint Francis de Sales

January 23  Blessed Benedetta Bianchi Porro Laywoman, invalid 1964 Italy

Some saints carry a single palm branch indicating a heroic moment of death. Today’s saint carries many palm branches!  As an infant she was afflicted with polio leaving her crippled. Then came bouts of bronchitis followed by a mystery disease causing neuromas.  She had begun medical studies by the time her Neurofibromatosis type I, a disease of the nervous system causing the growth of tumors was manifest.  She had learned enough to be able to diagnose herself and knew that the tumors would spread to her whole body.  She would gradually become blind and deaf as they did so. Twice her family took her to Lourdes in hope of a cure.  The second time she said her miracle was the realization that it was her vocation to be and die an invalid accepting suffering as Christ accepted his passion.   

“Her bed became the pulpit from which Benedetta ‘preached without preaching’ lessons of patience, humility, fortitude, resignation to God’s will, the value of the Cross endured with Christ and for Christ.” – Father Francis Xavier Grasso, S.J.

Each attempt to stay the disease now known to be genetic, made her worse and left her more incapacitated.  She died at age 28 on January 23.

January 22, William Joseph Chaminade, Priest, founder.  France 1850

Blessed William Joseph who preferred to be addressed by his Confirmation name of Joseph, was ordained as a diocesan priest for his local diocese in Bordeaux, France.  During the French revolution he refused to take the oath of loyalty to the secular government and was considered “an enemy of the people.”  He was exiled to Spain for three years. During that time while at prayer he experienced a call from Our Lady to work with him to restore faith in France.  When he returned to Bordeaux he set about founding “sodalities” of our Lady made up of a mixture of lay and religious persons whose mission it was to bring Christ to France as Our Lady had brought Christ to the world by living saintly lives.  He suffered a great deal toward the end of his life being betrayed by some members of the Marists he had founded but after his death there was immediate recognition of his holiness and within a few years Our Lady would choose another partner in the work of restoring faith in France as she began appearing to Bernadette at Lourdes.

Pope John Paul II spoke eloquently in his homily at the beatification of Blessed Joseph: “The beatification during the Jubilee Year (2000) of William Joseph Chaminade, founder of the Marianists, reminds the faithful that it is their task to find ever new ways of bearing witness to the faith, especially in order to reach those who are far from the Church and who do not have the usual means of knowing Christ. William Joseph Chaminade invites each Christian to be rooted in his Baptism, which conforms him to the Lord Jesus and communicates the Holy Spirit to him. Father Chaminade’s love for Christ, in keeping with the French school of spirituality, spurred him to pursue his tireless work by founding spiritual families in a troubled period of France’s religious history. His filial attachment to Mary maintained his inner peace on all occasions, helping him to do Christ’s will. His concern for human, moral and religious education calls the entire Church to renew her attention to young people, who need both teachers and witnesses in order to turn to the Lord and take their part in the Church’s mission.”

January 21 Agnes Martyr Rome 304

Agnes who was tortured to death in Rome at the age of 13 is the most famous of the young women martyrs of faith. Agnes blessed herself with the sign of the Cross –a testimony to faith in the Trinity and Christ’s death for us–as she faced the Roman tribunal declaring that she would die for Christ who died for her. The church kept records of the names of those who suffered martyrdom, honoring them as the ultimate witnesses to Christ who followed him to death.  In time the stories of those who lived their lives fully for Christ in heroic virtue were also recognized, though a special place is always held for those who suffer martyrdom.  A few days after Agnes’ death, her foster sister, Emerentiana, who was visiting her grave was stoned to death for her faith.  And today following the example of Agnes we celebrate some of the 40 Martyrs of England, Scotland and Wales,  5 of the Martyrs of Korea,  3 Martyrs of Turkey,  5 Martyrs of Spain, 19 Martyrs France, and 30 Roman soldiers who were put to death because they had embraced Christianity.

January 20 Pope Saint Fabian Rome 250

Fabian’s story is remarkable in that it shows how sensitive the early church was to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  His story was written by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History. Fabian was a layman, a farmer.  He happened to be visiting Rome on a day when a new Pope was to be elected.  He was standing there watching the proceedings when a dove landed on his head and remained there.  This was an indication to those who were to choose the Bishop of Rome that they should choose Fabian.  They did not hesitate because he was only a layman.  At that time clericalism did not rule the church.  Fabian proved to be a worthy administrator.  He sent out missionaries to France and sought to correct false teachings which were being spread about.  He was martyred in the persecution of Decius in 250.

January 19  Sts. Liberata and Faustina sisters, Benedictine nuns, Italy 580

Liberata and Faustina were sisters born into a Roman family of nobility.  Their mother died when they were young.  They were raised by a guardian.  Rather than accept arranged marriages, they went to Como and joined the Benedictine convent there.  They founded the Santa Margarita Convent in Como which lasted for 1000 years.  At one point the sisters came across a woman who had been crucified by her husband and was dying.  They took her down from the cross.  Liberata prayed over her, and she recovered.

January 18 Blessed Andrés de Peschiera, Grego, Dominican Priest 1485, Italy

From the very beginning of Christianity there has been a struggle to present Gospel truths accurately in the face of distortions and legend-makers who attempted to write their own version of the story.  There were those of sufficient arrogance and/or self-confidence that they determined they could “put the story straight.”   This assault on the veracity of the basic Christian revelation has continued through all the ages within the Church and from outside it in the form of cults that mimic Christianity.  At times the conflict between the Church and these “enemies” has been so fierce that it has led to physical violence with both sides even burning people at the stake. Each “new” group or would be new source of knowledge usually has some of the same characteristics of those who have previously burned their wings in the flame of truth.  Nevertheless, they continue coming and always will.  When such cults or erroneous teachings take hold in Christian settings it is almost always due to the lack of good education in the faith and good experiences of Christian community.  Today’s saint, blessed Andres, understood that very well. He entered the Dominican Order of Priests when he was 15.  After ordination he was sent to preach in the Alps of northern Italy, an area that was very poor and had few priests or any teachers of the faith. He became known as “the Apostle of the Valtelline.”  For 45 years he traveled these alps sharing the poverty of the people, teaching and creating small communities of men and women to share the faith. The first of these was in Morbegno where he died in 1485.

January 17 St. Anthony, Hermit

Very early in Christianity a solitary form of life was adopted by many men and women.  They felt that the corruption in society often reflected in the life of the Church, made it impossible for them to live out the gospel.  They wanted to imitate the life of Christ and give up everything for him.  At first glance this would seem to be contradictory to the gospel.  Jesus preached the gospel and commissioned his disciples to do the same.  We are to be an evangelizing Church.  However, the Church has honored these persons from the very beginning.  St. Athanasius, the Bishop, wrote the life of the Hermit, Paul, and St. Jerome wrote the life of Anthony.  There are two theological principles behind such recognition.  The first is the interconnectedness of all creation.  Modern science is just beginning to discover and elaborate on this basic principle, but it has been understood by contemplatives from the beginning of Christianity.  We can have an influence on the rest of humanity by living as lovingly as possible even if we are not directly involved in ministry.  Secondly, actions speak louder than words and a life of self-denial shouts without saying a word.  It says that the one for whom you have given up everything is utterly worthy of this kind of devotion.  While hermits lived alone, they were not unknown.  People sought them out for advice as persons who had overcome temptations.  They sought them out just to see this kind of absolute witness.  They sought them out to learn how to live similar lives.

St. Anthony had a wonderful saying that could readily apply to our time with all of its conspiracy theories, election denying and outright lies: “The days are coming when men will go mad; and, when they meet a man who has kept his senses, they will rise up against him, saying, “You are mad, because you are not like us.” 

January 16 Three Priscillas, Martyrs, Rome 64-270

Priscilla was a popular, well-known name in the first centuries of Christianity.  That in itself contributes to confusion about different women who bore the name.  Add to that the lack of historical data and the tendencies to fabricate legends and you end up with something like a gordian knot of identities.

The first Pricilla in the New Testament is the wife of Aquila.  She is mentioned no less than six times always with her husband four times before him.  The two of them were of immense help to Paul in Corinth and Ephesus.  Like him they were tent-makers by trade.  And following him, they were ardent and eloquent preachers of the gospel.  They were martyred together probably in the year 65 after the great fire in Rome. They have a feastday in July.

The second Pricilla was also a married woman, the wife of Manius Acilius Glabrio

There are some legends about her hosting St. Peter in her home when Peter was in Rome.  There is no historical evidence for this, but it is entirely possible.  What is historical is the catacombs of Pricilla with an entrance under her house.  The catacombs have rooms of Catholic worship and also burial areas for Christian martyrs.  She followed her husband as a martyr.

The third Priscilla lived in the third-century (269) a martyr for her faith and her virginity. Little is known about her other than that she was tried before the Emperor and refused to deny her faith.  She was beheaded and buried in the catacombs under the home of Pricilla the wife of Blabrio.

January 15 Ita, foster-mother to the saints of Ireland, 570

From the time she was baptized as a child, those around her noticed a special spirituality about Deidre.  She preferred to be called Ita or Ida meaning (a thirst for God).  At sixteen she left home and went to Killeedy where a nobleman gave her four acres of land with a good spring of water to house a community of women.  They diligently gardened the soil and to supplement their income, Ita started a boarding school for small boys.  Among those who lived there as children were Sts. Brendan, Pulcherius, and Cummian.  Ita served as a Foster-mother to them and later in their lives as Spiritual mother and guide to whom they would return for advice.  Once Brendan asked her what God most disliked and her first response was “a dour face.”    Her community endured until they were destroyed by raiding Vikings.

January 14 Saint Macrina, Grandmother, 340 Turkey

Grandmothers have a sacred, irreplaceable role in passing on the Christian Faith.  Perhaps it is because it takes a lifetime to acquire mature wisdom from which to guide others while offering the example of a full life of faith as the main lesson.  Macrina is the grandmother of four Saints recognized by the church, two of them Doctors of the Church.  Macrina had studied Christianity under Saint Gregory the Wonderworker, her bishop in Cappadocia.  She and her husband hid out in the forests and on the shore of the Black Sea for seven years during the persecution of Diocletian and nearly starved to death more than once. She raised her grandson, Basil who went on to become a bishop and great defender of the faith. She also had remarkable influence over the other three of her grandchildren Gregory, Peter and Macrina, her namesake.  Her grandson Basil and his close friend, Gregory Nazianzus told her story and held up the example of her virtues.

January13, Sts. Hilary of Poitiers (368) and Viventius (400), France

Today we celebrate two saints who worked closely together: Hilary, Doctor of the church and Viventius, his assistant.  Hilary was a remarkable man.  He was a married Frenchman and was not a Christian. However, he was self-taught.  He read extensively and decided to read the New Testament.  When he finished it, he was convinced of the truth of the Gospel and became a Christian then a priest. He lived his faith so deeply that he was chosen as bishop of Poitiers.  The Arian heresy was being taught and he set about confronting it which turned out to be the task of a lifetime. Hilary understood the importance of bringing the teaching of the Greek theologians to the West to help people understand the doctrine of the Trinity and he made himself a bridge between Eastern Christian thought and Western Christianity as St. Irenaeus had done.  He is honored as a doctor of the Church.

St. Viventius was born in Palestine and was a Samaritan Christian.  After ordination he traveled to France and became Hilary’s close associate in the struggle against Arianism.  After Hilary’s death Viventius became a hermit and lived out the rest of his life in semi-obscurity.

The Church is at its best when different ways of thinking are brought to bear on the difficulties it faces.  Hilary understood the importance of having both the perceptions of Roman theologians and those of the Greek Theologians, of having the familiarity with scripture which led him to the faith and the insights of a prayerful recluse.

January 11 Sts. Paldo, Tato, and Taso, 8^th century Italy

The relationship between blood brothers can be complicated with fierce loyalty and/or sometimes rivalry as they seek to outdo each other. Paldo, Tato and Taso seem to have been very supportive of one another.  All three of them became monks in the northern Italian Abbey of Farfa.  The Abbot there commissioned all three of them to begin a new Abbey in southern Italy at a site which on which Constantine had had an oratory.  They named it San Vincenzo and it grew to have a large influence in southern Italy.  In the 12^th century a monk there wrote the history of the Abbey in a beautiful illuminated manuscript.  Three times the monks were wiped out by invaders and earthquakes.  Twice they came back.  However, today it houses a community of women. Each of the brothers, Paldo, Tato and Taso served in turn as the first Abbots of the Community.  The history of the Abbey is of interest because it shows the devotion of three brothers to each other and to their faith.  It further demonstrates how Christianity was kept alive in the culture of the time during the 8^th. to 12^th.  Centuries.  It displays the artwork of mosaics and manuscripts characteristic of the faith of that time. The monks were also farmers, gardeners and herbalists.  They provided hospitality to pilgrims and travelers as well.

January 10 Bl. Maria Dolores Rodriquez Sopena, laywoman, 1918 Spain

And now for something different…Maria Dolores was different in that she was almost legally blind due to childhood surgery on her eyes. She was also different due to the fact that she did not find religious life as a sister in traditional religious convents suited her.  She had to find her way to doing Catechetical work (which was gravely needed) and to gathering a group of women who would provide spiritual support for one another in working teaching Catechism and providing medical services while not wearing a religious habit or appearing in any way different from the lay women of their time.  They evangelized and continue to do so while dressing and living as ordinary lay women who encourage one another in their commitment.  After Vatican II there was a huge shift in religious life in the direction that Maria Dolores had already gone.  Less emphasis is placed on appearances (which Jesus himself never emphasized in the gospel) and vows while great emphasis is placed upon community and evangelization.  Maria Dolores was in many ways a prophet recalling the gospel simplicity.

January 9 Baptism of the Lord

Recently I became aware of the Eastern Orthodox custom of blessing water, especially a river, on the feast of the Epiphany.  For them the feast is all about revelation, and in the waters of the Jordan the Trinity first revealed Themselves in the gospel.  Each of the gospels tells the story of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan.  I used to think that this was because it marked the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, which is true, but there is more.  Jesus’ identity is affirmed in his humanity; the Trinity is revealed to those who were witnesses then and to gospel readers now.  It is fitting that this feast follows upon Matthew’s account of the Epiphany to the wise men.  The liturgy moves us along in this trajectory of revelation. 

In the story of the wise men, it is a star that reveals to them where to find Christ.  In the story of the Baptism, water and a dove are the nature elements.  Anyone who has found inspiration in nature could understand how water and a special movement of a bird could be the occasion of deeply personal revelation.  This Jewish baptism was a ritual used to reaffirm their commitment to the revelation of God to Abraham and Moses. The Baptist was doing it the Jordan River which Joshua had crossed to the Promised Land.  Jesus was affirming his Jewishness and commitment to God the father when his full identity is revealed.  We could say the same thing about our baptism—it reveals our true identity as persons made in the image of God, called to intimacy with the divine Three, called as Jesus was to share the good news.

In Matthew’s version John protests that he should be the one baptized by Jesus because he knew how faithful Jesus was to the Father, but Jesus says that it is for “righteousness.” This is another word for justice and a description of the perfect keeper of the law—one who does justice.  Jesus says that he is affirming, accepting this role of ordering justice, which is the role of the Sovereign archetype—the commitment to justice.

January 8 Thorfinn, Bishop, Norway 814

Every now and then some of the great surprises that await us in eternity break into our consciousness.  Thorfinn was a simple priest at the Cathedral of Nidaros, Norway.  He was made bishop of Hamar and witnessed the signing of an agreement between Kind Magnus VI and the Archbishop confirming the rights of the clergy.  Years later a new king abolished the agreement leading to a fierce church-state conflict.  The Archbishop and the bishops who supported him including Thorfinn were banished. Thorfinn fled to the Abbey in Ter Doest.  There he became a simple monk.  After making a pilgrimage to Rome, he died at the Abbey in Ter Doest.  A fellow monk wrote a poem about him and who he was.  It was put into his tomb.  50 years later the abbey was doing some reconstruction under a new Abbot.  Thorfinn’s tomb was opened, and it omitted a lovely fragrance.  The Abbot asked who was buried there and if anyone knew anything about him.   By then the very elderly monk who wrote the poem said he knew and told them about the poem which they searched for and found.  Thorfinn was almost unknown during his lifetime living very quietly after being forced out of his diocese by the king.  God chose to make him known many years after his death.  How many other unknowns shall we encounter when we pass to the fullness of the Resurrection? What surprises we will have when the mists of time are gone. 

January 7 Margit Slachta, Religious, Politician 1974  New York

It is rare to find a Christian who can serve in a secular government and not be entrapped by the mentality of a political party to the detriment of their conscience.  Such was Margit.  Margit Slachta was born in Hungary and lived most of her life there. She became a religious sister at an early age and then went on to found her own groups of Sister devoted to social work.  Margit was elected to serve in the Hungarian government.  She strongly protested the persecution of the Jews.  She and her sisters did everything they could to protect them from persecution and deportation.  One of the Sisters was killed by Nazi forces and Margit herself was nearly beaten to death.  After the war she was again elected to the Hungarian government but resigned her seat because she was unwilling to conform to the communist ideals of the party.  She formed her own party which won four seats in the next election.  She was recognized by the Israeli government as “Righteous among the Nations” for putting her life on the line for Jews during World War II.

January 6, The Magi, Seekers

Before the Epiphany celebration was moved to Sunday, it was celebrated on January 6 as a grand climax to the 12 days of Christmas.  Now, this day has been reduced to an optional celebration of the Magi.  Legends of the Middle Ages called them Kings and gave them names, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, but Matthew only says that they were wise men who were seekers.  The story of their search has a very interesting trajectory.  They are alerted to the new king by nature which they studied intently. Then they travel a great distance to a foreign land to consult the royalty.  They are pointed to Hebrew Scriptures. Finally key persons hold the child for them. They exhausted every natural means at their disposal to find Christ.  Spiritual masters tell us that if we have an intense desire to seek God, we have already found him. It is God who stirs up in us such desires.  It is a great gift to be a seeker.  Life is a journey of encounter, and each encounter deepens our understanding and our love. 

Paul tells us in Romans that the first revelation of God is in nature.  If we do not begin our spiritual journey by being enchanted with wonder and awe at a star-filled sky, at the glory of sunrise and sunset, the majesty of mountains and trees, the immensity of the ocean, then at some point in our journey we need to drink from this source.

The Magi traveled to a foreign country braving the perils of the journey and being willing to learn from another culture.  When we set out on our spiritual journey, we need to have an open mind to realize that God speaks through all cultures.  We are more comfortable in our own culture, but we cannot narrowly judge others who are different.  And there will be difficulties on the journey.  The Wise Counselor in the bible’s Wisdom literature tells us: “When you set out to serve the Lord, expect trials.”

Being Wise men, the Magi had the humility to approach authority figures seeking answers.  Humility is the bedrock of truth.  Without it our own egos falsely assume an authority they are not entitled to.  Unfortunately, in the case of the Magi, the authority figure, the king was someone unworthy of their confidence.  But at least members of his court were able to consult the Scriptures for the Magi.  At this point they come into contact with divine inspiration as we do when we let the Scriptures speak to us.

Finally, the Magi discover the babe in the arms of his mother.  Human love, be it of spouse, parent, sibling, friend, mentor or compassionate stranger is a reflection of divine love.  Having received the gift of seeking and finding, the Magi in turn give gifts.  When we come to the realization that everything in life is gift—pure gift which begs for the gift of ourselves in return we have arrived at our destination. And that being the case, there is direct divine communication with the guiding force of our lives.  The Magi are warned not to return to the King.

Jan 5 John Henry Newman, Theologian, 1890 England

To most people John Henry Newman is known as an English Bishop who converted to Catholicism.  But what he should really be known for is his exposition of the concept of the historical development of Theology. Christian doctrines do not change in the truth they represent but our understanding of them must develop given cultural circumstances and scientific advances.  Darwinism was sweeping Europe and England in particular, during Newman’s lifetime. It was not only the differences in Catholic and Protestant views that needed to be examined which he did very thoroughly concluding that the Catholic church was the product of genuine historical development.  Evolution and biblical literalism would have to be reconciled by recognizing the importance of biblical studies and literary types in the bible. This would  not be denying the validity of Scripture but coming to a deeper understanding of it. Newman recognized that the difficulties in reconciling the early Church with modern Catholicism lay in the failure to recognize doctrinal development.  Newman had enjoyed great fame as an Anglican Bishop and scholar.  As a Catholic, he was held in suspicion by Catholics.  Perhaps his immense contribution to the Catholic Tradition was not appreciated until Vatican II when his ideas about development came to full fruition.

We might think of the Development of Doctrine like the unfolding of a rose bud. First there is just the tight bud, then slowly more petals develop from that center until finally there is the fully developed/multi-petaled flower.  Some doctrines like that of the Trinity may be hard to recognize and formulate initially, then philosophy helps us see the distinctive petals and finally the experiences of the mystics help us understand how our lives are mingled in God’s life.  The doctrine of the individual person—body and soul in the image of God from the moment of conception may be hard to formulate at first but as science reveals the DNA it becomes clear that yes, this is a human person from the moment of conception as early Church fathers held.

Jan 4  Elizabeth Ann Seton, Widow,1821, Maryland

Elizabeth is the patron saint of persons whose lives God turns upside down. She was a very happily married mother of five living with her husband on Wall Street in New York in the late 1700’s.  Then one disaster after another struck.  Her husband lost ships at sea and went bankrupt. His tuberculosis grew worse, and he died. Business friends of his introduced her to Catholicism and when she converted family and friends in the Episcopal Church rejected her. She accepted an invitation to begin a free school for girls—the first in the United States.  She founded a group of women to help with this work.  She suffered great grief at the loss of family members and young women who joined her. The winters were terrible.  They almost froze to death and the priest appointed to serve as spiritual director of the group did not appreciate her.  Nevertheless, she persevered in establishing schools and hospitals.  She died at only 46 but she had suffered as intensely as those who live long lives. She is the first American born woman to be recognized as a saint.

January 3 Holy Name of Jesus

Throughout the Bible beginning with Genesis where God names the first man “Adam” and the first woman “Eve” and presents the animals to Adam to name, names are important.  To name someone was to possess them in some manner and for special roles God often changed the person’s name as with Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of Hebrew history.   Jesus would change Simon’s name to Peter.  The angel who foretold Jesus’ birth indicated that he would be called “Jesus,” because he would save his people.  The name “Jesus” is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Joshua.”  It was Joshua who led the chosen people across the River Jordan into the Holy Land as they returned from Egypt. Through his passion and death Jesus would lead us to the Promised Land of the Resurrection thus healing us of the effects of sin.  “Savior” means healer.  In Latin it comes from salvo, to heal.  In Greek it is soter, healer.  In Jesus is the healing of the harm sin does to us.

God would not give Moses the divine name because no one can possess God.  Instead, God told Moses “I am who Am.” Ex. 3:14.  It is God who possesses us, not the other way around.  Nevertheless, there is a sense in which we can possess Jesus when we take his mind as our own as Paul exhorts us (Phil. 2:5), when we follow him in love, when we receive his body into ours briefly in the Eucharist.  It is for these reasons that devotion to the name of Jesus became a strong feature of Christianity and the center of the great prayer form, the “Jesus Prayer.”  The name alone was the central mantra of this prayer form.  St. Bernard is famous for his devotion to the name of Jesus.  His hymn “Jesu dulcis memoria” is uses for Vespers for this feastday:

1. Jesus, the very thought of Thee
   With sweetness fills the breast;
   But sweeter far Thy face to see,
   And in Thy presence rest.
2. Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
   Nor can the mem’ry find
   A sweeter sound than Thy blest name,
   O Savior of mankind!
3. O hope of every contrite heart,
   O joy of all the meek,
   To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
   How good to those who seek!
4. All those who find Thee find a bliss
   Nor tongue nor pen can show;
   The love of Jesus, what it is,
   None but His loved ones know.
5. Jesus, our only joy be Thou,
   As Thou our prize will be;
   Jesus, be Thou our glory now,
   And through eternity.

Jesus himself used names in a very special way.  “You are Simon, the son of John, you will be called Cephas (the Rock) Jn. 1:42.  And after his resurrection he calls Mary by her name awakening both recognition and affection Jn 21:16.

A name is like a verbal icon.  It brings a presence into your mind of the person who bears it like sunrise brings light to the eye.  A name strengthens bonds of friendship when repeated. A name evokes a special identity. Jesus himself encouraged us to pray in his name Jn. 14:13. The apostles preached in his name and rejoiced to bear suffering for it Acts 5:14. Paul says that without the Spirit we cannot say that Jesus is Lord 1. Cor. 12:3 and at the name of Jesus every knee should bow Phil. 2;10.  Scripture is an immense treasure trove regarding the name of Jesus and many of the saints throughout history understood that.

Jan 2, Basil, Caesarea 379 and Gregory Nazianzus 390, Bishops, Doctors of the Church

The story of Basil and Gregory is a story of friendship “two bodies in one spirit” in their early monastic days formulating a monastic rule.  However, their years in the quiet, prayerful setting of monasticism, it seems, was only a preparation for dramatic public life.  Basil was drawn into the conflict with Arianism then made a bishop who would continue the fight against Arianism.  He consecrated his friend Gregory a bishop and sent him to a diocese where he would be plunged into the controversy also.  For a time, this strained their relationship, but they were reconciled. Basil strongly affirmed the equality of women with men—both created equally in the image of God.  He also taught that slavery was wrong.  Basil died in Caesarea in 379.

Gregory loved monasticism and was a reluctant bishop but brilliant defender of Orthodox Christianity against Arianism.  He was appointed Bishop of Constantinople and the Emperor had to intervene to keep an Arian bishop from deposing Gregory.  He was elected to preside over the Second Council of Constantinople amid great controversy.  He wrote beautifully of the Holy Spirit and strongly defended the role of the Holy Spirit, supporting the addition to the Creed of the portion on the Holy Spirit. He is recognized as creator of the church’s definitive definition of the doctrine of the Trinity. Gregory created a dramatic scene at the end of the Council by resigning as Bishop of Constantinople in an impassioned speech to the emperor.  He went back to Cappadocia and continued as Bishop to defend the Nicene Creed.  Then retired to solitude and gardening which he loved for the last six years of his life. He died and was buried in Nazianzus.

 At the beginning of our calendar year, these two men, strong in their friendship, both from saintly families, are seen like two mountains towering over the landscape of Christian history and guiding the Church to a deep understanding of the dimensions of its faith.  We owe much to their brilliant intellects and the way they allowed the Holy Spirit to guide them. Gregory himself told the story of their friendship:

“Such was the prelude to our friendship, the kindling of that flame that was to bind us together. In this way we began to feel affection for each other. When, in the course of time, we acknowledged our friendship and recognized that our ambition was a life of true wisdom…

Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents or to themselves, that is, to their own pursuits and achievements. But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians.”

January 1, Blessed Lojze Grozde, Student and Martyr  Solvenia 1943

Lojze was born to an unmarried woman whose father would not acknowledge him.  At age four his mother wanted to marry another man who did not like the boy.  It was his aunt who became his parent and support.  She had friends who helped her finance his education. Despite being rejected by his biological parents and step-father, Lojze seemed to understand that he was beloved by his creator.  He was an excellent student.  He joined a sodality of Our Lady at 13. At 15 he became involved with Catholic Action groups.  He considered becoming a priest but decided that it was as a layman he would be most effective.

While traveling for the holiday to visit family and friends the cart he was riding in was intercepted by Communist militia.  It was the height of World War II, the Communists hated Catholics as much as they hated Nazis. He was carrying a copy of the Imitation of Christ and a book on Our Lady of Fatima who warned the world of the problems of Communism. Lojze was accused, without any proof, of being a spy.  They tortured him horribly then killed him and buried his body in the woods. He was 20 years old. His body was found by some school children a couple months later.  It was not corrupted but the marks of the torture showed.  The local people buried him in their cemetery.

December 31, St. Sylvester Rome 335

St. Sylvester whose feastday is today, is the figure behind the notion of “father time” who is represented as a very old man hobbling away from the scene of the current year. 

In the Middle Ages many fantastic legends were created about St. Sylvester which have been proven to be inventions.  What we do know is that he was Pope during the time of Constantine who stopped the persecutions of Christianity.  Constantine also gave some great Roman basilicas (public buildings) to Sylvester for the Church.  Constantine wanted to endow the Church with some measure of shared power in certain affairs and he needed to have the bishops be in unison and organized for that.  It was Constantine who called for the Council of Nicea which would turn out to be a defining moment in Church history as the teaching of Arius was rejected.  Pope Sylvester sent two delegates to the Council.

The teachings of Arius were rejected authoritatively but not universally as the controversy over his teaching that Jesus was not co-equal with the Father had not been fully understood or exposed to all areas of Christianity.  The Arian heresy would continue to create problems for at least three hundred more years.  Later Councils through the centuries would reenforce the rejection of Arius’ ideas but this first step would always remain crucial. The first two thirds of the Nicene Creed were formulated in 325 in Nicea.  In 381 The First Council of Constantinople would add the portion of the Creed on the Holy Spirit. In the sixth century the Nicene Creed was added to the Sunday Liturgy.  The basic formula proclaims the truths which are important because God is Truth. This Creed has become the litmus test for those who profess to be Christians.  Many groups may use the appellation but only those holding to this Creed are recognized as Christian.  Sylvester had a long reign as Pope—21 years.  He died in 335 of natural causes.

December 30, John Main, Monk and Prayer Teacher, Canada 1982

On of the amazing things about having a 2000-year history is that the Church is constantly rediscovering early riches.  It is like an archeological dig but takes place in the field of theology.  John Main was a modern Benedictine monk who rediscovered the ancient prayer practices of the early Christian monks under St. John Cassian.  John himself had been on a journey of discovery of methods of prayer including those of Malaysia.  After he became a Benedictine monk, he discovered that the early monks had a method of prayer based on using just a single phrase of scripture as a mantra, then slowly and prayerfully repeating the mantra and letting the mantra lead you into silent contemplation.  Sometimes this prayer was called the “Jesus’ prayer using just the name of Jesus.  The goal of this form of prayer is not imaginative meditation using images and words but rather to simply come to rest silently in the presence of the Beloved while quieting the mind.  This kind of silent, transformative prayer has been one of the powerhouses of the Catholic Tradition through the ages but sometimes it has gotten lost to the general public in the midst of the rushing rapids of history.  John Main rediscovered this prayer form for himself and began teaching it to is fellow monks and lay persons with great success.  The rapid pace of modern life, the rise of many forms of media, at times crushes the human heart and mind and the need for quiet prayer is like an unquenched thirst. Prayer is defined by St. Teresa as a conversation with one who loves us.  In this form of prayer, the emphasis is upon listening to that One.  After the madness of preparation for the holidays a time of quiet prayer to close the year is a wonderful exercise.  Having moved from England to Canada to found another community devoted to teaching contemplative prayer, John died there of cancer.

December 29, Saint Thomas a Becket, Bishop Martyr England, 1170

Thomas Becket represents one of theology’s thorniest problems. In the gospel Jesus commissions his disciples to spread the good news of the gospel, of the Kingdom of God which is not of a worldly order.

Then came the Roman Empire and Constantine’s desire to include Bishops in its power structure.

Then came the theology that if the Church has spiritual authority, it should likewise  have earthly authority to rule nations.

Then came earthly sovereigns who demanded to have authority over the Church.  It is at this point Thomas a Becket comes on stage.  He refused to surrender Church authority to his former friend the King. The King let it be known that he wanted Becket out of the way.  Four of his knights went into the Cathedral and hacked Becket to death.

The struggle for earthly power became a center focus as a later King of England declared himself to be head of the Church in place of the Pope and sought to remove the Church in England from all Papal governance.

Through political upheavals, the Church was gradually dispossessed of all land holdings and political authority except for a tiny city island in Rome, Italy. Once again it came face to face with Jesus’ insistence that his kingdom is not of this world.  The church should not be in the business of ruling nations, nevertheless, it has a right to govern itself and its members have the right and responsibility of all citizens of any nation to contribute to the moral ideals that make for good governance.

The struggle of how best to contribute to good governance continues to be a major source of contention in all religious groups not just Catholicism.  Frequently in Christianity people think they are being very religious but in reality, the major influence in their lives is not the gospel but the agenda of their political party.  They read the gospel through the lenses of the philosophy of their party without even realizing they are doing so. Patriotism supplants the gospel and as in the case of Becket, there are martyrs.

In the twelve days of Christmas, we already have an abundance of red, of martyrs—Stephen, Innocents, Becket.

December 28,  Holy Innocents

Our consciousness as fully developed human persons is never adequate if we are not aware, if we do not carry, the cries of innocents within us.   In his story of the Holy Innocents Matthew sums up the endeavors of the forces of evil against God’s activity in history.  Jesus echoes Moses in the opposition both suffer from men whose hunger for power causes them to slaughter innocents.  History repeats itself over and over.  Today, right before our eyes, Putin murders innocent people in his thirst for power.  The right to slaughter the unborn is used to defend democracy. The refusal to provide adequate health care because of monetary concerns drives women and children into poverty.  The thirst for the power of the gun leads to the slaughter of innocent school children to satisfy a demented need for false glory. 

We cannot appreciate the story of the incarnation and the resurrection if we do not open our hearts to the cries of innocents unjustly driven from their homes by violence, to women in need of health care, to children murdered in their innocence.  It is important in the holidays as we revel in good food, good friends, warm homes, lovely gifts that we pause to listen to the “cries of Rachel” mourning her children who are no more.

December 27 St. John Evangelist 100 Ephesus?

Rome, “we have a problem….”  It is an identity problem.  Two John’s in the gospel have been confused, melded together, conflated…  The result is that neither is recognized as he should be.  Only recently have the gospel “Marys” been untangled and the true identity of Mary of Magdala set forth.  Now we need to unentangle John the Apostle, brother of James, and John the Beloved, Evangelist of the fourth gospel.  Scripture scholars are doing a good job but in the popular mind not given to reading scripture scholars, there is confusion.  John the Apostle, brother of James was one of the “sons of thunder.”  They were ambitious to be rulers of the tribes of Israel and their mother even asked Jesus for those positions for them, Jesus told her it was not he but the Father who would assign such roles.

John the Beloved, author of the fourth gospel, never names himself in the gospel out of modesty and also out of respect for John the Baptist.  He refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”  He was only in his teens during Jesus’ public ministry and would not have been considered an apostle.  Nevertheless, he had a close relationship with the brothers Andrew and Peter.  Andrew took him with them to attend the Baptist’s revival at the Jordan. There the Baptist introduced him to Jesus. He frequently traveled with Andrew and Peter and was present at many great moments in Jesus’ ministry.  He rested on Jesus’ chest at the last supper. He was responsible for getting Peter into Jesus’ trial in the high priest’s house.  He was present with Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary of Magdala at the foot of the Cross. He outlived the Apostles and wrote his gospel in his old age. 

This is not the personality of the “son of thunder,” fisherman with his brother James who was with Peter and James at the transfiguration and in the garden of Gethsemane.  That John needs to be celebrated with his brother James in July. In the gospel stories there were two Simons, two Judases, two James’s—enough for plenty of confusion and conflation.

 We need to give space to John the Beloved, Evangelist, not Apostle, but disciple as he calls himself. He is the eagle, barely a fledgling during Jesus’ ministry, who would fly to the heights of vision to give us the “Word became flesh.”  He who rested on the chest of Jesus at the supper gives us a marvelously expanded understanding of Jesus.

December 26, Stephen Proto-Martyr, 36 Holy Land

Reverence for martyrs is a biblical devotion.  The account of the brothers Maccabee being put to death for their faith in the First Testament happens at the end of that testament, through the prophets were persecuted by their own people all through Hebrew History.

Stephen’s story has a touch of both kinds of persecution.  He was Jewish but came from outside the Holy Land and spoke Greek.  He was hated both for being Christian and for speaking Greek.

Acts of the Apostles chapter 6 give us the story of the creation of deacons—persons designated to have special roles of service in the early community. The Greek widows were not getting a fair share of the food distribution and there were complaints so seven men were given a particular ministry to see to the fair distribution.  Stephen was the most prominent among them.

The story of Stephen, whose name means “witness,” is a parallel of Jesus in many ways.  Jesus was a witness to the Father, Stephen was a witness to Jesus, both were known for outstanding preaching, for miracles, both spoke disparagingly about the Temple, both were killed outside the city being accused of blasphemy, both forgave their murderers.

There are two features that led the Church to honor martyrs as saints.  Their lives bore witness to Christ, and they died for that witness.  They follow the Lamb, and they have “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb” by their own deaths.  All of chapter seven of the book of Revelation is about these witnesses.  They are sealed on their foreheads with the seal of God—the image of the Lamb whom they have so perfectly followed.  Gradually the church would come to recognize that it can be as difficult to live for Christ as to die for him and other persons who did not die by martyrdom were recognized as holy ones or saints.

The question we need to ask ourselves on Stephen’s day is could others recognize me as a witness of Christ?

December 25 Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Statesman, Poet, Spain 413

I must confess that I chose Prudentius because he wrote my favorite Christmas Hymn as set to Gregorian Chant.

Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega;
He the source, the ending he,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,

Evermore and Evermore!

O, that birth forever blessed
When the Virgin, full of grace,
By Holy Spirit conceiving,
Bore the Savior of our race,
And the babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed his sacred face,
Evermore and evermore!

Let the storm and summer sunshine,
Gliding stream and sounding shore,
Sea and forest, frost and zephyr,
Day and night their Lord adore;
Let creation join to praise you
Through the ages evermore,
Evermore and evermore.

Christ, to you with God the Father
And Holy Spirit, be 

Songs and hymns of great thanksgiving
Praises now in time begun

Chanting lifted mightily

While endless ages run

Evermore and evermore

Prudentius was a lawyer who became a statesman then later retired to a monastic style of life and devoted himself to writing poetry especially for the Prayer of Hours.  Poetry is to words what music is to sound and these two art forms have graced Christianity from the very beginning.  Each culture the Church has encountered added its store of beauty from within that culture’s own resources of poetry, music and art. Prudentius contributed greatly to this enrichment.

December 24 The Ancestors of Jesus

For centuries it has been a custom in the Church to read the genealogy of Jesus in the early Hours of Prayer on December 24 thus transitioning from Advent into Christmastide.  Actually, the gospels present us with three different versions of the origins of Jesus, each emphasizing a special feature of the God/Man.  Matthew emphasizes Jesus’ Jewishness as a son of Abraham and traces Jesus’ forebearers from Abraham.  Luke emphasizes Jesus’ humanity and presents a genealogy that ascends to Adam.  John gives us the characteristics of the Word of God Who became flesh.

Matthew wrote for a community that was made up primarily of Jewish converts and seeing Jesus as a son of Abraham was beneficial to their faith.  For us this is a lesson in the value of cultural heritage.  Faith in Christ has been expressed by each culture that has embraced the gospel in stories, songs, foods and rituals.  Those customs nurture the faith of each generation in turn.  Christmas religious customs are sacred. Matthew’s genealogy is written at the beginning of his gospel.

Luke wrote for a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles and his concern was that they understand the humanity of Christ and his role as prophet.  His genealogy is placed at the time when Jesus began his public ministry.  Old Testament prophets are identified by family at the time they begin their ministry as prophets.  Luke recognizes that at Jesus’ birth, it was the genealogy of Joseph that would have been important when he and Mary arrive in Bethlehem. Yes, the “inn,” which is the spare room of the home, was already occupied so the family took Mary and Joseph into the main living quarters which includes a space for the family-owned animals—an indoor stable and manger. The genealogy of Jesus is important when he begins his ministry under the guidance of the Spirit.  From Luke we learn the importance of our ancestors in faith when we recognize the role our baptism has given us –that of following Jesus as priest, prophet, sovereign, servant and lover.

John wrote for a community of mostly Jewish converts.  He gives no human history of Jesus.  But emphasizes the divine origin of the one who becomes flesh –a term used in God’s covenant with Noah.  John gives us as it were the divine DNA which is made up of self-emptying love.  The Father empties self in generating the Word as the entrance antiphon for Mass on Christmas Day quotes:  Dixit Dominus ad me (the Lord said to me),  Filius meus est tu (you are my son), Ego hodie genui te (I have begotten you this eternal day).   The Word empties self in taking on humanity.  It is this self-emptying love that must characterize our lives as Christians.

In our day and age when we are asked for ID we show documents: birth certificate, drivers license, passport.  In Jesus’ time you identified yourself by reciting a few generations of your ancestors and how you descended from them.  Personal identity is closely linked to those who came before us.

December 23 Servulus of Rome 590

Had St. Servulus lived in the modern world his parents would probably have aborted him on grounds that he would never be able to live a useful life and would be a burden.  He was born with such severe cerebral palsy that he could neither stand nor sit by himself.  His mother had him carried to St. Clement’s Church where he spent his time lying on a porch praying and begging.  He would ask those who gave him food and alms to read the scriptures to him especially the psalms.  He would sing with them when the psalms were sung.  Pope St. Gregory describes the scene when he died.  Those gathered around him were singing when suddenly he asked them to be silent and listen to the angels singing the psalms.  Moments later he died.  He was buried in the church and his tomb became a site of miracles.  The heroic way he accepted his handicap, and the miserable condition of his existence were already a miracle.  His body was handicapped but not his mind which came to know God in most remarkable ways.  He is the patron of the handicapped.

December 22, Servant of God Isaac Hecker 1888, New York

Culture is to the human psyche what soil is to a plant.  It nourishes and allows the plant to flourish.  Saints learned the art of using the culture to promote the Gospel.  Jesus himself grew up in the Jewish culture of the Holy Land.  Paul the Apostle grew up as a Jew in the wider Roman culture which he made use of for spreading the Gospel. The culture of the Gospel is not that of a particular country or ethnicity rather it is the milieu of the Holy Spirit who can and does use all human cultures. 

Isaac’s story is very much one of culture, American culture.  He was the son of immigrants, his family was Protestant, but he converted to Catholicism and then became a religious—a Redemptorist– and finally with four other priests founded the American Religious Order of Paulist Priests whose unique mission initially was to evangelize American culture and make use of it to spread the gospel. He ran headlong into pitfalls of the culture of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church with its characteristic progressive/conservative division.  The Redemptorists in Rome disowned him and his companion priests.  The Pope intervened noting the movement of the Spirit in his person and goals.  The Pope commissioned the men to found an “American” order.  They took Paul the Apostle as their model.  Because Paul had so surrendered himself to the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit could use him to evangelize in the culture of the Roman Empire.  The “Paulists” sought to emulate Paul in following the Spirit to evangelize the American culture and use it for the gospel.

Fifteen years before his death Isaac contracted leukemia.  Finding the Spirit in this turn of events was the greatest personal challenge of his life. Having given up everything to follow Christ, to preach as Jesus did, he found that it remained for him to undergo his own form of crucifixion in that illness. He finally succeeded and for 13 years carried on his apostolic activities as his health permitted until the disease took his life. The hardest lesson to learn is to follow where the Spirit leads in the labyrinth of life.

December 21 Peter Canisius, Doctor of the Church 1597 Switzerland

Peter Canisius was one of the first Jesuits. He lived and traveled with Ignatius Loyola. After Ignatius’ death Peter’s evangelical labors took him to Germany Where he endeared himself to Protestants and Catholics alike.  He did immense work to preserve Catholicism in Germany and to respond to the theological challenges of the Reformation.  He took the catechism format –a series of questions and answers– made popular by the newly invented printing press and Protestant writers, and used it extensively to demonstrate Catholic beliefs. He wrote three Catechisms, one of which went through 200 reprints in his lifetime. He attended the Council of Trent and the Concordat of Worms.

Before Peter set out for Germany he had a spiritual experience in which he saw the Heart of Christ.  He wrote about this experience:  “It was as if you opened to me the heart in your most sacred body. I seemed to see it directly before my eyes. You told me to drink from this fountain, inviting me, that is, to draw the waters of my salvation from your wellsprings, my Savior. I was most eager that streams of faith, hope, and love should flow into me from that source…’

It was nearly a hundred years before another Jesuit, Claude de la Colombière, would authenticate Margaret Mary’s experiences of the Sacred Heart but already the Jesuits were participating in that stream of spirituality. Peter ended his days in Myrna Switzerland where he died of natural causes.

December 20 Origen, Theologian, Mystic, Scripture Scholar 253 Lebanon

This time of year, when darkness is most intense and prolonged in the northern hemisphere we love to decorate with colored lights.  They make the darkness more acceptable and even add a sense of romance to the darkness.  But bright light can make our eyes very uncomfortable and be just as blinding or even more so than darkness.  Something similar happens in our intellectual life. Brilliant minds can leave us staggering intellectually.  This was the fate of Origen in the early Church.  He lived in a time of immense turmoil and fermentation when new intellectual stars were being born in the firmament of nascent Christianity.  He had a remarkable ability to understand the workings of the Spirit, probably the best able to do that next to the Apostle Paul.  After absorbing his experience of the risen Christ, Paul understood the supremacy of Christ compared to the Law.  Christ does not do away with the Law but the revelation in his person transcends and fulfills it.  What Paul sees regarding the Law, Origen sees regarding the working of the Spirit in all realms of intellectual enterprise.  The Spirit can speak through philosophy despite its pre-Christian origins. Through the Scriptures, the Spirit speaks in a variety of ways, giving us various “senses” of Scripture.  All during his ministry Paul was dogged by those who could not comprehend the brilliance of his insights. Likewise,  Origen was dogged by fellow theologians who could not comprehend his insights and unfortunately attributed to him things that he did not say.  In a world where all writing was done and copied by hand, anyone could write something then attribute it to someone else.   Hot-tempered persons could easily attribute sayings to those they disagreed with making the opponent look incompetent or bad.  While saints may practice heroic virtue, they are still human and driven by human passions, sometimes with a false zeal.  Forensic historians have uncovered evidence of this in two of the great saints of the early period of the Church.  Augustine had a personal vendetta against Pelagius and Jerome against Origen.  It is evident now from study of ancient writings that both saints made extensive use of Origen’s writings and ideas, nevertheless they disagreed with some things attributed to him and themselves attributed to him and Pelagius things which those scholars did not actually say.  The sad result of all of this is that both Origen and Pelagius were accused of heresy, largely at the insistence of Augustine and Jerome their teachings were condemned.

However, truth will out eventually even if it takes centuries.  And during that time the Church has continued to use and greatly benefit from the influence of these great teachers.  Origen’s embrace of philosophical methods, his devotion to scriptural exegesis, his breadth of vision regarding the ways scripture can be understood, became foundational to Catholic Theology.  St. Bernard and St. John of the Cross are two examples of theologians and mystics using Origen’s method of understanding scripture. St. Thomas Aquinas used philosophy. The brilliance of his remarkable mind, which he surrendered completely to the Spirit, cannot be extinguished and continues to enrich us today. Origen was put in prison and tortured for his faith under Decius for years.  Finally, when the emperor died, Origen was released but his health was broken.  He died in 253.  He is a giant of spirituality, a remarkable theologian and scripture scholar.

December 19 Pope Anastasius 373 Rome

Pope Anastasius has two claims on history.  He was the Pope who condemned the writings of Origen the famous third century Christian philosopher.  Pope Anastasius was succeeded as Pope by his own son, a unique claim for popes.

The condemnation of Origen has always been an outstanding moment in Church history.  He was the first theologian to use Greek philosophy in interpreting the Christ event.  There were those who criticized him for that, but it is not the reason for his works being condemned. Philosophy is a science of the mind, of thought. The Church has never been against science.  Yes, there have been controversies over whether the revelation of scripture takes presidency over scientific evidence which resulted in the realization that the bible is not scientific literature and should not be regarded as such, but the Church has never been against the sciences which include not only the physical sciences like medicine, biology and archeology but also the sciences of the mind philosophy and psychology.  All truth comes from God and is a result of the workings of the Holy Spirit.  There are plenty of examples in the Hebrew Testament of “borrowing” from “pagan” sources beginning with the stories of creation.  The Spirit has guided the Hebrew people and Christianity in its theological interpretation and use of such sources.  Anastasius did not condemn Origen for the use of Greek Philosophy, but questioned how he used it.

Origen’s works were condemned on two primary grounds:  his treatment of the Trinity and of the Resurrection.  In his treatment of the Trinity, he considered the Son and Spirit to be subordinate to the Father.  Origen died in 253. Seventy-five years later in 325 the Council of Nicaea produced the Nicene Creed. Fifty years after that Anastasius declared that Origen was not correct in making the Son and the Spirit subordinate to the Father.  Unfortunately, Origen’s teaching may have provided a foundation for Arianism which denied that Jesus was co-equal with the Father.  However, when Origen wrote the doctrine of the Trinity had not been fully developed.  The same can be said of the understanding of the Resurrection.  But it seems that Origen’s understanding of the Resurrection relied more on philosophy than on scriptural revelation and this brought about his rejection by the Pope and Councils.  It is not the use of any of the sciences that is objectionable but rather when the biblical revelation is interpreted mainly or entirely by science—when science usurps the role of divine revelation instead of augmenting it.

What we learn from Pope Anastasius is how the Church grounded itself in the Scriptures of the New Testament and was led by the Spirit, who can use all things to lead us to truth including the use of sciences.

December 18 Malachi the Prophet

Malachi was the last of the Hebrew Testament prophets.  He lived and spoke around 400 BC.  We tend to think of prophets as persons who foretell the future, but the role of the prophet is scarcely associated with that.  The prophets were called to be the conscience of the people.  Paul explains that the role of the prophet is to build up the community, to help the community understand what God is doing at that point in history (cf. Romans, Corinthians and Ephesians). That is done in various ways: personal testimony of communication with God, reminders of the covenant, reproof of forgetting God.  Malachi lived after the return of the people from Exile.  The temple had been rebuilt.  But the people were slipping into forgetfulness as usually happens when things are going well.  It is then that we tend to forget about God.

It would be another 400 years before the time of Christ.  While the phenomenon of an individual preacher with unusual characteristics became absent from the Old Testament scene, the work of inspiration was being highlighted by another strain of Revelation which was the writing of the books of Wisdom.  Three of the most important of these Books were written in the interim between Malachi and John the Baptist.  They are Qoheleth 300 BC, Sirach 200 BC and Wisdom 100 BC.

The writers became the prophets in another form.  This is especially true of the Book of Wisdom the last voice of the Old Testament preparing for Christ who would be the Wisdom figure par excellence.

We are baptized into Christ as priest, prophet, sovereign, servant, and lover.  What does it mean to be a prophet for the baptized person?  We are called to witness to the community and to the world our belief in Christ.  We do that physically by being present at the Liturgy, by speaking our belief to others, by the morality of our lifestyle. In all these ways we are prophetic voices crying out in the wilderness of a society that forgets God.

December 17 Saint Olympias of Constantinople, Deaconess and Soul-Friend of St. John Chrysostom, Nicomedia 408

Olympias was born to a noble family in Constantinople and at 18 was married to the prefect of the city.  He died two years later leaving her a very wealthy widow.  Nectarius, the Archbishop took notice of her and ordained her a deacon.  She used her wealth to found a hospital, an orphanage and a sanctuary for some 200 women many of whom were also deaconesses.  When Nectarius died, John Chrysostom became the new Archbishop.  A strong bond of friendship grew between him and Olympias who found that they were of the same mind on many topics.  Both were deeply concerned for the poor.  Both condemned the lavish lifestyle of prelates and royalty.  They quickly earned condemnation from both prelates and the royalty.  A final straw came when John compared the Empress to Herodias who had John the Baptist put to death in the New Testament.  John was sent into exile in Cappadocia.  He urged Olympias to remain in Constantinople and continue the fight against the corruption. A correspondence began between them revealing a beautiful friendship in which they supported each other in their struggles.  Seventeen of the letters are still extant.  Chrysostom continued to shepherd the Christians of Constantinople in his writings and his eloquence had an impact.  Those who were stung determined to further obliterate his influence by destroying Olympias’ work.  The Women’s sanctuary was disbanded.  She too was exiled.  Her orphanage and hospital were closed.  She died in exile a few months after John also died in exile.  But while her works were destroyed, her memory was not. The people held both her and John in deep veneration.

Power corrupts and it is said absolute power corrupts absolutely.  All through church history there has been this tendency for those in power to become addicted to lavish lifestyles contrary to the simplicity of the Gospel.  Olympias and John were early examples of the struggle to not allow the gospel to be lost to this form of corruption.  They paid dearly for their stand.

December 15 St. Sylvia, widow  592 Rome

Sylvia is most noted for being the mother of Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church.  She was married to Gordianus also venerated as a saint.  Sylvia was totally devoted to her two sons and their education.  After Gordianus died Gregory provided a small home for her close to the large home where the family had lived.  That was turned into the monastery of San Saba.  After her death Gregory had a mosaic created of his parents.  Sylvia was sitting in front of her husband who was standing.  Her blue eyes were very vivid and her beauty evident despite the wrinkles of age.  She is the patroness of pregnant women.  She was canonized by popular acclaim and her name was inserted in the list of saints by Pope Clement VIII.  It seems that there were many blooms on this flower stalk as three of her sisters-in-law are also venerated as saints.

December 14 John of the Cross, Mystic and Poet Spain 1591

Hopefully everyone has a network, a support group of saints, special to them.  Some of these will be acquaintances, some friends, some family and some will have parental influence.  John of the Cross is a spiritual father to me.  In the 1500’s after 800 years of Islamic occupation there was intense interracial commingling in Spain.  St. Teresa of Avila whom John joined in creating the Discalced branch of the Carmelite Order was of mixed Spanish and Jewish blood.  Juan was of mixed Spanish and Moorish blood.  His family was extremely poor.  John soon found his riches in his Catholic faith.  He is considered the most outstanding of Spanish poets for the beautiful lyricism of his poetry.  His major prose works are commentaries on his poetry written for those he cherished in spiritual direction—nuns, friars and lay persons.  His works show the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas but most of all the influence of Scripture.  There are thousands of Scripture references in his works about the mystical life.  He holds the title of Mystical doctor of the Church.  His works serve as a guide through all the stages of the spiritual journey to union with God.  The Ascent of Mt. Carmel portrays the personal discipline necessary for the journey as well as the pitfalls that can delay or abort the journey.  The Spiritual Canticle which is a commentary on the biblical Song of Songs and describes both the joys and the tribulations of the spiritual life, was written during the months he was held and tortured in captivity by some of his fellow Carmelites who resented his reform work.  He wrote two versions of his final major work, the Living Flame of Love which describes the inner life of a person consumed with a flame of the Spirit and living in union with the Trinity.  John could write of the mystical life because of his own experiences which, however, he never describes directly.  He always writes in the third person or the person of the Bride in the Song of Songs.  John spent hundreds of hours in the woodlands of Spain finding God in the contemplation of nature and he uses natural imagery extensively in his writings. He can well be considered the patron of Creation Mystics.  It is fitting that we celebrate John of the Cross during Advent as he loved the para-liturgical devotion of the Posadas and would do his own version of the Posadas in the monasteries where he was superior taking time at each Posada to reflect on those things that keep us from God.

December 13, St. Lucy Italy 304

For centuries the feast of Lucy felt on the winter solstice before changes in the calendar.  It was celebrated with great festivities of light. “Lucy” means light. Young girls wore crowns of lighted candles and processed in the streets.  For Dante, Lucia was the light that led him to purgatory and again out of purgatory to the dawning light.  She was regarded as one of the Five Virgin Martyrs of the early Church: Agatha (Sicily), Agnes (Rome), Cecilia (Rome) Catherine (Alexandria)–a five petaled Rose.  Dante also represented her next to the Mystical Rose opposite to Adam.   Historically, she refused the attentions of a Roman suitor and in his rage over rejection he turned her in to the authorities.  It was the reign of Diocletian, one of the hardest times for the early Church.  She was tortured, blinded and finally stabbed to death.

December 12 Our Lady of Guadalupe (Tepeyac) Mexico 1531

There are many sayings to the effect that “timing is everything.”  Never was that truer than in the story of the appearances of Our Lady to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico in December of 1531.  The time was a terrible one for the Native people of Mexico, they had been conquered by Cortez in 1521 ten years previously.  The Spanish missionaries accompanying him set about destroying the belief system of the Aztec people leaving them in poverty and abjection.  Very few of the Natives accepted the new religion of Christianity, understandably based upon the way they were perceived and treated.  An exception was the humble day laborer Juan Diego and his wife.  Juan frequently traveled past the Native sacred site of Tepeyac Hill on his way to Catholic instruction classes.  On the morning of December 12th, he was intercepted by a vision of Our Lady who with great tenderness identified herself as “your mother” and shared with him that she wanted a chapel built on this site sacred to the Native People where she herself could minister to their needs.  She took on the appearance and clothing of an Aztec princess thus associating herself with the Tonantzin, the Aztec goddess of the earth, corn, and fertility. This was a huge switch in attitude toward his people—one that demonstrated care, concern, appreciation –even of a place sacred to them, even of their culture in her dress. She had to persuade him to go to the prelate in charge, Zumarraga the bishop-elect, and ask for permission to build the chapel.  Zumarraga was there as “protector of the natives” charged with trying to correct some abuses.  He did not believe Juan and sought to disseminate.  After another appeal on behalf of the Lady he told Juan to bring him a sign.  Our Lady herself arranged the roses she told Juan to pick blooming miraculously on the December hillside in his tilma to carry to the Bishop-elect.  What Zumarraga saw however was not so much the roses which tumbled to the floor, but an image created on Juan’s tilma.  He took the tilma to his own chapel and gave permission for the chapel destined to hold it.  The Lady had chosen her time for this carefully.  Shortly thereafter Zumarraga returned to Spain to be consecrated Bishop and he was given the role of Grand Inquisitor for Mexico charged with seeing to it that the Natives did not return to their pagan ways.  He was overzealous about this even burning one chieftain to death.  His power as Inquisitor was to be revoked.

In the meantime, the image of Our Lady as she appeared on Tepeyac Hill had struck home in the hearts of the Native People and they began coming into the Church by the thousands.  In view of this, Zumarraga did not rescind permission for the chapel, but neither would he talk about the apparition nor promote it. Apparently, he thought that this phenomena over the image to which he had given the title “Guadalupe” to associate it with a Spanish devotion would pass away.  That was not to happen.  Our Lady was lightyears away from the mentality of the conquerors.  She was teaching the principle of inculturation so important in evangelization.  Paul had used it in Europe. Patrick had used it in Ireland.  Francis Xavier was on his way to using it in Japan, but less gifted thinkers could not imagine Catholicism except clothed in Roman culture.  They had no concept of pre-Christianity and the workings of the Spirit among non/pre-Christian peoples.  Even today we have traditionalists who regard the honoring of any Native practices as mere syncretism –an attempt to water down faith by introducing foreign elements.  The question was could the people honor the image of a pregnant Aztec princess, goddess of fertility, as the Mother of God and be drawn to the practice of Catholic Faith without just reverting to the Aztec religion?  Our Lady proved that yes, they could!  The features of this image of herself which she created could be regarded as pre-Christian.  She stood in front of the great native symbol of the sun-god not obliterating it but indicating that Christianity had something greater to offer.  She wore a turquoise mantel the color of the gods in the native mind indicating to them that as a Christian she was of heavenly origin.  On her dress immediately over her womb was the symbol of universalism indicating to them that the one she carried was of universal importance.  Her black pregnancy band identified her as the Mother of the God/Man. Her skin and hair were like theirs indicating that they were as dear to God as any other people. And the way she treated them was the ultimate test.  She declared that she wanted to minister to them in Christlike fashion.  She healed Juan’s uncle even as she sent Juan with the roses to Zumarraga. This image and the devotion of the people to whom it was given has outlasted all those who decry syncretism (the mixing of “pagan” symbols and Christianity).  The Lady chose a time when the Native people were in great need of appreciation and tenderness, when their culture was debased.  She managed a moment when a grand Inquisitor had not yet gotten a swollen head over a theologically mistaken anti-pagan attitude.  There is a need to keep theological concepts clear but there is also a need to recognize the working of the Spirit in pre-Christian peoples.  That was the lesson Our Lady taught at this moment in time, –a lesson for all time.

December 11, Pope Saint Damasus I Rome 384

When you get overwhelmed with election deniers, false accusations, ridiculous conspiracy theories, and outrageous religious claims that contradict the basics of your faith, it can be comforting to visit Pope Damasus. He was elected Pope as the Church was emerging into a new role as the favored religion of the Roman Empire.  His election was immediately contested by the Arian priest who lost the election and who proceeded to try and govern as an antipope. There was bloodshed and violence. The antipope resorted to false accusations in his attempt to destroy Damasus.  The Arians who deny that Jesus is God were attempting to take over Christianity followed by other sects whose doctrine was not that of the Nicene Creed.  Damasus strongly reaffirmed the Creed.  He was also the first Pope to evoke a council on the question of which books belonged in the Catholic understanding of Sacred Scripture (the “Canon”).  The list the Council of Rome 386 gave us the one affirmed again by the Councils of Trent (1500’s)and Vatican II 1900’s).  It includes the Old Testament books written in Greek and written shortly before the time of Christ.  There were certain criteria for a book to be included in this collection regarded as inspired by the Spirit and of universal import.  A book had to have been written before the year 150, it had to be traceable to the Apostles, it had to have been in use by all the churches (not just one or two) and it had to be in agreement with the Creed.  Pope Damasus then commissioned St. Jerome (who was assisted by St. Paula) to translate the books of the bible into Latin the language spoken by most people in the roman Empire thus making the bible available to those who could read.  St. Damasus was pope for 18 years and died a natural death. He lived in a stormy time but came through it well.

December 10, John Roberts one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales

There were some 800 martyrs in England between 1535 and 1679 put to death under Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I.  The first martyrs disagreed with the King’s degree breaking with Rome and making himself head of the Church.  Catholics after that had to practice their faith in secret.  Many priests risked their lives to continue ministering in secret.  Elizabeth made it a crime to even be in England for all “Jesuits, seminary priests and any other disobedient persons.”  Anyone who aided and harbored them could also be put to death.  John was a Benedictine priest, there were also Franciscans, and many Jesuits along with diocesan priests and lay persons in this group of 40.  All but six of them were hanged, drawn and quartered, most at Tyburn.

While we celebrate many saints who were not martyrs, it seems that the greatest number of those close to the throne of the Lamb, Himself slain, are martyrs! They are a countless multitude of radiant beauty.

December 9, St. Juan Diego 1548 Tepeyac Hill Mexico

Juan whose native name was Cuauhtlatoatzin is Patron of Indigenous Peoples.  Juan and his wife were among the few converts to the Christian Faith among the conquered Aztec People of what is now Mexico.  Our Lady appeared to him as an Aztec princess and asked him to get permission to have a chapel built in her honor at Tepeyac. Only when her image appeared miraculously on Juan’s tilma was the bishop-elect persuaded to allow the chapel (a small one room adobe structure) to be built.

The amazing thing about Juan is not just that Our Lady appeared to him but that he has suffered periods of intense persecution since his death, even to the point of denying his existence.  Critics point out that there is no documentation in the papers left by Bishop Zumarraga concerning the chapel or the visions. Likewise for a long period afterward.  If the Bishop was so touched by the image of our Lady, why didn’t he leave documentation or some mention?  And why did he insist that the image be called “Guadalupe?” when it occurred on Tepeyac Hill at that time just outside Mexico city.  There are very good reasons for the Bishop’s silence and why he gave the image the title of Guadalupe.  At the time of the apparition, Zumarraga was only bishop-elect, he had not been consecrated as Bishop.  He was in Mexico as “Protector of the Natives.”  He was sent there to try and correct some of the injustices committed by Spanish military and tradesmen.  The only way that the apparition would be acceptable to the Spanish was to associate it with a Spanish devotion to Our Lady.  In Spain there was great devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a statue of a Black Madonna rescued from the Moors who ruled Spain for 800 years.  The reconquest of Spain was attributed to her as was Cortez’s conquering of the Aztecs.  Cortez was from Extremadura where the statue is kept.  So, a bishop-elect appointed to protect the natives was presented with the Tilma of Juan Diego.  He kept it in his private chapel but allowed it to be taken to the small mud chapel by the natives.  Subsequently he returned to Spain to be consecrated as Bishop.  The role of protector of the natives was taken away and in its place, he was given the role of Grand Inquisitor to Mexico. He returned a different man.  One dedicated to making sure that the Natives did not revert to pagan practices.  He carried on quite a campaign in this regard even having one chieftain burned at the stake for heresy.  There were complaints about his overzealous behavior by groups of Latin Bishops and the role of Inquisitor was revoked.  However, it was not until after his death that the first account of the appearances of our Lady on Tepeyac was published and then only in the Aztec tongue.  Zumarraga did not rescind the permission for the chapel because so many natives were coming to the Church, but neither would he in any way promote it or even own his association with it.  His generation of Franciscans continued his attitudes.  There are stories told by Pueblo People in Santa Fe, NM of how their ancestors had their legs broken by the priests to keep them from dancing their native rituals.  In short it was the era of the Inquisition.  Things would not change until that generation of Franciscans passed away and the Jesuits took root in Mexico.  The Jesuits came with a very different mind-set.  They were not searching for heretics; their mission was to search out and affirm those elements that could be considered “pre-gospel” and in affirming those to promote and spread the gospel.  This is especially true of Padre Eusebio Kino, Jesuit missionary in Mexico.  The devotion to the story and the image of the apparitions on Tepeyac was kept alive by the people with little support from the clergy.  The scandal of Our Lady appearing as an Aztec princess to a native layman and only allowed to continue is due to Our Lady’s timing in appearing to Juan before the bishop-elect was made Inquisitor.  She made her pitch to her Mexican people as their mother, it took hold as has never been neglected.  Her most recent triumph happened when historical evidence demonstrated the bias and prejudice against Juan, and he was canonized.

December 8 Saint Narcisa de Jesús Martillo-Morán Peru 1869

One of the many saints celebrated today is a woman who achieved holiness as a lay woman. Her mother died when she was young.  Her older sister taught her a multitude of skills including how to read and write, to pay the guitar and sewing.  When her father died, she was 19 and she took up sewing as a profession to help support her brothers and sisters who were younger than she.  She also assisted the poor and needy.  Narcisa lived with various families in Ecuador her native country, then spent the last two years of her life living with Dominican Sisters in Lima, Peru but did not take religious vows.  Narcisa remained a Third Order Dominican. She had a very intense prayer life but like many saints of the time her bodily mortifications were excessive and contributed to an early death.  She is an example of the vocation to the single life and is a patroness of seamstresses.

December 7, Ambrose, Doctor of the Church Italy 397

Small of stature, mighty of mind and will, Ambrose lived at a time when the  Roman Empire was being shaken and frequently people looked to the church for stability. The church itself was being racked with the Arian heresy. Ambrose was the son of Roman Christians but as was common then baptism was delayed until adulthood.  He became a local Roman governor.  The Bishop of Milan who was an Arian died and a new bishop was to be elected.  Ambrose went there to assure there would be no election fraud or riots.  He was well known and liked by the people.  While he was giving a speech about good order someone cried out “Ambrose for Bishop,” the chant was taken up by the whole assembly. Ambrose went into hiding in the home of a friend.  When the Nicean Emperor Gratian heard the news he sent a letter praising the appropriateness of the choice and the friend gave Ambrose up.  Ambrose recognized that this was the call of God.  He was Baptized, Confirmed, Ordained and consecrated bishop all in one week.

Ambrose had deep respect for the Arians and treated them with charity, but he was equally firm about the faith based upon the Nicene Creed.   The Arians had control of another church in the city and would sing hymns expressing Arian theology.  Ambrose took the melodies and wrote Nicean lyrics for them. When Gratian died and an Arian emperor took control, he twice refused to surrender his church to Arian authorities even barricading himself inside.  The populous would not tolerate any violence toward him and the Arians gave up.

St Monica begged her son Augustine to listen to Ambrose’s preaching.  Augustine completed his catechumenate and was baptized by Ambrose.  These two pillars of faith both coming to Christ in adulthood, served at a time of great stress for society and the church. Ambrose had two wonderful gifts which he used for his ministry. He was an excellent administrator, and he had a winning personality.

December 6 St. Nicholas Bishop 343 Turkey

Will the real St. Nicholas please stand up!  This holy bishop is patron saint of those whose image has been distorted and abused beyond the point of recognition by the media. Most people including Catholics do not know that St. Nicholas was the original inspiration for the popular figure Santa Claus.  The red robes of a bishop have been changed into a red pantsuit.  St. Nicholas had a special love for poor children and often made personal donations to help them.  He would drop his donation in the window at night so as not to attract attention to himself following the gospel exhortation not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing (cf. Mt. 6:4). However, sometimes the snow was so deep that the footprints of the donor could be traced back to the Bishop’s residence.  Saints are canonized for examples of heroic virtue –his were generosity and humility.

December 5 Christina of Markyate 1154 England

Women are destined to be breakers of barriers (glass ceilings).  “Women cannot be disciples,” “Women cannot be teachers,” “Women cannot be physicians,” “Women cannot be writers,” “Women cannot be apostles,”  etc.  How many of these can not’s has history seen.  The gospel itself breaks down the first and last of these.  Mary assumed the posture and activity of a disciple and Jesus said, “let her be!” (cf. Luke 10:38-42).  An apostle was one who had seen the risen Jesus and was commissioned to tell others. Mary of Magdala was the first person to see the risen Jesus and he commissioned her to go to his disciples.

Christina of Markyate breaks down the “women cannot be monks.”  And she is the first recorded Christian mystic.  Her life is defined by the men in it—her father determined to marry her off, a lustful bishop determined to seduce her, a noble determined to marry her, a Cannon who rescues and hides her in a secret cell  for two years, a saintly hermit who becomes her mentor as an anchorite, an Abbot who creates a community for her and to whom she becomes a special advisor.  He had a monk of his community write an account of her life.  She could read Latin but could not write. The Abbot also had a special luminated psalter made for her so she could pray the psalms in her solitude.  Eventually those who sought her for sexual pleasure and financial gain died or turned their attention to other victims.  After spending most of her life as monk disguised as a man she was joined by her sister and a few other women in a community protected by the Abbot of St. Albans.   Like Patrick in his time of lonely slavery,  her years in solitude had led to a very intense spiritual life and made a leader of her. Even Abbot Geoffrey relied on her wisdom.

December 4, St John Damascene, 749 Jerusalem

John of Damascus the last of the Greek Fathers of the Church is a remarkable example of Divine Providence.  He was born in Damascus shortly after Islam had taken over the holy Land.  John followed his father in holding a place of importance in the administration of the Islamic caliphate. John was tutored in his Catholic faith by a captured monk, Cosmas.  He absorbed the teachings of the Greek Fathers of the Church before him as well as the sciences being taught in the Muslim schools.  He wrote “The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, The Fountain of Wisdom,” the first great compendium of the Catholic faith and a foundation piece for subsequent efforts to summarize Catholic Faith.  John lived and worked under Muslim rule, yet he could see the problems with Islam in that it had an Arian perspective on Christ and lacked a true encounter with Orthodox Christian teaching. For the first time in its history Christianity was confronted with a counter revelation. Other attacks had come from misinterpretation of scripture and Gnosticism.  This challenge was based upon personal private experience.  John saw the significance of this and in his comments on Islam he went to the heart of the matter—the perils of believing a private revelation that is not vetted by a community of believers and previously recognized scripture.

During his lifetime the Orthodox branch of the Church in Constantinople was racked with the Iconoclast heresy—the teaching that using any images was a betrayal of the Judeo/Christian Faith.  John used Scripture to refute this notion pointing out that God gave us a divine image in Christ thus justifying the principle of the use of images.  Christ or Christ’s saints are honored, not the image in itself.  The image is a window on to the reality of the life of God and God’s saints.

Show me the icons that you venerate, that I may be able to understand your faith. – Saint John of Damascus

The saints must be honored as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God, as John the theologian and evangelist says: “But as many as received him, he gave them the power to be made the sons of God.” Let us carefully observe the manner of life of all the apostles, martyrs, ascetics and just men who announced the coming of the Lord. And let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering, and perseverance unto death, so that we may also share their crowns of glory. – Saint John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith

John remained in good standing with the caliph because of his learning and skills for many years.  Then they had a falling out over the use of sacred images which Islam condemns. John retired from the caliph’s court to a hermitage associated with the Christian Monastery of Bar Saba. He continued his writing and also composed poetry and hymns.  He understood the importance of music and poetry in the expression of the faith having lived for so long with Muslims who feel that the poetic and lyrical beauty of the sung Quran is an indication of its heavenly origin.

The workings of God’s providence are most striking in John Damascene in that he was given such a grounding his faith by an almost unknown monk who was a captive of Islam from Sicily. He lived under Islamic rule and because of that he could write against the Iconoclast heresy and be protected from the Iconoclasts. He was extremely well educated in his Catholic Faith and in Muslim sciences so that his works rest on knowledge rather than speculation.

December 3, St. Francis Xavier, China 1552

When Francis Xavier met Ignatius of Loyola, they were both students at the University of Paris assigned to share a room.  Ignatius had long since experienced a profound “conversion” to Christ and had written his Spiritual Exercises.  Francis was a young nobleman with academic goals. Gradually a friendship was formed, Ignatius invited Francis to make the exercises and a saint was shaped.  Francis was Ignatius’ constant companion and was at his side when one of the two men destined to take on the new mission to India became ill.  Ignatius recognized that the sick man was unable to go.  “Send me,” Francis said without hesitation.  It meant being separated from Ignatius, but the bond of their friendship remained strong with letters.  Francis carried Ignatius’ letters in a pouch on his chest so as to keep Ignatius always close. The bond of their friendship helped carry Francis spiritually in the many difficulties he faced.   Because of the situation in India where a dedicated missionary was needed, the Pope had called upon the newly formed order whose vows included being available to the Pope for special needs in the Church.  Francis served there among the poorest of the caste system for years then he went to Indonesia and  Japan to begin missions there. Finally, his eyes were set on China but while awaiting permission to enter the country he died alone of fever on a small island offshore.  Ignatius had sent him a letter asking him to come home to Rome, but he was called to the full presence of the Lord before the letter reached him. Francis is patron of missionaries.

December 2, Marua Clark and companions El Salvador 1980

There are many examples of the inequality with which women and men are treated in the church.  Today’s example is especially egregious in that many of the men who suffered in El Salvador have either been canonized or on the way.  These women are barely recognized! Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, lay missioner Jean Donovan, and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford risk their lives to minister to the persecuted people in El Salvador especially the children.  They were ambushed on the road by militia doing the persecution, brutally raped, tortured and killed for their ministry.  Their service was heroic, their deaths even more so.

December 1, Charles de Foucauld Algeria 1916

All saints are in love with God, but some of these lovers had very passionate ways of revealing their love.  Such was Charles, the patron of failures.   Charles was born in France. His mother was a very spiritual person, but she died when he was only six as did his father and grandmother.  His grandfather took charge of him.  He did well in high school but during that time lost his faith. He wanted to join the French military but was expelled from the Jesuit school where he was studying for the exams because of poor behavior and bad habits.  He finally was able to pass the exams in another school.  His regiment was sent to Algeria. He was enchanted with Africa. But he lost his military commission because of an affair with a woman whom he tried to pass off as French nobility so he could keep her.  His grandfather died and Charles was able to live on his inheritance, so he left the military. He was still deeply enchanted with Africa and wanted to explore Morocco which at that time was closed to all Europeans.  He disguised himself as a Jewish Rabbi and traveled the country with a Jew willing to accept him as a traveling companion. Charles remained an agnostic during this time.  But a curious story is told of a Jewish mother seeing a Rabbi and begging him to pray for her very ill child.  If he refused, it would have blown his cover, so he prayed over the child.  The child recovered. Perhaps it was the mother’s faith and tears that prevailed with God. Perhaps it was God nudging Charles to faith and prayer.

Back in France he was honored for the book he wrote describing Morocco, but Charles was restless and unhappy.  He began rediscovering his Catholic faith. He entered the Trappists as he was now burning with a desire to give himself as fully to God as he had given himself to worldly pursuits.  Back in Africa again, he decided to leave the Trappists so as to live poverty more fully without the security of a religious community.  But soon he felt the need of community and the Eucharist.  He sought ordination so that he would be able to provide Eucharist for community members willing to live as he did. He was ordained in France and after a stay in Palestine he returned to Algeria. His days were spent in prayer and ministering to those who came to him for help.  He ministered to the African people by living the gospel as fully as he could.  He had no converts and no recruits for a community during his ten years in the Algerian desert.  He was kidnapped and murdered by some extremists from the tribe to which he ministered.  In death his failures were compensated as several groups of religious formed and adapted his format of life.

November 30 St. Andrew Apostle, First Century

Based on key scripture passages, I think we could safely consider Andrew the patron or model of mentors.  He was the older brother of Peter and Peter’s partner in their fishing business.  Where his mentoring shows most tellingly is in regard to John the beloved.  John was a young teen at the time whose home was Jerusalem however, he apparently had strong ties of family or friendship with Andrew and Peter.  Andrew took him along with him to the River Jordan where John the Baptist was baptizing (cf. Jn 1:35-42). There Andrew and John the beloved (“two disciples of the Baptist”) make an initial encounter with Jesus.  Andrew then brings Peter into the personal encounter.  It would seem that Andrew also took the young John with him to the marriage in Cana and again to the great gathering when Jesus multiplied the fish and loaves.  It is Andrew who calls Jesus’ attention to the young man –possibly John– who was present and who had a few fish and some loaves. When Jesus went off to the mountain alone fleeing the pressure of the crowd, Andrew and the other disciples take the young John with them in the boat for the night crossing of the lake.  (cf. Jn 6). And the Easter stories at the end of John’s gospel he Identifies “another two” with the same phraseology as he used of Andrew and himself in chapter one.  These two were present on the shore with the risen Jesus. The way John links himself with Andrew seems to indicate a special bond between them like that of an older man mentoring a young boy. Most of us can look to a significant older person who helped us assimilate the basics of faith and learn how to live that out. John’s gospel hints at this role for Andrew with himself as the one who benefitted from Andrew’s presence. Through the ages there have been many men and women noted for this ministry such as St. Ursula, St John Bosco, the Jesuits whose charism includes the formation of youth.  It is good to acknowledge Andrew the gospel personality who first demonstrates this trait. A good mentor allows others to grow up and take their place.

November 29 Dorothy Day America 1980

Servant of God, Dorothy in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, says that her life can be divided into two parts –before she became a Catholic and her life as a Catholic.  She was baptized and confirmed as an Episcopalian, but her family was not deeply religious.  She became a journalist.  All her life long she cherished great writers and found companionship with them.  For a while she dallied in various love affairs. She became pregnant and her lover insisted on an abortion.  It was the greatest regret of her life and when almost miraculously she became pregnant again she gave up her male companion to keep her daughter.  She sought baptism for this child and then converted to Catholicism herself. She told the story of visiting a Catholic church with a friend.  She saw a woman there wrapped in prayer.  That scene so deeply impressed her that she said to her companion, “that is what I want!”  She longed to find the best way to pray and to live her faith.  She prayed at the National Shrine in DC for God to send her someone to teach her.  It was at that point that she met Peter Maurin who was deeply involved in Social Justice work with the poor.  He became her mentor in this work and she devoted herself to the working poor and their causes. Together with Peter she started the Catholic Worker publication and movement. They became like two streams flowing simultaneously from the same source of Catholic Social Justice and emptying themselves in the same ministry to the poor and the needy of the working class.

November 28 Catherine Laboure France 1867

Catherine learned responsibility at a very early age.  Her mother died when she was nine and Catherine had to take over managing the household for her father and siblings.  She had a dream of a priest whom she later recognized as St. Vincent de Paul, telling her she had a calling to care for the elderly and poor.  As a young adult she joined the order he founded, the Sisters of Charity.  Our Lady appeared to her and asked her to have a medallion struck with Our Lady’s Image on it.  She took drawings of the image to her confessor who did not believe her.  For two years he put her off until finally he approached the archbishop who had the medals made.  The medal provided a lot of consolation to those who worn it as a reminder of Our Lady’s concern for them and some miracles were even reported.  The Pope learned about the medal and wanted to know the name of the sister who received this revelation.  When her confessor relayed this request to her, she refused to allow him to reveal it!  No one was to know her name –the medal was about Our Lady not her.  They argued so fiercely that sometimes the confessional shook but she never gave in and finished her life of service to the elderly poor of whom she is the patroness, without anyone, even the Pope, knowing she was the one who had received the revelation.

November 27 St. Sechnall Ireland 457

It seems that the evangelization and conversion of Ireland was a family affair.   St. Patrick’s, sister Liamain, had eight sons seven of whom became bishops in Ireland.  Sechnall, one of Liamain sons, went with Patrick when he was sent to Ireland as bishop in 432.  Poetry was held in very high esteem in Celtic culture and poets were given special honors.  Sechnall is famous for adding Irish poetry to the Church’s tradition of hymns and poetry already established in Paul’s letters (especially the letter to the Philippians (cf. 2:6-11) and enhanced by writers like St. Ambrose, St. Ephrem and Prudentius who wrote Ex Corde Patri (Of the Father’s Love begotten) in 400.  Sechnall wrote what came to be the Church’s first Latin Lyrical hymn to the Eucharist Santi, Veniti, Christi Corpus.  It begins:

Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord,
and drink the holy Blood for you outpoured.

Saved by that Body and that precious Blood,
with souls refreshed, we render thanks to God.

The poem goes on for ten verses and was used for Holy Thursday and as a Communion hymn at other Masses.  In time Thomas Aquinas’ (1274) beautiful hymns written for the Feast of Corpus Christi would supersede it.  But it is important to remember that Aquinas was building upon a long-established tradition to which Sechnall made a major contribution.

Sechnall also wrote a 23-stanza poem in honor of St. Patrick with each stanza beginning with a successive letter of the alphabet.  He was the beginning of a great stream of artists in Ireland who would add their gifts to an expression of Christian Faith.

November 25 Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi (1951) and Maria Corsini (1965) Italy

Today is the wedding anniversary of  Blesseds Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi the first married couple to be beatified together. Pope John Paul hailed this as a special moment in church history. Luigi was an Italian lawyer and she was a professor of education. They had four children.  During her fourth pregnancy she developed a precarious situation with the placenta of her baby and the doctors advised an abortion.  They were determined to save the child and alternatively despite the less than 5% chance of success the doctors were able to induce premature labor and save both her and the baby.    Their two sons both became priests.  The older daughter became a nun and the younger daughter cared for her parents in their old age.  Luigi died suddenly of a heart attack in 1951.  Maria lived another 14 years and continued as best as she was able to be very active in organizations of Women’s Catholic Action.

November 24 Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions, Vietnam 1839

The Portuguese Jesuits brought Christianity to Vietnam in 1615.  Persecution followed in 1625!  Times of persecutions in the following centuries has brought Vietnam to age as a great Catholic country with thousands of martyrs.  The group of 117 put to death with Sr. Andrew are representatives of all the others.  In his group were ninety-six Vietnamese, eleven Spaniards, ten French persons.  Some of them were bishops, some priests.  The others were lay Catholics including one boy only nine years old.  The last century, the 1900’s, saw the greatest number of martyrs under communist persecution.  Many thousands fled their homeland taking their faith to other parts of the world. Today’s feast is a world-wide Vietnamese celebration of all the saints they have given to the Church.

The Lotus flower is the national flower of Vietnam symbolizing dawn at which it opens and the ability to endure. The Lotus flower regulates its own temperature, and its seeds can remain alive for a thousand years.

November 23 Bl. Miguel Pro Mexico 1927

Miguel could easily be the patron of humorists and practical jokesters, but more profoundly he can serve as a patron of those who struggle with mental illness and self-doubt.  He is another martyr of the war against Catholicism in Mexico in the 20^th century.  He was in his novitiate (first years before vows) when the war broke out.  His superiors managed to get the novices to the US Border.  They crossed into Texas and from there traveled to California and later on to Europe.  He finished his formation and studies in Spain.  His superiors provided him wonderful support in his mental struggles.  On the day of his ordination, he greatly missed sharing his joy with his family. He went to his room and spread out the pictures of his family to give each of them his first blessing as a priest.  Three years later he had to have a series of surgeries for stomach ulcers.  The cause of ulcers was unknown then and in any case the antibiotic to eradicate the bacterium had not been found.  It is possible that poor digestion and absorption of key nutrients contributed to his mental struggles.  As it turned out, his physical and psychological struggles prepared him for the greatest conflict of his life back in Mexico. He begged to be allowed to return there to support Catholics in the dreadful persecution.  The Church had gone underground, and priests had to minister in secret.  Miguel’s quick wit and creativity served him well in coming up with disguises to use in his ministry. His brothers were falsely accused of making an attempt on the previous president’s life.  Miguel was arrested along with them and was condemned to death before a trial could be held to prove his innocence.  Because Miguel was a priest the government officials saw this as an opportunity to teach a strong lesson against Catholicism and photographers were brought in to take pictures of Miguel’s execution to show the public.  He spread his arms in the form of a cross and cried Viva Cristo Rey as he was shot.  The result of these pictures was an enormous outpouring of faith and devotion at a public funeral in which he was celebrated by thousands as a martyr. He gave his talents of wit and humor to ministering for Christ despite personal struggles but most of all at the cost of his own life.

November 22  Saint Pedro Esqueda Ramirez  Mexico 1927

As Campus Minister one of my responsibilities was giving retreats to each grade of our High School.  I especially liked doing a retreat on saints during November.  One of the dynamic interactions of the retreat was a quiz about the number of martyrs in various countries.  Most students were surprised to learn that Mexico had hundreds of martyrs due to the Cristero War in the 1920’s.  A corrupt government had decided to move the country into Communism and in the process to destroy Catholicism.  History testifies that in centuries before when a government decided to overthrow the Church, priests were taken prisoners tortured and killed.  Catholic institutions were destroyed. In Mexico an association of Catholic laymen organized in opposition to the policies of the government, and this provoked even greater ire in the Communist officials.

 Though not a member of the Cristeros, Pedro was taken prisoner on November 18 and tortured for days while the soldiers ransacked his church.  They prepared a pyre for him to stand on while he was burned to death.  He was so mutilated that he could not stand on it so the soldier in charge forced him to climb a tree despite having a broken arm then the soldier shot him and set the tree on fire. Faith in Christ cannot be destroyed by putting people to death.  Their witness awakens in others the profound realization that if something is worth dying for, it is certainly worth living for.  It is indifference and living only for success, power and wealth that destroys faith.

November 21  Columbanus Italy 619

In the gospel Jesus gives us the picture of the Sower (cf. Mt 13:1-23), evangelizing is like sowing seeds. Sowing seeds is related to seasons. Seeds must be sown each spring and for some plants each fall to assure a future harvest.  Paul was the first missionary to evangelize Europe with the seed of the gospel.  He experienced the call to do so in a dream of a young man calling to him to come and preach the gospel there (cf. Acts 16:9-12).  The gospel flourished watered by the blood of martyrs.  After Emperor Constantine in the 4^th century Christianity became the religion of the Empire.  But another major event happened in the 4^th century.  The mega Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 416.  This volcano had a caldera four miles wide and has continued to erupt through the centuries.  Its eruption in 2022 disrupted air travel. The eruption in 416 affected the growth of crops across Europe and added to the fall of the Roman Empire.  The Empire was already struggling with invasions from the north and from the weight of trying to sustain its populace and military in a situation in which the majority of Roman citizens were exempt from taxes.  The Empire collapsed under the weight of all of this and there was a loss of productivity, of governmental order, of education. Prior to this fall Patrick had been instrumental in converting Ireland to the Christian faith and the monks of Ireland had not only gone to Europe to study but brought back to Ireland most of the works of great literature both secular and Christian.  They feverishly copied all of these works saving them for prosperity.  In the 6^th century Columbanus became an Irish monk devoted to this form of education and in his mid-thirties he felt a call to “spread the fire of the gospel” in Europe.  He became the first Irish missionary to Europe following in the footsteps of Paul. His method was different. Instead of preaching in the cities, he founded communities of religious which became centers of education as the monks carried and made copies of the great works of literature with them.  The monasteries also became centers of order in the midst of political disorder, and places of refuge for travelers and the sick to whom they ministered. Columbanus worked in Gall (modern France) Germany and finally Italy.  It was fall and winter for the Roman Empire and the Church—a time for planting seeds that would bring about a new springtime of faith.  It is appropriate that we celebrate Columbanus’ feast day in the fall in the northern hemisphere.

November 20 St. Edmund Martyr, England 869

There was a special petition in the “Deliver us, O Lord” section of the litany of the Saints in an ancient English version: “From the Danes, deliver us, O Lord!”  From 793 until 1096 were three hundred years of terror as the Danes riding the “whale road” made use of their light swift boats to go up the rivers of England, Scotland and Ireland to raid and conquer. Their methods were very barbaric.  There is some archeological evidence that they settled peacefully in parts of England but there are also historical accounts of the horrors of the raids.  Many English Kings of the various segments of England fought against them and the martyrdom of Edmund is especially famous making him the patron of England. He was captured and told to deny his faith.  He refused and was tied to a tree where archers made sport of painfully pinning his arms and legs demanding with each arrow a renunciation of faith. Each refusal brought another arrow until he finally died.  Many of us of English/Irish descent find that we also have Scandinavian genes. Between the raiding/raping and the later peaceful settlement of parts of England there was a lot of mixing of blood and finally of faith as the Danes gradually converted to Christianity.  My mother’s maiden name was Edmondson and her ancestry traces to Wales, so this martyr is of special significance for me. The Danes conquered much of England and ruled off and on there for a long time, but the Christian faith was not conquered.

November 18 Rose Philippine Duchesne Missouri 1852

Rose is the patroness of those who sustain hardships.  She might just as well be considered the patron of adventurers.  At 18 she entered a cloistered convent against the wishes of her father.  During the French revolution the nuns were dispersed and the house used for a military barracks.  She began a new adventure–caring for children and teaching during this time.  She tired to reorganize the convent after the war but there were not enough community members left.  She became friends with Madeleine Sophie Barat and joined that saint’s order of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.  Rose was named after St. Rose of Lima the first saint of the Americas and Philip the Apostle.  The adventure she really wanted was to go to America and found a mission for the Native Peoples.  That adventure came when she was 50 years old.  She and four other sisters came to Missouri. They had to endure every hardship imaginable from nearly starving to freezing to death. The sisters began a collaboration with the Jesuit missionaries of the area and in 1841 the Jesuits asked the Sisters to join them in a new mission to the Potawatomi tribe in Kansas. She was retired and unable to do much work or learn the language, but Father Verhaegen wanted her to go because of her prayer life “she will assure the success of the mission by her prayers.”  A delightful story is told of how she would spend her time in the chapel in prayer and be completely still.  The Indian children were fascinated by this and would sneak into the chapel to put little pebbles on her habit.  They would come back later to see if the stones had rolled off if she moved.  They gave her the nick name “Quahkahkanumad” “Woman who always prays.”  Her health failed even as she completed this last adventure. After a year she had to return to St. Charles Missouri where she died at 83.

November 17 Elizabeth of Hungary 1231

Elizabeth’s story until she was 20 reads like a fairytale.  She was born into royalty, bequeathed to marriage at five and went to live in her future husband, Luis’ household until they came of age, married at 14. She and Luis were of one mind and very happy.  He supported her work on behalf of the poor.  She turned the basement of their castle into a hospital where she ministered to the sick who had no one to turn to.  She became the mother of three children. Such was the devotion Elizabeth and Luis had to each other that they made a vow saying that if one should die the other would never marry again.

It was at that point that tragedy struck.  Luis went to fight in the Crusade and on the way, he got plague and died.  His brother, Henry, took over the management of Elizabeth’s estate since her son was still a child.  Henry did not approve of Elizabeth’s charitable activities, and she left the castle with her children.  She regained her dowry, refused to marry again and joined the third Order Franciscans.  With her dowry she founded a hospital for the poor.  She should be considered the patron of those who have the misfortune of having an extremely controlling spiritual director.  A Spiritual Director should be one who is a soul-friend, who assists you in the process of discerning the movements of the Spirit in your life. Conrad was anything but that. He was a borderline sadist intent on imposing his own agenda.  It is unclear if Elizabeth chose him, or he was appointed as her confessor.  It was the custom at the time for those of royalty to have a confessor appointed for them.  In any case Master Conrad of Marburg got control of her life and treated her with terrible cruelty as he did most of those he came into contact with.  The bishops of Germany petitioned the Pope to depose Conrad of his office as Inquisitor because of his cruelty and later he was murdered in retaliation for it.  Elizabeth did not live long after the death of her husband.  She died at 24.

Elizabeth is the patroness of Hospitals and of Third Order Franciscans.  She is associated with roses because of a legend that one day when she was carrying a basket of bread to the poor, her brother-in-law who disapproved of her charitable works met her on the path and asked what was in the basket. When the cover was drawn back, he saw roses.

November 16 St Gertrude the Great Germany 1302

It is fascinating to explore the headwaters of a river. It typically begins as does the Jordan River on Mt. Hermon in the Holy Land with the convergence of several small streams and springs.  Something similar happens with the rivers of thought in Catholic spirituality.  They spring from the reflections and prayer life of a small group of holy persons.  In this case, these persons reflected on the wounds of Christ especially the pierced heart in the gospel of John.  Gertrude provided one of those small streams from which flowed the river of devotion to the heart of Christ.  Her mentor St. Mechtildis had introduced Gertrude to the practice of meditating on the pierced heart of Christ and this along with a devotion to John the Beloved became major features of her spirituality as she advanced in the mystical life.  She wrote about her visions of Christ and John. The most touching of which is one in which she was allowed to rest her head on Jesus’ chest as John had done to “listen to the heart of Christ.”  She then asked John why he had not written more about this than a mere mention in his gospel and the response she got was that it remained for future ages to unpack and develop what it meant. In this she bears witness to the Catholic principle of the development of doctrine and the expansion of the revelation found in the scriptures.  So long as this is done within the parameters of the original Gospel revelation it provides a deeper understanding of the revelation.

Although Gertrude was very well educated and could read and write Latin the language of scholars, she chose to write about her experiences and about devotion to Christ’s pierced heart in her vernacular German thus becoming the first theologian to write in their own language.  This made her work much more accessible to ordinary persons.

People Innocent IVX who was deeply impressed with her theology gave her the title “the Great” to distinguish her from the other Gertrude who had been the Abbess of the community at the same time.  Here is another woman who merits the title “Doctor of the Church” for the theology she provides along with her mentor Mechtildis.  Pope Innocent XVI had an Office of the Hours created in celebration of her life and teachings and she was automatically declared a saint. Other saints would contribute to this river of devotion as it runs through the history of Catholicism probably the best-known being Margaret Mary.

November 15 St. Albert the Great 1280 Germany

Albert was great in so many ways it is hard to do credit to him –great teacher, great philosopher, great scientist, great Master General, great bishop and great mentor to Thomas Aquinas.  But for me I find his great pluck in the face of the misguided bishop of Paris most delightful of all.  The bishop of Paris was enraged that Thomas Aquinas had written a theological treatise using Aristotelian philosophy. Albert set out for Paris to argue in behalf of his protegee that all true knowledge comes from God regardless of human sources.  The prejudice was enormous as Aristotle was pre-Christian and in Albert’s time the fiercest enemies of Christianity, the Muslims were using Aristotle extensively although even they would not have had the texts if the monks in Ireland had not copied and save them along with other great books of Europe.  Albert’s arguments did not sway the Bishop of Paris and in a huff he set off for the Dominican Monastery to find and burn Aquinas’ work. Albert got there ahead of him and quietly hid Aquinas’ works so the bishop’s search for them was futile.  Thomas’ works would go on to become the backbone of Catholic Theology for centuries afterwards thanks to Albert and his ability to subvert the intentions of the bishop.

Albert is patron of scientists.  He is credited among other things with the discovery of arsenic.  But it seems his humility was not as great as his other works or as profound as that of his pupil, Thomas.  His cause for canonization was frequently delayed until finally Pius IX in 1931 got fed up with the delays and declared him a Doctor of the Church just by passing the process and making him a “saint.” Pope Pius realized that Albert’s vision of the importance of all truth was extremely important to the Church.

November 14  All Carmelite Saints

During November many Religious Orders have a celebration of all the saints of their particular Order.  Today is all Carmelite Saints.  I like to think of the different Orders as different bouquets of flowers in the garden of God who loves diversity. While all share the same attributes (faith, hope, love) we could observe that some display various features more strongly while still being examples of the virtues found in the Gospel.  Benedictines, a very ancient Order (500’s) like the gospel of Matthew show a great structure of order and justice. The day revolves around prayer (scripture) and work.  All the members are treated equally without regard for previous status or wealth.  All quests are treated “as Christ.”

We could say that the Jesuits, the Company of Jesus, founded by the soldier turned saint Ignatius in the 1500’s display something of a soldier’s courage and devotion to being like Jesus during his missionary activities as seen in the gospel of Mark going where he was most needed, ministering in a variety of ways –teaching, preaching, healing, socializing, praying and dying by martyrdom.

Looking at the Dominicans (1200’s) we see ministry in the pursuit of knowledge.  St. Dominic is the patron of astronomers and scientists.  All truth and knowledge lead to God. We find an example of this in Luke’s gospel where he set out to examine all the facts and stories related to Jesus.

The Franciscans and Carmelites display something of the outer reaches of the Lover finding God like the Gospel of John in both the humanity of Jesus and in creation. John’s declaration that God is Love (cf. 1 John) is their overarching preoccupation. Carmelites trace the origins to a group of hermits living on Mt. Carmel in the 1200’s.  The order was revitalized in the 1500’s by the mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross.  Its most recent saints are Therese, co-patron of Evangelization (Missions) and the Carmelite priest Titus Brandsma, who died a martyr in the Dachau Prison camp in 1942.

November 13 St Frances Xavier Cabrini Chicago 1917

Frances belongs to the army of those who are tiny but mighty.  Frances was small and frail physically but had an indominable spirit.  She wanted to become a religious but was rejected because of her poor health so she founded her own order of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.  She added Xavier to her name in honor of St. Francis Xavier Patron of Missionaries. She was born in Italy and  wanted to go to China as a missionary, but the Pope asked her to go to the United States and minister to Italian immigrants.  The cardinal who received her told her to go back home she was not needed. She ignored him.  He tolerated her but gave her no support.  She and her sisters had to sustain themselves.  A favorite story of mine is that of her begging for the orphans. She encountered a wealthy businessman and when she asked him for a donation for the orphans he spit in her face. With calm self-possession she wiped the spittle off, turned her eyes on him and said: “That was for me, now please give me something for my orphans.” Says who that meekness is a sign of weakness!  She had the courage of a battle general.  The wealthy man was deeply moved and honored her request. The sisters and their work flourished.  Ministry to the migrants was needed and will always be needed because so many things tear people’s lives apart and force immigration.

November 12 Pierre Yves Kerakum Texas 1872

Today my special person is not one honored officially by the Church or even by his adopted land, America.  His was a humble priest who became a missionary.  Pierre started adult life by becoming a skilled craftsman.  He was an expert architect, carpenter and stone mason.  He then experienced a call to priesthood and further to religious life with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.  Once ordained he was sent from France to Texas in the United States.  His skills as an architect and carpenter were put to great used in church buildings.  But Pierre’s most remarkable work was as a priest circuit rider.  For years he rode the  border in Texas visiting ranches and administering the Sacraments.  He died alone on the prairie on one of his trips. Pierre was greatly admired by his fellow missionaries for his humble, unpretentious service and the people he served called him “El Santo Padre Pedrito.”  A gifted architect his finest work was the relationship he built with God during his lonely journeys and the relatedness he had to those he served.

November 11 Martin of Tours France 397

It is fitting on Veteran’s Day to also celebrate a saint who was a soldier. One of the most enduring stories from the lives of the saints is that of Martin when he was still a soldier.  He was riding his horse in haste on an assignment when he encountered a beggar in the freezing cold.  He took his Sagum, a very large cloak that kept him warm and served as a blanket at night and cut it in half with his sword.  He gave half to the beggar.  That night he had a vision and the figure in the vision was wearing the other half of his cloak.  “Who are you, he asked?” and the figure replied, “I am Jesus wearing the cloak of Martin the catechumen.”  A catechumen is one who is preparing to become a Catholic.  Martin was baptized and in later life was elected a Bishop against his will.  However, he made a wonderful Bishop and toward the end of his life retired back to the solitude he craved. 

November 10 The Lubeck Martyrs Germany 1943

Like petals on the same flower –a flower of friendship—or the strands of a four-fold  friendship knot Roman Catholic priests – Johannes Prassek, Eduard Müller and Hermann Lange – and the Evangelical-Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink were executed by beheading on 10 November 1943 less than 3 minutes apart from each other at Hamburg’s Holstenglacis Prison.  They had a friendship circle encouraging each other in the face of Hitler’s atrocities and sharing homily notes. In his Palm Sunday sermon, 29 March 1942, Stellbrink said “In the misery of our home city we hear God’s voice.” This was interpreted  by some as Stellbrink meaning God’s judgment upon the city was expressed in the effects of a British air raid on Lübeck the previous night. More than 300 people had been killed. He was arrested and in short order the other three also.  They were tortured in prison.  In their letters they testified to how the prison experience strengthened their friendship –“we are like brothers.”  On November 10 of 1943 they were all beheaded within minutes of each other, and some witnesses testified that their blood ran together as their lives had run together in friendship and mutual encouragement.

There are times when the warmth of heavenly inspired friendship and the purity of lives lived in protest to inhuman atrocities light up the harsh terrain of human cruelty and those who witness this see a remarkable beauty.

November 9 Elizabeth of the Trinity 1906 France

The Body of Christ is like the human body—we are prone to need reminders. We get distracted and sometimes lose our focus. We need reminders of Gospel truths.  The Liturgical Year is designed to give us reminders throughout its cycle but it is  also true that on a larger scale humanity can forget or shift attention to such a degree that we need to be brought back to the Gospel.   Frequently the Holy Spirit does this by selecting some ordinary person to remind us. In the midst of the colonialism of the 1500’s, the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe reminded us that the gospel is for all nationalities and God loves the oppressed.  Margaret Mary reminded us of the goodness of the human body as evidenced by Jesus’ own human heart when the church faced the Albigensian Heresy.  Our Lady of Lourdes reminded us of the healing power of prayer after the massive upheaval of the Enlightenment.

Elizabeth of the Trinity was not a mystic like Margaret Mary or Bernadette.  She had no visions, but her life and her writings bear strong testimony to the basic Gospel truth that God is present within us.  The Father, Son and Spirit take up their abode within us as Jesus promised in the Gospel: “Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” Jn. 14:23.

November 8 Bl John Duns Scotus 1308 Germany

“If there had been no sin would Christ still have become incarnate?” That was the great question this Doctor of the Church, a Celtic Franciscan, posed in his teachings.  He went on to answer his own question “YES!” The incarnation was God’s way of bringing us into the fullness of divine life.  Jesus became human so that we might have participation in the divine.  That was the original design. When sin obstructed that design, it meant that Jesus would descend yet further into self-emptying “even to death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).  In this argument Scotus was proclaiming that we need to see the Incarnation from the viewpoint of love first of all.  It was not plan “B” for God but the original design.  Sin got in the way, but love also conquered that obstacle.  Scotus argued in favor of the notion of Mary’s Immaculate Conception for the same reason –sin is not greater than God.  God exempted Our Lady “because He could.” 

John Scotus stood up to Kings and University officials for these truths. The beauty of the Gospel Revelation gradually unfolds and blossoms in our minds.  Truth is the ultimate intellectual beauty.  Scotus died at the early age of 43.

November 7 Saint Peter Ou  1814 China

“After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.” (Rev. 7:9)

Peter was a married layman who was owner of a large hotel. He took advantage of that to share the faith he had found in Christ with as many people as possible.  When he was arrested for doing so, he continued to hold prayer meetings in prison, to minister to other prisoners and to write to his wife: Be loyal to the Lord, accept his will.

His dying words were: Heaven, heaven, my true home! I see my heavenly Mother and my guardian angel coming to take me home.

He was put to death for his faith but already he had put to death all selfish desires and aspirations, all notions of worldly advantage for Christ’s sake. His death was a beautiful Easter sunrise.

November 6 Blessed Joan Mary de Mallie 1414

In today’s story of a married woman, we have another case of the prejudice against marriage.  By her prayers she healed a young man her own age and they fell in love.  Her grandfather arranged their wedding but died on that day. The legend is that this was a celibate marriage. It seems that only if a marriage was declared to be celibate could either of the married couple be considered holy.  This couple lived the gospel in their care for the poor.  Her husband Robert Barron was taken prisoner during war and Joan had to manage their estate and charitable work alone for a long time.  He managed to escape and to their other charitable works the couple added donations for the release of prisoners.  When Robert died, Joan faced not only the grief of losing him, but also the contempt of his relatives who cast her out leaving her homeless.  She learned the art of herbal medicine and spent many years caring for the sick as a Franciscan Tertiary having been disowned by her own relatives also for embracing poverty.

 While celibacy is a wonderful prophetic gift given to the church, we should recognize that human love –faithful spouses who share the same spirituality is also a work of God.  Joan is not only an example of a loving wife but an example of a martyr for poverty having to suffer contempt and abandonment for spending her wealth on the poor and renouncing personal riches.

November 5 Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg 1945

Bernard as an older priest in Germany during World War II led the life of the solitary prophet.  He spoke out publicly by both preaching and writing against Hitler’s regime.  We honor the few clergy and lay persons who dared to confront the political evil unfolding in their midst.  They were prophets who at the cost of their own lives dared to speak truth to power.  One wonders what would have happened if more Catholics had spoken up –would the lies and atrocities have been prevented?  Why didn’t more people recognize the horrible inhuman treatment of Jewish people? Why didn’t more people recognize the medical atrocities being committed against the ill and elderly?  It is hard to see through the lies when you are promised prosperity, when the slogan of the dictator is to “make Germany great again.”   The need for personal prosperity and national pride often takes precedence over the gospel. Blessed Bernhard is honored as a martyr who gave his life for the truth of proclaiming the evil of a dictator.

November 4 St. Charles Borromeo

Paul indicated that there is a spiritual gift of “administration.” (cf. 1 Cor. 12:28)  We might ask what are the characteristics of this gift.   Certainly vision/perspective is one of them.  The administrator must have a vision of the responsibilities and accountability demanded of the position.  But the administrator also needs a forward vision—an ability to see where the community needs to go, what values have to be established or reestablished. This is especially true in times of crisis.  The Church had reached a state of crisis in the 15^th century.  The corruption in Rome was terrible.  Church officials had lost their way in the quagmire of corruption.  In large measure the scandal was the reason for the Protestant Reformation movements.  When administrators lose their values and vision people look elsewhere for leadership.  Charles Borromeo was born into the ruling families of the Church but by some miracle of grace recognized the problem and the need for reform.  He did not seek the role of administrator/reformer.  It was thrust upon him bringing about an inner crisis, but in the end, he accepted the role.  He was the moving force behind the Council of Trent seeing it finally to completion even though at the time he was not even ordained as a priest.  Shortly thereafter he was ordained and consecrated as a Bishop then sent to Milan where he worked to put the vison of Trent into practice in that sprawling diocese. 

There were times when the strength of his vision and his self-confidence made it hard even impossible for him to listen to and understand other very saintly and worthy persons. Nevertheless, without him the reform of the Church would have been much more difficult.  He was a man of the hour whose spiritual vista held understanding of what had to be accomplished and history proved him correct.

November 3 St. Martin de Porres

Flowers sometimes boom as isolated wonders and sometimes they bloom together in delightful bunches.  That was the case in Lima, Peru in the 1600’s. The city was in a state of chaos as a boom site overrun with Spanish wealth seekers, slave traders and poor dispossessed indigenous people.  There was corruption in politics and in the church. Yet in this chaotic situation God had a garden of delights with four remarkable saints co-existing in simultaneous ministry. St Turibius was sent from Spain to take over the leadership of the church as Archbishop.  He confirmed two saints Martin de Porres and Rose of Lima both of whom became lay Dominicans. Juan Macias who also came from Spain also became a lay Dominican.  The three Dominicans were friends and mutually encouraged one another in care for the poor and needy.  Martin was the child of a Spanish nobleman who refused to marry his mother a freed slave.  When the children she bore had features that closely resembled her own, he abandoned her, Martin and his sister all together.  Martin was ridiculed even within his own Dominican Community as a “mulato.” But he was deeply favored by God. Martin is patron of those of mixed race and of those who care for animals.  He had a great love of animals even the mice who caused trouble in the buildings.

November 2 All Souls Day

When I was a young girl in Catholic School, we would spend this whole day making repeated visits to the chapel to say the requisite prayers which were supposed to be needed to get a soul out of the flames of purgatory.  At present we have put medieval notions behind us. Pope John Paul XXIII has assured us that Purgatory is not a physical place but a state of consciousness.  It is still a good idea to pray for the dying as it is at that time that we enter that state of consciousness and come face to face with true self-knowledge which can be a shock! And because God (and those who have died) are beyond the realm of time our prayers can still be of use as support for the dead.

Pope Francis in his weekly homilies has urged us to take time to pause and remember those who have helped shape and form our faith be they parents, mentors, or friends who are alive or dead. We should remember them in gratitude and celebrate them. For many cultures this is a time to do just that– to revel in those memories, to visit their graves, to take food and drink to celebrate as we would at our tables.  To make sweets—sugar skulls—in honor of how sweet the memories of these loved ones is.  To make decorated home displays of their pictures. Bright gold flowers mark the festivals.  We do not pretend they are still alive in our present condition of life; they are depicted as dead yet still joyful and still loving us.  The Resurrection is the fulfillment of the hopes and beliefs of humanity.

November 1 All Saints

In the beginning, that is the first centuries of the Church a feast of all the martyrs was celebrated in the week after Easter. There were so many martyrs and it seemed appropriate to celebrate their suffering and triumph with the triumph of the Lamb:

After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.”

Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, “Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?” I said to him, “My lord, you are the one who knows.” He said to me, “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress ;–they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Rev. 7:9,10,13

Another tradition arose in the Middle Ages of celebrating all holy persons in the fall.  The Roman persecutions were over, and the church was gaining the insight that it can be more difficult to live for Christ in the face of worldly culture than to die for him. Also, the Church was learning from Celtic cultures the value of honoring all the dead in the fall of the year at harvest time.  The saints are the great harvest of holiness.  It became a custom for each diocese to honor the holy persons who had died during the year.  In our own time the diocesan celebrations are gone but parishes celebrate the Day of the Dead remembering loved ones and the whole Church celebrates the declared Saints while religious orders have days in November when they celebrate all the saints of their orders.  While there is exuberance in celebrating the Multitude without number, there is also value in celebrating one’s own galaxy of saints—the saints who are for you a special source of inspiration.

My Galaxy: Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Catherine of Siena, Oscar Romero, John XXIII, Brigid of Ireland, Duns Scotus, Hildegard of Bingen, Peter Claver, John the Beloved, Patrick, Alphonsus Rodriguez, Ignatius of Loyola, Paul, Francis, Therese, Joan of Arc. 

October 31 All Saints Eve

It seems that what is missing from All Saints Eve is Saints!  We have pumpkins by the millions, ghosts, goblins, skeletons, mummies, witches, cobwebs, wild animals—just about everything imaginable but no saints.  It is a magnificent triumph for commercialism.  Who would want to buy saints costumes anyhow, but ghosts and witches, you bet.  So why is this?  One explanation lies in our adrenal glands.  When we experience fear –more specially a fright–, those glands pump out a huge spurt of adrenaline.  Adrenaline is like the starter of a car it gives you an immediate charge of power –a thrill.  Like junkies looking to get a high, we give ourselves permission to use any means possible on this day to secure that thrill and everything else is pushed aside.

The saints sought something far greater than transient thrills.  It may be best expressed in the Spiritual Song “When the Saints Go Marching In”

Oh, when the Saints go marching in, Oh, when the Saints go marching in,

 I want to be in that number, When the Saints go marching in.

Oh, when the new world is revealed, Oh, when the new world is revealed,

I want to be in that number, When the Saints go marching in.

The celebration of those who have died goes far back in human history and the Church sought to capture some of the beauty of such celebrations with the festival of the saints.  In ancient Celtic times there was a custom in the evening of this day for a big bonfire to be created in the center area of a village meanwhile the fires in all the home hearths were put out.  All night long the community sat around the fire telling stories of loved ones who had died during the year, recounting their contributions to the group.  At dawn everyone took embers from the fire to rekindle their hearths.  The memory of the loved ones celebrated would continue in the home fire all year.

Hopefully the meaning of this eve of the Saints can someday be recaptured, rescued from the madness of adrenaline thrill seeking of the omnipresence of plastic ghosts, goblins, and pumpkins. Or at least decorate the pumpkins with symbols of our special saints to recall their presence and contributions. The saints are after all the great harvest of those grown and matured in Christ.

October 30 St. Alphonsus Rodriguez d. 1617

Alphonsus had a very special ministry of friendship.  He came to it as a broken man.  In his youth he had to give up his own education to manage the family business in Segovia, Spain after the death of his father.  He married and they had three children.  Then his wife and all three children died.  Alphonsus was utterly bereaved.  His business began to fail. He was left with nothing.  He turned to the Jesuits with whom his family had always had strong ties to guide him through the grief. His pain became a spiritual fulcrum pivoting him to a deep prayer life. Finally, he sought to become a Jesuit himself in Valencia, but the community felt he was too old (37) and refused his request until the provincial, convinced of his holiness, said that if they felt he was not qualified to be a priest or even a brother, he could enter as a saint! 

As a Jesuit Brother he was sent to the college of Montesión in Palma on the island of Majorca, off the Spanish coast where he became the door keeper assigned to welcoming guests and doing community errands.  He would never have a priestly ministry, but he had the ministry of friends as he became the soul-friend and counselor of visitors, college students and members of the community for 47 years.  He was 72 when Peter Claver came to the college.  Alphonsus became his friend and mentor helping him discern a calling to the South American missions.  After Alphonsus’ death his journals were found, and the community discovered that Alphonsus had a very rich mystical life which he had kept to himself.  He was canonized in 1888 at the same time as his protégé Peter Claver.  Alphonsus’ gift for listening, befriending and counseling makes him a wonderful patron of spiritual directors and would be soul-friends.

October 29 Narcissus of Jerusalem (d. 216)

It would be very hard to choose what Narcissus bishop of Jerusalem in the second century could be patron of.  It could be bishops.  He presided over a council of bishops which decided that Easter would always be celebrated on Sunday not on whichever weekday the Jewish Passover occurred. It could be the elderly. He lived to be 116 years old! It could be miracle workers. Among other miracles he changed water into oil for the lamps on the Easter Vigil when the supply of oil could not be found. On the other hand, it could be those who suffer false accusations. He was accused of serious wrongdoing by three men. He forgave his accusers and retired quietly only to be brought back as bishop a few years later when the accusers had been proven wrong. Perhaps resilience would be the best: a patron of those whose resilience and miracles testify to the power of Jesus’ Resurrection.

October 28 St. Jude Thaddaeus

In our times tracing ancestry using both DNA and public records such as census documents has become a major enterprise.  History testifies that we would like to be able to trace the identity of St. Jude. Theories of who he was abound from the second century down to our own time.  To further complicate the issue there were two persons with the name Judas among Jesus disciples.  The only thing we know for certain about Judas Thaddaeus (Jude) is that he is not the Judas who betrayed Jesus.  We cannot be certain that he is the author of the letter of Jude because the ability to read and write was scarce in New Testament times and that skill would be especially rare in working men from Galilee.  The names of the Apostles were use by later authors to give authority to their writings.  This was a common practice and may not have been a dishonesty as the writer may have known the apostle and have been able to accurately express his ideas.  Jude is considered the patron of impossible cases.  He might also be considered the patron of those who suffer identity crises or who search for their identity.  What the gospel assures us is that Jude was not the one who betrayed Jesus and that is the identity we all need to strive for—to be faithful to the gift of being Christian and to place that identity above all other claims to our loyalty such as personal gain/fame, family, political party, and nation. 

October 27 St. Abraham the Poor

To a society that has just endured a pandemic with forced isolation, the idea of living in isolation as a hermit is totally revolting.  That is partly due to the great difference in the cultural setting.  Abraham the Poor lived in Egypt in the age of the Desert Fathers which began in the late 200’s and lasted for a few hundred years.  He became a disciple of St. Pachomius the founder of cenobitic monasticism (that is religious who live in small rooms and have some activities in common.  When Pachomius died Abraham became a hermit living for seventeen years in a cave. He died in 372 at the height of the time of the Desert Fathers.

 The Desert Fathers who were protesting the hedonistic society of the Roman Empire remain a great phenomenon in church life.  They testify to the fact that living itself can bear witness to God and God’s claim on our “whole heart and mind, strength and soul.” (cf. Lk 10:28).  Such a witness is its own form of evangelism.  And they serve to remind us that we need antidotes to excessive, and usually frivolous absorption in communication. They show us that there is great delight to be found in silence. Studies of human brains indicate that meditation makes the tissue denser, while density of tissue usually indicates less tendency to depression.  We walk around with ear buds that provide constant music –usually rap or rock– to protect ourselves from silence.  Our fingers twitter instantaneously in response to every twitter we receive. Instagram demands an immediate like. We surf the net for hours every day.  Such obsessive preoccupation deprives us of knowledge of ourselves, of the ability to objectively discern truth.  It deprives us of the ability to value in depth relationships. It deprives us of the rapture of “silent music and sounding solitude.” The Desert Fathers still have much to teach us.

October 26 Blessed José Gregorio Hernández

One of the outstanding features of Jesus public life is his healing ministry.  Each of the gospels tells stories of the healings he performed.   Since early times the church has honored the ministry of physicians.  Blessed José was from a small town in Argentina.  As a youth he thought of becoming a lawyer, but his mother influenced him to become a doctor. Through his studies in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, and New York, he became a renowned bacteriologist.  The healing ministry in turn led him to want to become a healer of souls as a priest.  Before that could be accomplished, he was killed in a car accident in 1919.

Dr. Hernández treated the poor without charging them.  He became known as the doctor of the poor.  Pope Frances said of him: “He is a man of universal service.”  To seek to heal others is to imitate Christ, to become a beacon of hope and a witness to God’s love

October 25 St. Daria wife of Saint Chrysanthus

Today we have a celebration in honor of the rarest saints of all—married persons.  Many legends were created around this third century couple and if they had not been martyred, they would probably not have been canonized. Recent archeology seems to have confirmed that some of the details of the legends were true – that they were young, that they died by suffocation being buried alive together.  Other parts of the legends such as marital celibacy there is no way to prove and most likely were created in light of the prejudice against sexuality.  Given the widespread promiscuity and hedonism that existed in the Roman Empire, Christianity quickly developed a strong adverse attitude to sexual activity, even marital sex.  This has persisted almost to our times. Marriage has been regarded as a “lesser” way of life. There are very few married persons recognized as saints.  John Paul II sought to change that with his Theology of the Body and honoring of married couples like the parents of St. Therese. It is highly likely that Daria and Chrysanthus fell in love in their late teens/early twenties, both were strongly committed Christians who refused to deny their faith during persecution and were killed together.

October 24 Arethas the Great Martyr and His Fellow Martyrs

I have never done so, but I feel certain that if one made a list of all the nations of the world it would be possible to document Christian martyrs in each of them.  In this case the Arabic country is present day Yemen.  In the 6^th century it was governed by a Tribal system.  The city of Najran was a Christian city.  A convert to Judaism Dhu Nuwas became ruler of the local tribe and in accordance with the hatred which many Jews bore Christians he determined to rid the city of Christianity.  Arethas was a councilman the equivalent of major.  He refused to give up his faith.  The men of the city stood with him, and they were put to death.  Dhu Nuwas then sought to get the women to give up their faith and they suffered even worse torture.  Hundreds of them along with their children held fast to their faith and were put to death.  The Byzantium King Elesbaan of Ethiopia (honored himself as a saint) heard of the disaster and liberated the city from Dhu Nuwas.  He constructed churches honoring the martyrs which became places of pilgrimage for many decades.  They are honored as a whole city willing to die for their Christian faith. Belief in the Resurrection allows Christians of every age and time to endure all kinds of torture and even death as they cling to Christ. We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song as Augustine said.

October 23 Saint Elfleda

St. Elfleda is a patroness for 98% of Catholics—the 98% who will never be known in the public eye of their time, who are not media personalities and do not merit special attention—most of us.  The only thing we know about her is that she lived the life of a prayerful recluse, and she was a friend of Bishop Dunstan.  As Christians we are each called to be witnesses to Christ.  Prayer is a witness to the Lamb of God who is worthy to receive all praise and honor (cf. Rev 5:12).  We often think of prayer as asking but it is much more.  It is a witness to the worthiness of God to receive our whole attention, to receive all the devotion of which we are capable.  When we attend the liturgy, the Mass, it is not for what we can get out of it but for what we can give.  We give the witness of faith to others strengthening their faith, we give ourselves as we unite to Christ and his sacrifice.  It is in giving (not in getting) that we receive.  It is in giving of ourselves that our lives find their true meaning.  Bishop Dunstan cherished Elfleda because she so well understood that giving.  Hopefully our friends find in us this devotion to giving the witness of our lives and our prayer.

Givingness reflects the divine like water poured out reflects the light.

October 22 St. Philip of Heraclea

In the story of St. Philip we have all the drama of what it mean to be a Christian in early Christianity.  Christians lived quietly and their worship spaces were private homes, but two things stood out in their behavior.  They would not make sacrifices to Roman gods and they constantly bore witness to Christ.  Persecutions came in waves depending upon the mind-set of the emperor and local officials.  In the culture of Rome, the common belief was that it was the pantheon of gods they worshiped who kept the empire functioning well.  Thus, for anyone to refuse to worship the Gods was to wish ill on the empire, in modern terms it was to go against nationalism.  Philip drew attention to himself and his priests and a deacon because his fervent preaching converted a soldier. For anyone to become a Christian was to live under the threat of death, for a soldier it was a sure sentence as his fellow soldiers would have noticed immediately that he was not sacrificing to the Roman gods.  The authorities began a campaign to silence Philip and his companions.  His home was sealed up.  So he held services outside.  He was commanded to surrender the books of scripture they possessed, and he would not.  He was tortured and imprisoned.  Finally, his badly beaten body had to be carried to the arena where he and the others were burned alive.  Joy and belief in the Resurrection were the outstanding characteristics of Christians and They sang joyful hymns for as long as they were able.  The blood of martyrs is the seed of faith as others witness their courage and joy then and now.

October 21 Blessed Rosario Livatino

Like candy which comes in all shapes and sizes, saints come in all ages and walks of life. Blessed Rosario was a magistrate judge.  It has become a custom during October for each diocese to celebrate a “Red Mass,” a liturgy offered for those who are engaged in juridical processes.  Blessed Rosario beautifully described the vocation of a magistrate:

The magistrate’s task is to decide. Now, to decide is to choose and, at times, between numerous things or paths or solutions. And choosing is one of the most difficult things man is called to do. And it is precisely in this to choose to decide, to decide to order, that the believing magistrate can find a relationship with God. A direct relationship, because doing justice is self-realization, it is prayer, it is self-dedication to God. An indirect relationship through love for the judged person.

He gave his life for this love and justice.  He was chased down and shot to death by mafia figures because of his pursuit of justice in the face of their corruption. The virtues of justice and love flower in grace despite deserts of hate and violence.

October 20 Blessed Marie-Therese de Soubiran La Louvier

While all Christians are called to put on Christ, to live the Paschal Mystery in our own lives, it seems that some saints are destined to live Jesus’ rejection more intensely.  Marie-Therese founded a community of women dedicated to helping other women and it was very successful.  A new member of the community was accepted shortly before Marie-Therese had to be away in another city in France for a few months.  The new member took over the community and fabricated charges of financial misconduct against Marie-Therese whom she expelled from the community.

With everything taken away from her Marie-Therese wrote: “Now, in the oblivion, inactivity, the most complete nullity, I shall be passionate about Our Lord Himself.”  She supported herself for a few years doing embroidery then another women’s community accepted her.  But the rejection took it’s toll.  Her health failed and she died in her fifties.  The woman who had taken over her community was found to be a fraud herself when her husband came looking for her.  Marie’s community cleared the name and memory of their foundress who had lived out the mystery of Christ’s rejection to the fullest. Her cruel rejection became the occasion of a beautiful blossoming. She was beatified on October 20 with a feastday on June 7. 

October 19, St. Isaac Jogues

I never realized until I read The Rim of Christendom just how many Jesuit martyrs of the Americas there are.  A Jesuit was martyred at Jamestown before it became a colony and there are so many others.  Isaac Jogues and his companions ministering to the Natives of the Northeast are just the most well-known. The parallels between Isaac and Jesus in his passion are amazing.  He was one who went all the way in “conforming to Jesus crucified!”  Like Jesus he knew what lay ahead for him, yet he went forward.  He had already been horribly tortured when he chose to return to those same Natives in peace only to be captured and tortured to death by another tribe.  He was stripped named like Jesus and his body was slashed like Jesus in the scourging before the death blow was dealt.  Isaac did not blame the Natives who tortured him.  He understood that they were defending their culture from those they perceived as invaders.  He hoped by kindness and love to show them the truth of the gospel thus he would return to those who tortured him and finally the one who killed him asked for baptism and took his name.  He lived Ignatius Suscipe:

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess,

 Thou hast given me: I surrender it all to Thee to be disposed of

according to Thy will. Give me only Thy love and Thy grace; with

these I will be rich enough and will desire nothing more. Amen.

He lived Jesus paschal mystery to the fullest and now we honor him in the Resurrection of Jesus.

October 18 St. Luke

“Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events

 that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were

eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have

handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence

for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the

certainty of the teachings you have received.” Lk 1:1-4

Luke is a master word-painter, a patron of writers.  The themes that stand out in his gospel are like the colors of an artist’s pallet or the masterful strokes such an artist uses to depict a scene.  Prayer, the Holy Spirit, and Healing are some of those themes.  Luke makes the second largest contribution to the New Testament with two books after the many letters of Paul to whom he was a special companion in spreading the gospel. Unique to Luke are scenes like the Annunciation, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the meal in the home of Martha and Mary. Luke was not trying to outdo other Christian writers but to complement their work.  We can be grateful that he too “decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus”.

Recently, I saw a wonderful sculpture by a Native American Artist in which she brings many waves into a wholeness in a very creative way.  Luke does that with his writing giving us a beautiful whole.

October 4 Empowerment

Francis of Assisi was not a scholastic, he was not a priest, still he is recognized the world over as having a spiritual ministry –patron of the Environment.  His empowerment for this spiritual ministry comes from his intimacy with God and creation—with the sun, the moon, the stars, the elements of fire, water and earth also with animals.  It was an intimacy that led him to declare them brothers, sisters and mother as he experienced them in the presence of and gratitude to his Lord. 

The empowerment of John the beloved, author of the Gospel of John, also came from intimacy—intimacy with the Creation Stories of the Hebrew Testament and intimacy with Jesus on whose chest he rested in close friendship.  Because of this empowerment of intimacy, he may be considered the evangelist of creation.

By baptism we are made prophets. May we all also in imitation of John and Francis, be considered evangelists of creation as our Holy Father, Pope Francis asks us in Laudato Si which is the most researched document ever produced by the Vatican.  It was researched not just by churchmen and women but by teams of climatologists worldwide.  The field of science is very volatile and there are constant discoveries and corrections of previous determinations as we learn how the earth has adapted to extremes in temperature variations.  We shall need all the knowledge we can acquire to deal with a changing environment. What Pope Francis has asked of us is to honor the findings of science going forward. This has always been a Catholic principle –that science is to be honored. Faith does not despise knowledge. We can learn from ice-core samples, from gases in the atmosphere, from temperatures in the ocean, from the wind, from fire, from species going extinct.  Most of all Pope Francis asks of us a conversion of attitude, a change –from overuse and abuse to partnership with creation.  Can we regard creation as Francis did as our brother and sister and mother?

October 3 Friendship

The gospel of John is the gospel of friendship.  In this gospel Jesus calls us “friends.” John tells the story of Jesus friendship with Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus.  He tells us how he rested on Jesus’ chest during their last meal together and how Jesus tenderly addressed Mary of Magdala by name on the morning of his resurrection.  How does all of this relate to the creation stories?  Where in them do we find the concept that John is echoing?  It is in Genesis 1:27: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God, he created them; male and female he created them.”

God is a communing of love and from that it follows that all affection which is created in the divine image –spousal love, parental love, friendship, siblings–is destined to participate in such communing. Recently Cardinal Schönborn speaking of the theology of Thomas Aquinas expressed this very beautifully:

More specifically: thus it is possible to build up a friendship on the basis of this present of God’s communication, fundari amicitiam (“build up a friendship”). If there is a phrase that sums up the entire Summa Theologica, it is in my opinion fundari amicitiam. God wishes to build up a friendship with his creation. The whole way of human Christian life has its deepest sense in the building of friendship with God. And the entire ethics of communication between men is summed up in this idea of building friendship.

You will remember, dear students, how important the prologue to the second book of the Summa is. It is there that man’s whole path is presented under the aspect of man’s likeness to God. Man is made in God’s image and he is therefore called upon to realize this image by moving freely towards his goal. In the sense of this prologue we can specifically say that the whole sense of human life is in realizing this image through friendship with God. And Thomas immediately shows that this building of friendship has a very concrete place: community and hence friendship with Jesus Christ. In him, God has fully communicated with us humans. Thus it is a matter of building friendship with God in a concrete way, as friendship with Jesus Christ, who came to the world to make us his friends. 

So, the questions we have to ask ourselves is where are we in our friendship with God? Do we behave like friends to each other, even to those who disagree with us?  Do we act as friends to the rest of God’s creation?

October 2 Eventide

There is a huge contrast between two biblical eventides. One is in Genesis:

When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden at the evening time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden”. Gen 3:8

And one in John 20

“On the evening of that first day of the week when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Jn 20:19

It is evening in both stories.  Adam and Eve are hiding in fear and shame.  The disciples are hiding in fear of the Romans and shame over their desertion of Jesus.  But while Adam and Eve are rebuked in the Genesis story, in the gospels Jesus greets the disciples with “Shalom”!  The greeting conveys much more than peace.  It means fullness of life, prosperity, health, new beginning.  There is no mention of their guilt.  In other words, Eden has been reversed or superseded by a new order.  It is the new creation.

Darkness is gathering in both stories but in the gospel, the light of the Resurrection overcomes all.  When Jesus had stood in the temple and cried out that he is the Light of the World, it was in the midst of the celebrations associated with the feast of Tabernacles.  There was a water ritual and a ritual of lights.  On the first day of the festival for the ritual of lights, huge candelabra bearing bowls of oil were lighted setting the Court of Women ablaze with flames that could be seen even from a long distance outside the city.  The light was reminiscent of the light of glory by which the presence of God had been recognized in the Tent of Meeting and at the dedication of the Temple.   During the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus was declaring that he is the true manifestation of the light and glory of God.  Now his Resurrected presence cannot be touched by darkness.

Paul prays for us that: ”you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like stars in the firmament offering the word of God.” Phil 2:15.  Seeing the evening stars should remind us that we need to be stars in the darkness of the world as we proclaim the Resurrection.

October 1 Innocence

Humankind in their original state coming from the hand of God had a natural innocence. “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.”  Gen 2:25.

In the story of the crucifixion Jesus is stripped of his garments.  Stripping of all the criminal’s garments was a way of further shaming and humiliating him.  Thus, a very naked Jesus is crucified and laid in the tomb with only the grave cloths to cover his body.  On Easter morning Peter and John ran to the tomb. John arrived first and immediately noted the burial cloths and how they were placed. “When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.” Jn 20: 6-9

It was the sight of the burial cloths that moved John to believe in the Resurrection. It is unlikely that any grave robber would attempt to remove the cloths which would have been stuck to the wounds of Jesus by drying blood and oozing lymph. The cloths lay as if the body had passed through them then deliberately laid the face cloth aside.  The Resurrected body of Jesus restored the naked innocence of the Garden of Eden before the fall.  John makes the connection. The burial cloths are an indication of the restoration of Creation.  Jesus had said that even Solomon in all his royal robes was not as beautiful as the flowers (cf. Mt. 6:29).  John Chrysostom in his commentary on the gospels says: “And Solomon was exceeded by the flowers not once only, or twice, but throughout his whole reign; and this is what He says, in all his glory; for no one day was he arrayed as are the flowers.” Now the burial cloths reveal that the body of the Resurrected Jesus does not need clothing to be glorious, to exceed the glory and beauty of nature.  He is the new Adam, more glorious and innocent than the first.

In an age when our focus is upon pollution –air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, it is easy to overlook the pollution of innocence.  Pornography and sex-trafficking are sadly, major global industries.  The internet has greatly enabled them.  Early Christianity faced the same kind of world enabled by the Roman Empire. Gradually the Joy of Christians became a beacon showing others that there are joys which exceed fleshly pleasures and which treasure innocence.  While doing everything we can to disenable pornography and sex-trafficking, it is just as important to be beacons of joy, to exhibit the joy of the resurrection to the world.  The ministry of Resurrection Joy is very attractive.

September 30 Life

What was from the beginning,

                        what we have heard,

                        what we have seen with our eyes,

                        what we looked upon

                        and touched with our hands

                        concerns the Word of life–

for the life was made visible;

                         we have seen it and testify to it

                        and proclaim to you the eternal life

                        that was with the Father and was made visible to us. 1 Jn 1:1-2.

John the Beloved writes of “life” over forty times in his gospel. Seventeen of those references are to “eternal” life. “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation but has passed from death to life.” Jn 5:24.

Lastly John the Beloved tells us that he has written his gospel so that we may believe in Christ and our belief will bring us life: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have lifein his name.” Jn 20:30.

In our culture we are obsessed with “rights”—the right to free speech, the right to to carry guns, the right to prosperity etc.   We determine our lives by our rights.  All of us are guilty of this no matter which political party we belong to. Thus, we condemn each other but are both guilty of the same sin. John was obsessed with life, with the Gospel of Life.  We are obsessed with rights. So great is this obsession that we cannot see things from the perspective of LIFE.

My right to free speech is not greater than the words of Life in the gospel

A teenagers’ right to own an automatic rifle is not greater than others’

   right to life

My right to prosperity is not greater than the migrant’s need for decent living

My right to profit is not greater than the environment’s right to life

My right to my body is not greater than a child’s right to life

No one’s right to pleasure is greater than a child’s right to innocence

The Caucasian right to write history is not greater than the right of the indigenous

    peoples to the truth of their experiences at our hands

The promise of personal determination (Eden) is not greater than the Easter

   garden’s gift of eternal life

The right to “personal determination” is not greater than the gift of Living Water

   and the gift of participation in the Divine Three which comes with Living Bread

     shared in community.

September 29 Breath

In the story of the first creation “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Gen 2:7 While a beating heart and circulating blood are internal signs of life, breathing is the most visible sign we have that someone is alive.  In Genesis God is pictured as breathing and blowing that breath into us giving us life. In the story of the new creation the risen Jesus breathes new life into the disciples on Easter evening: “And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.” Jn 20:22. For John this is the equivalent of God first breathing life into man. 

The Spirit is God’s own breath shared with us.  And there is profound sharing going on in every breath we take.  The molecules in that breath have been breathed by millions before us and will be shared with millions after us. The air we breathe links us profoundly. The air we inhale is both the Spirit and the presence of humankind who have breathed that air before us. This should motivate us to keep the air clean.  Tragically, in our time we have multiplied ways of polluting the air making it the cause of diseases for thousands. To care for the earth is also to care for the atmosphere we all breathe.

September 28 Daybreak

For John the Beloved, each day of Jesus’ ministry was a struggle with the powers of darkness trying to gather around Jesus as it gathered on each of the days of creation. The last mention of darkness in the gospel of John the Beloved is in the last chapter when most of disciples who first met Jesus in the opening of the gospel go fishing with Peter at night.  That was common practice because the fish can’t see the men and the nets above them at night and are more easily caught but sometimes even that trick does not bring in the fish.  The Beloved tells us that “day was breaking” –a very significant moment for him–when they saw the stranger on the shore.    By this time John the Beloved was so conditioned by the juxta-position and co-penetration of the divine with the natural that he immediately recognizes Jesus in the stranger.  Possibly a young John had lost his own father at an early age and hence his attachment to Andrew and Peter then ultimately to Jesus.  He recognizes Jesus more quickly than the others.

It is daybreak in the new Garden of Eden. God is working (a theme of this gospel) as God had worked at creation in Genesis.  Man is invited to work as the first Adam had been assigned to help with creation.  As in the first garden, there is an abundance of food, Jesus has already prepared fish for them, and they catch another multitude. The story is echoing Genesis as much as it is echoing the event of the multiplication of the loaves and fish earlier in the gospel.

In the scheme of his gospel, it is as it were the “eighth” day, the new day, the dawning of the eternal resurrection day because night will never again dim the Light of the world.  It is eternal day for those who believe.  “…through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jn 1:4-5

In our time we are witnessing a special kind of daybreak, one being ushered in by immense tragedy: fires, floods, heat waves, famines which promised to rise to a scale far exceeding anything in the last million years at least.  We have neglected to listen to the prophets –in this case the environmental scientists.  We shall need to learn to respect and cherish creation as it is unfettered from the marvelous rhythms that had been worked out for our benefit for millennia.  Chaos is ahead and we need to keep the Resurrection in mind.  God destined all of creation to participate in the resurrection. We and all of nature on our earth have to make our way through the chaos and suffering we had brought about to that promised resurrection.

September 27 A Garden

John the Beloved wanted to make sure we knew that Jesus was buried in a garden: “They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom.  Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried” (cf. Jn 19:40-1). John is situating the new creation in a garden just like the first creation which took place in the garden of Eden: “Then God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.” Gen. 2:28.

John the Beloved mentions the “garden” three times in the passion narrative which begins and ends in the same physical area.  Jesus and the disciples go out to the garden (cf. Jn. 18:1); Peter is accused of being in the garden with him (cf. Jn. 18:26) and Jesus is buried in the garden near where he was crucified (cf. Jn 19:41).   The other evangelists refer to the hillside with olive groves on it adjacent to the city as “the Mount of Olives.”  For John Jesus’ passion and resurrection are the epicenter of the new creation and it is a garden as Eden was a garden.

The activity of gardening creates space in our minds and hearts for the paschal mystery.  Teaching gardening helps students to both connect to the earth and to connect to their faith. Gardening activities in education at all levels is beneficial in many ways: science, connectivity with the environment, collaboration with others, the value of water, enhancement of faith.  Gardening put us in touch with most of the environmental issues of our time: depletion of the soil, lack of water, loss of pollinators, while at the same time opening us up to the generative, creative power of God. God is a gardener, and the first task humankind was given was gardening.

September 26 The First Creation

John’s account of Jesus’s passion is for him a parallel genesis story.  He is the telling of the first chapters of Genesis over again for the new creation.  He tells us that it begins in a garden as did the first creation: “When he had said this, Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered” Jn 18:1. When the soldiers arrive with the temple officials Jesus speaks to them:

“Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him, went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?”  They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.”  He said to them, “I AM.” Judas his betrayer was also with them.  When he said to them, “I AM,” they turned away and fell to the ground” Jn 18:3-6.

Those who seek Jesus for selfish reasons as Judas did belong to the first creation who return to the dust from which they have been taken. They “fall to the ground.”  This is John the Beloved’s way of identifying them with Adam who falls back into ground. John uses the same words here as Genesis uses for man returning to the ground.  God had told Adam (the one taken from the earth as his name means) that because of his disobedience he would return to the earth: “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are soil, and to soil you shall return.” Gen 3:19

However, in the new creation, in the Resurrection, humans and the soil from which they are taken are subsumed into the glory of God.  All creation is destined to participate in the Resurrection, the new creation. Thus, the story resumes with the same question: “Whom do you seek?” And Jesus identifies himself again as the I AM.

John the beloved wants us to ponder if we still belong to the first creation with Judas who seeks personal profit, or do we seek the new creation of the Resurrection? To do that we must embrace all that happens in the garden—the passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus.  John is placing before us the choice by having Jesus ask the question twice “Whom do you seek?”  There is a profound choice here.  Will we continue to choose to view creation from the point of the sinful perspective of the Genesis stories –a view in which we dominate, subjugate and exploit creation or are we willing to adopt the perspective of the resurrection—a view which regards all of creation as sacred and destined to share resurrection with us.

September 25 Living Bread

Every month the body of a fertile woman stores nutrients in her womb in anticipation of the possible arrival of an embryo.  Nourishment is ready. In the creation story plants and animals are provided first so that humans will have nourishment: God said “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food…” Gen 1:29

In the new creation also, Jesus has provided the kind of nourishment we need. We are as it were in the womb of Christ awaiting birth into the fullness of resurrected life.  The food we receive is living with that life.  To borrow from St. John Chrysostom, Christ feeds us with his body and blood as a mother feeds her unborn child. The food is living.

“For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Jn 6:55-58.

There is a progression from the living Father to Jesus who shares the Father’s life to those who feed on Jesus and live because of him.  Jesus insists on the livingness to indicate that this is not a mere analogy i.e. eating this bread is like intellectual and emotional feasting on how God cares for us.  No, this is “living bread.” It is not an analogy.  It is physical participation in life. The new creation builds upon the first creation in that we consume food physically but instead of this food being transformed into our bodies, we are transformed into the life of the Risen Christ if we allow it.  Death will be birth.

Starvation is a major cause of death across all species. The problem is not a lack of food sources but of how those sources are managed. In the early church fasting was encouraged, likewise abstinence from meat on Fridays in order for everyone to stand in solidarity with the poor who did not have enough to eat.  It is only when you have felt hunger from food and known silence in the absence from entertainment that you quietly begin to grasp what it means to be hungry, to lack nourishment.  Fasting is an excellent way to embrace the travail of creation and in that hunger and silence we remember that every few seconds a child somewhere in the world dies of starvation.

September 24 The Shepherd

The most prevalent image of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is that of Shepherd.  God is even addressed as Shepherd: “O Shepherd of Israel, listen, and guide  the flock of Joseph” Ps 80:2. Unlike Matthew and Luke, John the Beloved chooses not to present a physical genealogy of Jesus but a symbolic and mystical one and it comes in the image of the shepherd–the most beloved image of God in the Hebrew testament.  Adam was a “shepherd” to the other animals giving each a name, Abraham was a shepherd, Jacob was a master shepherd who lived for a time in the area of Samaria, Moses was a shepherd. David was a shepherd. Amos was a shepherd. John the Beloved is showing us that Jesus was “the” Shepherd of Israel in the line of all these others and greater than them as God.

Lineage and racism based upon lineage, is a major cause of the abuses people heap upon other people and even on the environment.  It escapes us that we are all—despite our racial characteristics–evolutionary products of apes. God chose to create us in this manner.  No one group is superior to any other.  And all equally bear the responsibility given to Adam to care for the garden.  The differences that should make us envious is that some of us, indigenous peoples in particular, have usually been the ones who have developed the best environmental techniques for caring for the earth.  They are shepherds after the heart of The Shepherd.

God self-identifies through the scriptures with those who care for animals.  Of course, that includes us as we are part of the animal kingdom, but we really do not usually think of ourselves that way. Rather we are the superior ones with the right of naming other species.  Psychological studies have shown that those who abuse/neglect animals are the ones most likely to abuse and neglect fellow human beings.  We are far more profoundly connected to all animal species than we ever give due consideration.  “My sheep know me” Jesus says. Perhaps we need to explore what all of God’s creatures have to tell us about what they “know.”

September 23 The Vine

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes

away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone

that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already

pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.  Remain in me,

 as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own

unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you

 remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever

remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without

me you can do nothing.” Jn 15:5,6

 The Jewish people regarded Israel as a vine which God had planted in the first Creation.  That vine had become diseased as the Hebrew Testament testifies. In the new creation, God planted a new vine—the person of Jesus! He declares that he is The Vine, the true Vine! When the fruit of this vine was crushed it gave us the wine of the Eucharist. On the night of his supper the disciples drank the blood of this vine to be crushed for our offenses (cf. Isa 53:5). When you drink the wine you honor his sufferings and because he has made you one of his branches, you must now bear fruit—fruit willing to be crushed like he was, willing to be made wine for others. When a Jewish bride drank the cup of wine provided by the groom at the betrothal meal, the covenant between them was sealed.  At the Eucharist our covenant is sealed in Jesus’ blood.

The household is the first place for celebrations with the wine of gladness.  It is usually also the first place that violence and abuse is experienced. Animals, children, the elderly, and spouses discover that this primal place is also the place where abuse first and most frequently is carried out. Abuse has a pattern going from domestic to global.  50 million people worldwide according to the UN are held in slavery.  We have to ask what happened to the household into which they were born?  Each of us has a responsibility to discern and break that pattern wherever we find it.

September 22 Life Blood

Blood was the symbol of life in Jewish culture and this element of blood had to be removed for the sacrifice of an animal. Four times in three verses Jesus insists on the importance of drinking his blood.  John the Beloved saw this as a necessary component of the Eucharistic meal because it acknowledges the sacrifice of the Lamb whose blood was drained from his body as was Jesus’ life blood.  Likewise, Paul and the other evangelists all insist that the drinking of the wine transformed into Jesus’ blood is essential to the Eucharistic sacrifice.  John the Beloved also notes how he saw the last drops of blood being shed by this Paschal Lamb:

But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead,

they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his

side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.  An

eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that

he is speaking the truth, so that you also may (come to) believe.

For this happened so that the scripture passage might be fulfilled:

“Not a bone of it will be broken” Jn 19:33-36.

Bloodshed is such a common occurrence in modern culture that we have grown immune to it.  If we perceive any supposed threat to anything about ourselves—our ideas, our political stance, our driving mannerisms, our “right to spout off anything we care to say, our “right” to do and have as we please, we immediately take it upon ourselves to perpetrate violence upon the one who in our minds poses such a threat.  We are piteous creatures trapped by our needs to defend.  We are like caged animals but caged by our fears, our need to defend.  It is not freedom we defend because only truth can make us free. And when we are free, we are willing to lay down our life blood as did the lamb. We only become like the Lamb whose blood we consume when it is others not ourselves or our political cronies we strongly defend.

September 21 The Truth

The three letters which make up the word “truth” in Hebrew are also the first letters of the last three words in the second account of creation in Genesis.  God is truth because there is complete agreement between what God says and what God does (the work of creation).

Throughout his gospel John the Beloved constantly refers to truth beginning with the prologue,” and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”Jn. 1:14. Jesus frequently insisted with the Pharisees that he spoke the truth—his words and his deeds were in complete agreement. At the last Supper Jesus declared: “I AM the Way and the Truth and the Life.” Jn 14:6.

One of the saddest things happening in our time is the denial of the scientific evidence of climate change—the refusal to face the truth. We have a million ways to lie to ourselves and others when truth is inconvenient.  We need to pray every day for the courage to face and accept truth no matter its cost.  When something disagrees with our basic mindset, we tend to harden our attitude toward what is said, to admit that this might be right would be to admit that we have been wrong and that is unacceptable to our self-image.  To walk humbly with our God is to live with an attitude that we are possibly in need of changing our mind, of having an ongoing conversion to truth which none of us ever possesses fully.  Science at its best is a search for truth and as such is not contrary to the gospel. 

September 20 The Way

We encounter the word “way” in a verse from the second creation story in Genesis, a story which held special significance for John the Beloved: When EL (God) expelled the man, God settled him east of the garden of Eden; and God stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life (cf. Gen 3:24). It is not any sword the angel uses to defend the way to the tree of life but a “revolving” one indicating that there was no way from any side for anyone to approach the tree of life.  All access had been cut off.  John is the only evangelist who has Jesus self-identify as “the Way.” But for the Jews who first believed in Jesus calling him “The Way” gave them also a name for themselves— “followers of the Way” which became the first name they would give to themselves:

Now Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples

of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to

the synagogues in Damascus, that, if he should find any men or

women who belonged to the Way, he might bring them back

to Jerusalem in chains Acts 9:1-2.

The way back to the Tree of Life, to the promises of Eden is in a certain sense what humankind has been trying to achieve for all our history.  We search for meaning, for happiness, for an understanding of our potential and our destiny.  Jesus assures us he is The Way.  But to go back into the garden also implies resuming a role of stewards, a role of caring for the garden, of cherishing it as it comes from the hand of the creator.  We need to be converted back to such an attitude as we seek Jesus, the Way. The term used by Jesus in the gospel “Repent” means to convert, to turn to his way.  We know we are on that way when we cherish creation and work to preserve it for all of humankind, when we care for animals and all our fellow human beings to include the poor, the migrant, those of other races, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned.

September 19 Hovering

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters” Gen. 1:1-2. Actually, the wind is pictured as “hovering” over the water.   In the story of the storm on the lake Jesus is the incarnate Word of God upon whom the Spirit remains and is now walking just above (hovering) over the waters of creation bringing it to a new birth.  For John the Beloved, this was something much more momentous than the Passover of Moses.  In that Passover story a strong wind had temporarily blown over the Reed Sea providing a dry path for the fleeing Israelites allowing them to escape slavery.  Now walking (hovering) over the water is the “I AM” Ex. 3 :14 –God’s self-description to Moses (John uses this title of God from the Hebrew scriptures to express what Jesus says as he presents himself on the water).  The “I AM” is present, is enfeshed in Jesus, upon whom the Spirit remains.  All Three persons are present.

Hovering as when a mother bird hovers over her nest is a profound activity.  It requires a certain stillness, an attentiveness which enables life to come to birth.

We are asked in prayer to quietly hover over the waters of our lives, to gently discern the creative activity of God being born there and to affirm it. Praying is a time for each of us to experience our own rebirth as a new creation.

September 18 A Storm

It was late at night, and the disciples were a few miles out on the Sea when a violent springtime storm broke.  This became quite literally a life-or-death situation.  Then in the midst of the storm, they saw Jesus coming toward them walking on the water.

This was a Genesis experience, a creation experience, and a Trinitarian one.  The darkness, the water and the wind were like the chaos in the opening chapter of Genesis.   The immense power of the Creator God is there in the storm. John would have been familiar with the story of Job and how God spoke to Job out of the storm (cf. Job 40:6).  Now in this storm on the lake God in the person of Jesus is speaking to them out of a storm.  In the book Job what follows is one of the most beautiful and powerful stories of creation in scripture.  God speaks to Job with a series of questions: Have you walked on the wings of the wind?  Have you measured the depth of the ocean? Have you visited the Pleiades?  The wonders of creation are listed.

On the lake Christ was present walking on the water and the Spirit was in the wind hovering over the water. In the mind of John the Beloved, this was a creation experience. 

The Book of Job is an expose of how to find God and listen to God in the wonders of nature.  In its climax God speaks out of the storm (cf. Job 40:6).  God’s presence in the storm is seen as evidence of God’s creative power.  It was in this storm on the sea, as the waters of the abyss threatened, that John the beloved had his foundational experience, an experience which for him revealed the God of creation, and God’s Word (in whom all things were made) in-fleshed in Jesus upon whom the Spirit, the creative energy of God, remains always. It is a Trinitarian experience of nature, and it is the CenterPoint of the Gospel of John the Beloved. 

In our time storms are becoming more frequent.  We need to ask ourselves what these storms have to say to us about our role in failing to care for creation.  The storm is a moment of grace in that it awakens in us a sense of danger, of urgency. Storms call to us to reflect on how our behavior has changed global weather patterns.  They are prophets of things to come.  The storm signals power and creativity even while it is destructive.  Out of loss something new can be achieved but only if we recognize what needs to change. 

September 17 Naming

In the second creation story in Genesis, the man gave names to all the tame animals, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals (cf. Gen 2:20).  Adam was a “shepherd” to the other animals giving each a name.

 In John’s gospel there is a naming quality about Jesus whom John sees as the new Adam:

Jesus addresses Simon by name when he first meets him (cf .Jn 1:42); John is the only one who gives us the story of Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter.

Jesus addresses Lazarus by name when he calls him out of the tomb (cf. Jn 11:43); the story of the friendship of Jesus with Mary, Martha and Lazarus is found only in John’s gospel. Jesus addresses Philip by name during the supper on the night he was arrested (cf. Jn 14:9). Jesus addresses Mary by name on the morning of his resurrection and it is how he pronounces her name that causes her to recognize him (cf. Jn 20:16).

Jesus addresses Simon by name at the seashore the morning the risen Jesus prepares breakfast for his disciples (cf. Jn 21:17). That threefold calling by name echoes the calling of Samuel (cf. 1 Sam 3).  The scene at the seashore was a solemn moment when Simon is confirmed in his role as leader and shepherd.

Naming is done to facilitate relationships, to distinguish species.  Children are taught names to facilitate reading.  For us to be able to read the signs of the times we need to be able to name the issues, the challenges to care for creation.  We cannot in conscience just pass that task off to “activists.”  We each need to be able to name the problems that face our environment.  Naming them is the first step in recognizing them and finding remedies.

September 16 Rivers

John uses the image of water profusely in his gospel: Water and the Spirit, living water, flowing water, springs of water, rivers, walking on water, water and blood.  The rivers of water are actually about us. On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him.’” He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Jn 7:37-39

In the creation stories the spring wells up to become a stream and from the stream is formed the four great rivers flowing out to the whole earth (cf. Gen 1:10-14). Living (moving) water has plentiful oxygen and it gives off negative ions into the atmosphere creating sensations of pleasantness for our minds and bodies. The rivers of living water the Spirit unleashes within us are rivers of sweetness, of confidence, of inspiration, of consolation, of refreshment and of power.  In this experience we are reborn, reshaped.  This is what it means to be born again of water and the Spirit (cf. Jn 3:5). John is saying that when we are Spirit-filled, life flows out from us to the rest of humankind like the great rivers at the beginning of creation.

In our time great rivers all around the world are going dry.  This is one of the effects of climate change.  We need to support every effort to slow the effects, to mitigate the effects of climate change.  Human lives are intimately bound up with the life of rivers –when they wane so does human life.  There is an intimate connection between the flow of human communication and the flow of water.  The manufacturing of the chips that make our communication devices work requires huge amounts of water.  This must be considered when locating these facilities and many of them need to be moved to protect water.  When we use our computers and cell phones we need to think “WATER!” And we must be careful that what flows from us is clear and honest, not contaminated with the poison of bullying, blaming, unnecessary criticism, not muddied with falsehood.

September 15 Firstborn

“Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home”. Jn 19:25-27

In the second creation story, the man gave his wife the name “Eve,” because she was the mother of all the living (cf. Gen 3:20).  For John the beloved, the role of “Woman” in the new Creation brought about by Jesus’ Passion/Resurrection is equivalent to that of Eve in the first creation story.  “Woman” at the wedding in Cana initiates Jesus’ “hour” as Eve had initiated the fall.  Now in the fulfillment of his hour Jesus indicates that “Woman” has become mother of the new creation and John is her firstborn—behold your mother!  In her priestly presence she has offered sacrifice and shared Jesus’ sufferings as only a mother can.  This birth is an agony as all of Eve’s birthings would be (cf. Gen 3).  This “Woman” loses her firstborn of the first creation and becomes mother of the “living” (those who believe in Jesus) in the new creation. Declaring her so is Jesus’ last act before he says: “it is finished” and gives up his spirit.  Jesus had spoken to all at the supper about birth pangs (cf. Jn 16:21) now it is accomplished.

The measure in which we truly cherish motherhood is not to be found in the tsunami of sentimental greetings offered to mothers.  Our sincerity can only really be measured by how our society treats mothers and small children.  Currently, they are the major worldwide victims of poverty and abuse.  Pregnant unwed women are blamed for “getting pregnant” as if they were the only agents responsible!  If we truly believed that life is precious, that motherhood is sacred there would be far greater efforts to support mothers and children without judgements.

September 14 The Serpent

Jesus explained his destiny in the beginning of John’s gospel:

No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come

down from heaven, the Son of Man.  And just as Moses lifted up

the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so

that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” Jn 3:13-15

This symbol of the serpent mounted on a pole became one that John the Beloved carries through his gospel to the end. Because the story involves the image of a serpent it has echoes of the second creation story in Genesis for John the Beloved (cf. Gen3:1). John is the only gospel writer to use this image. He sees this as applying to the new creation. Adam and Eve had, so to speak, been bitten by the serpent.  Now what the serpent had done—brought about death–will be mounted on the cross as Jesus dies but as anyone who believes in him, gazes upon him in his sacrifice, they will be freed from death and have eternal life. John applies the strange story in Numbers to this image of the serpent:

…and the Lord said to Moses, “Make a saraph and mount it on a

pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover.”

Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a

pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent

looked at the bronze serpent, he recovered. Num 21: 8,9.

It is only when we have looked death in the face so to speak that we understand life.  We must face the fact that humans are responsible for a massive extension of species taking present.  It will be the greatest extinction of species the earth has ever seen before it is over.  Unless we face this fact, we will never react so as to save the few we may still be able to save.

September 13 Earth

John the Beloved has a great affinity for the creation stories in Genesis.   We read about the third day:

            “Then God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear.’ And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared. God called the dry land ‘the earth,’ and the basin of the water he called ‘the sea.’ God saw how good it was.” Gen 1:9-10

 The dry land, “the earth” experience, which John the Beloved had was after the storm on the shore of the lake: “They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading” Jn. 6:21.  The shore John had arrived at was the conviction of Jesus’ identity as Word of God and One in full identity with the Creator and the Spirit. You could say that John the Beloved was born again that night in the storm on the lake out of the womb of darkness and water onto the land, the earth, of understanding. In John’s gospel Jesus’ I  AM statements begin with the night on the lake.   John the Beloved  and those in the boat arrived on the firm land of conviction that Jesus was the Son of God.

There is perhaps nothing that we take for granted more than the earth we walk on.  We mine it leaving piles of tailings to poison plants and water.  We dump waste chemicals on it as if it too is trash. We drill to extract oil leaving the surface a wasteland of oil rigs and oil spots. We dig it up to unload all our garbage without any thought to processes of recycling, of composting, of beauty.  We are irresponsible stewards of creation as long as we do these things.  One of the most important features of care for creation is learning how to reduce and manage our waste products.  And in our time, we stand in grave danger of committing the worst crime of all toward the earth—nuclear warfare.  Twice already the US has used this horrible destructive weapon.  Nations continue to test these bombs without regard for what is being done to the earth and we stand poised to use them against each other.  We need to pray that out of the chaotic abyss of our careless disregard some solid land of understanding will emerge.

September 12 Flowing Water

Great themes in John the Beloved’s gospel always have a creation connection.  So too for Living Water: “but a stream was welling up out of the earth (literally the belly of the earth) and was watering all the surface of the ground…Gen 2:6.  The next act of creation in Gen 2:7 is that God forms man out of the ground which the water has softened into clay.  John the Beloved sees the same scenario in the new creation.  This living water welling up out of the belly of the earth is like the living water flowing as a stream from within the ground of the believer who is softened and shaped by God, the divine Potter (Is 64:7).  From this newly formed creature living water continues and flows out to others like the rivers of creation. Thus, John is invoking the image in Gen 2.  The human body is compared to earth from which it is taken and from it springs this living water.

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!” This is becoming our status. Our drinking, cooking and bathing sources of water are being polluted with run-off from flash floods after monster fires, with flooding of sewage systems, with excessive bacterial growth from rogue floods.  Even our oceans are becoming so polluted with plastics and human waste that corals and fish are dying.  Water is the well-spring of life, and we urgently need to care for it.  It is possible to create plastic from biodegradable sources such as bamboo and corn.  It is our responsibility to search out and support such sources.  Less than 20% of the plastics currently in use and made from petroleum products are ever recycled. 

September 11, The Seed

The image of seeds is actually found in all the gospels, but John the Beloved has his own version of it: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” Jn 12:24.  

For John the Beloved, Jesus’ use of the seed metaphor harkens back again to the Genesis stories of creation: “Then the Lord God planted a garden of delights…”Gen 2:8. In the New Testament God is planting a new creation, a creation of delight for the Godself.  Jesus is both the new Adam whom God places there and the seed God plants in the new creation.

In our world of the developed nations there are many people who have never seen a farm or a garden.  They have no experience of planning seeds and watching plants grow.  Farming itself has become industrialized and we are just now beginning to realize how some of the methods of industrialized farming such as the use of pesticides, fertilizers and sprinkler water systems are doing terrible damage to the environment.  It is critical that we explore and learn methods of farming, of planting and growing that are sustainable, that do no harm.

September 10, Springs of Water

“On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him.'”   He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”  Jn 7:37-39.

In this passage John the Beloved has in mind the verses in Gen 2 which speak about the springs of water welling up from within the belly of the earth, which enable other forms of life.  John has Jesus say: “Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him (literally from within his belly).’

When we are Spirit-filled, we can bring forth all kinds of wonderful attitudes of creativity, of humility, of insight and healing. From us have sprung attitudes of carelessness in regard to water and from us must spring attitudes of conservation, the will to promote wise use of water, the understanding of the water crisis the world is facing because of climate change. In the Creation stories water plays a huge role and, in our time, solving the water crisis is a huge part of climate change.  Water sources and flows are being changed in ways that have not been seen since the biblical stories were written thousands of years ago.

September 9 Living Water

John the Beloved offers us a plethora of “I AM” sayings of Jesus:  I AM the Light of the World, I AM Living Bread, I AM the Way and the Truth and the Life, but Jesus never says” I AM Living Water.”  Rather Jesus says to the Samaritan woman “I will give you living water,” (cf. Jn 4:10)

Water does many things for us.  Washing is the first that comes to mind physically.  Spiritually the first thing that comes to mind is getting rid of sin. But there is so much more.  Water literally renews our life every day.  All our metabolic processes depend upon water.  Water gives us life over and over again every day.  That life is mostly unseen, interior in our bodies.  But it is more important than external washing with water. John the Beloved compares belief in Jesus and receiving the Spirit with this life-giving function of physical water.

One of the gravest mistakes we make is to take something for granted.  In developed countries we have done that in regard to water.  Now that water fit for drinking is becoming threatened by drought and contamination, we need to have a conversion experience and change the way we regard water.  We need to count the precious drops rather than take 15 minute showers and water lavish landscapes.

September 8 Woman in the New Creation

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the

mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples were also invited

to the wedding.  When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said

to him, “They have no wine.”   (And) Jesus said to her, “Woman, how

does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”   His

mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.” Jn 2:1-5

From a perspective which John the Beloved loves to dwell on, in the second account of creation, woman initiates the eating of the forbidden fruit and now in John the Beloved’s eyes, in the new creation the “Woman” as John has Jesus address his mother, initiates partaking of the fruit of the new creation –wine, the wine of gladness, the wine of a wedding.

Today we celebrate the birthday of Mary, the mother of Jesus.   She is more than simply mother to him; she is to him what Eve was to Adam. Eve was Adam’s helpmate in caring for creation.  Mary is Jesus’ helpmate in the new creation, and she initiates his work, the beginning of his hour which will glorify all of creation.

It is important to honor the creative contributions of women, to recognize that in the new creation they are not to be treated as sources of evil, of temptation.  They do not emasculate men but help men achieve their destiny which always includes feminine elements—spiritually, psychologically and physically.

September 7 Trees

In the creation story of Gen 2, there are two trees in the Garden of Eden –the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.  The Tree of Life is mentioned at the center of the garden in Genesis 2. It disappears from the scene as the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil becomes the focus of attention.  After the fall, the focus again shifts to the Tree of Life in the center of the garden from of which Adam and Eve were kept by an angelic guard (cf. Gen3).  In John’s gospel, Jesus speaks of himself as a ladder (understand tree) in chapter one (cf. Jn 1:50) and the fig tree (a symbol of the Tree of Knowledge) is mentioned only this once when Jesus says he saw Nathaniel under a fig tree.  At the closing of the gospel, in keeping with the imagery of Genesis, John has only one tree—the Tree of Life—Jesus’ resurrected body. Thomas is invited to touch—”to put up his hand and take the fruit” as Adam was no longer able to do (cf. Gen 3:22).

After the resurrection there is a new Tree of life or the actual tree of life in place of the mythological one and man is invited to bring his hand to touch and take the fruit of eternal life.  It is a reversal of the Genesis story. Now the Tree of Life is accessible.  It was important to John to tell the story of Thomas reaching to Jesus’ side because John saw Jesus as the Tree of Life.

For St. John Chrysostom, one of the early Catholic theologians, a tree is a wonderful nature icon of the Trinity.  The Father is represented by the roots hidden from sight in eternity, the ground of our being.  The trunk which is visible represents Christ who lived among us in a very visible manner.  The sap circulating between trunk and roots represents the Holy Spirit shared by Father and Son.

In our own time science has revealed to us just how important trees are to life on our planet.  They store carbon, they release oxygen, they hold the soil in place, they provide shade and shelter, medicine and inspiration. It is possible to read the history of climate change over centuries in tree rings.  One of the most important things we can do is to educate ourselves on the life of trees. And then protect and plant trees.

September 6 Light

John the Beloved identifies Jesus as the light and life of humankind, of creation, in his prolog.   For him Jesus is the embodiment of light—God’s first act of creation in the Genesis story.  “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness” Gen 1:1-4.  In the prolog of John the Beloved’s gospel this light is emphasized and the rest of the gospel is in a certain sense, the separating of light and darkness during each of the “days” of Jesus’ ministry.  

In our time we have conquered darkness with artificial light to such an extent that when we flip on a switch, we think nothing of the cost of the light of the fuel it takes to produce that light most of the time at great cost to creation.  We might benefit from sitting in darkness and pondering the value of light and the cost of artificial light to our environment. The lights and computers we leave on all the time use enough power to provide for a whole city for more than a day.

September 5

Then God planted a garden (cf. Gen2:8).  Next, God took man and placed him in the garden to cultivate the earth and care for it (cf. Gen 2:28). Jesus said: My Father is still working, and I also am working Jn 5:17. God’s work is both ongoing creation and self-revelation (cf. Jn.14:21,23).  Every day, every moment God’s creativity is at work and each work is unique, no two days alike, no two animals alike, no two patterns of frost alike.

Whole theologies of work have been derived from John’s gospel.  But we need to remember that God’s first work is creation and taking care of it is the first task God has given humankind.  Our work ethic so far has not been very good especially in developed nations where produce from the earth is no longer sustainable due to our activity.  Primitive peoples like the Bushmen of Australia did much better for thousands of years.  We have never made sustainability a goal. It is surely time that we begin to do so.

Work enables us to share in God’s creative activity and gives the worker–no matter what the work from the humblest to the most exalted, a special dignity. Jesus was proud of his work for and with the Father.  We can be proud of our work for and with him while we hold ourselves and all workers in esteem.

September Fourth Flesh

A key to understanding the prolog to John’s gospel is to focus on the word “flesh.”  John has taken this word from the story of Noah, the third creation story in Genesis. Gen 6.  The Noah story is a creation story like the first creation story in Genesis. God allows life on the earth to be destroyed through a flood returning as it were to the beginning when the waters swept over the deep.  Gradually land emerges from the water as in the first creation story, then we see the presence of animal life and plant life in the verses about the dove with the olive branch.  Finally, God makes a covenant with “all flesh” –that is all creation not merely Noah.  In the first unnamed covenant of creation God gave humans the garden and, on their part, they were to care for it.  In the re-creation after the flood, God makes a new covenant this time with “all flesh” promising that never again because of human sin will the world be destroyed.  John uses the word “flesh” in his prolog –the Word became flesh–which indicates all of material creation and harkens back to God’s covenant with all “flesh” in the Noah myth.  Jesus, the Word incarnated as flesh, is the fulfillment of the Noah Covenant for John.

It took almost two thousand years for Christianity to recognize the evil of slavery and that whatsoever we do to the least of our kind, we do to Christ.  If we enslave anyone, we are enslaving Christ.  Perhaps the twenty-first century will bring the breakthrough of realizing that what we do to creation we do to Christ in whom it was created and to ourselves as inexorably bound to every molecule of creation.

September Third, Wine

“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there and Jesus and his disciples were also invited.” Jn 2:1.2.  On the third day of creation God brought forth land (earth) and “the earth brought forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree that bears fruit with its seed in it. God saw that it was good.  Gen 1:12. That grapes use water and sunlight to make grape juice and wine is a basic miracle of creation.  Jesus enhances that process making a superior wine at his mother’s request.  On the third day after Jesus’ death, he is raised.  The Father raises Jesus as God had brought forth earth and plants on a third day, but the life of the raised Jesus is life transformed far superior to life before the resurrection.  Because creation is good and beautiful God never destroys it but rather brings it to a new fruition.  When we act in tune with God’s creativity, we do not destroy nature but seek to bring it to greater fruition.

September 2  The Word

God spoke then light, water, earth, vegetation, sun, moon, stars, fish, birds, animals and lastly humans came into existence. Reflecting on this creative activity of God described in Genesis, John enhances the story by identifying God’s speech as “the Word,” in whom everything is created and whom we know as the second Person of the Trinity who will become incarnate as Jesus.

God’s Word is powerful and so are our words!  Words matter.  That is why we must speak out about creation.  We must speak to legislators, to friends, to neighbors.  We must make our voices heard to give creation itself a voice.  We are the ones gifted with speech and we must use it for the sake of the rest of creation.

Luke’s Journey through Eastertide

When I was a young girl I was given a birthstone ring.  The birthstone was in the center of smaller rhinestones.  Somehow I lost one of them, and its absence so defaced the ring that I no longer wore it.  There is a gem of a resurrection story in the gospel of Luke which unfortunately is not given a hearing in the Sunday liturgies during Eastertide or is used only as an alternative.  For me, it is somewhat like missing that gemstone.  It is the story of what happened on Easter day when two disciples left the community in great discouragement.  It is found in Luke 24:13-34.

The story is not only unique to Luke, but it displays so many themes particular to Luke’s Sage archetype that it deserves hearing and pondering.  It is a journey story.  Luke built much of his gospel on the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem.  In this short story he shows us the journey of two disciples from despair to hope, from confusion to truth, from isolation to community. 

Luke’s gospel focuses in a special way on healing.  In this story the two disciples are hurting psychologically and spiritually.  Jesus heals them by first by listening, then by asking them to ponder the scriptures more carefully, indicating that therein they will find the answers.  This kind of sensitivity shows all the characteristics of a deft sage who points them to their tradition, to what they are familiar with and asks them to search there for the answers.  Genuine spiritual experience is not rooted solely in personal imagination but in the collective wisdom of a tradition.  Jesus asks them to examine that tradition more carefully.  As they do so, their hearts begin to burn—they are thinking with both emotions and intellect.  Now they are ready for the full revelation.

That full revelation comes at a meal in which Jesus uses a ritual peculiar to him. The sage is deeply aware of the power of ritual, and this detail is something that the Sage archetype would emphasize.  Finally, the revelatory experience leads them back to community.  They could hardly wait to share their experience of the risen Jesus with the others.  They ran back over the road they had walked with Jesus as he explained the scriptures to them.  The sage writes, expounds, explains tradition for the sake of the community, not for personal glory or gain.  This was Luke’s motivation for writing his gospel.

This story is also the story of every disciple who has to struggle with her or his own doubts and despair, who must find the truth in the depths of the scriptural tradition by careful pondering and discussion; who in turn finally discovers who Jesus is in the Eucharist and having found that, burns to share with others, not to force someone else to believe but to offer personal testimony in the hopes that doing so will build up the community and help others in their journey.

Our journey through Eastertide is extremely important because the journey takes us from purely rational considerations to an appreciation of supra-rational knowledge, from physical to meta-physical.  All the while it teaches us the importance of the body, of community, of using our rational minds even while we transcend what they can teach us.  In the story of the journey to Emmaus Luke has given us a remarkable picture of the journey through Eastertide.  We are the disciples learning about the risen Jesus and why what happened did happen.  This story contains all of Luke’s major themes:  Journey, Jesus as healing prophet, God’s presence in fire, Jesus’ Meal Ministry.  It also provides the pattern of our main liturgy the Mass.  We begin by pausing to examine ourselves, we move on to the scriptures, we ask for our needs even as the two disciples begged Jesus to stay with them and the Eucharistic, meeting him in the Bread and Wine is the climax of the liturgy from which we go forth to share with others the good news.

 

Resurrection the Heart of the New Testament

The Deacon and I were standing in the sanctuary discussing the Proclamation of Easter as part of the Epiphany liturgy when we were overtaken by an elderly woman parishioner arranging the Magi.  “What is this you are talking about?”  I made an effort to explain that on the feast of the Epiphany we proclaim the Resurrection and the date of Easter because the dates of whole Liturgical year  are determined by Easter, the greatest celebration of the Liturgical year.  “That is absolute nonsense!” she declared. “Christmas is the greatest celebration of the year.”  I made no response as I could see that it would be useless, but I felt a great sense of sorrow for someone whose liturgical spirituality was so conditioned that she didn’t understanding the depth and breadth of the wisdom embedded in the liturgical year.

It is true that comparing feast days is a little like asking which person of two is human—Both are of course!  And the feasts of the Christian cycle are so interconnected that to isolate one is to do violence to the others.  That being said, we can also say that it was in light of the Resurrection that the first disciples began to realize the importance of Jesus’ birth. The entire New Testament is written from the standpoint of the Resurrection. There are scripture scholars who have devoted volumes to demonstrating this.  Such is the case of the Redemptorist scholar Durwell in “The Resurrection” and N. T. Wright in “The Resurrection of the Son of God.”   It was under the influence of the experience of the Risen One that the New Testament was written.  Paul, our earliest Christian writer, who wrote most of the New Testament books which are his letters, does not give us a birth story for Jesus. 

The early church came to conclude the importance of Jesus’ incarnation by realizing the full meaning of the Resurrection. This was reflected in liturgical life.  It was not until into the second century that the church began celebrating Epiphany/Christmas and even then, it was not widespread until well into the fourth century. Each year there was a solemn proclamation on the feast the Epiphany, of the date of Easter and consequently the dates of all the rest of the movable feasts for the year up to and including the start of the next Advent season. The USCCB comments:

Although calendars now give the date of Easter and the other feasts in the liturgical year for many years in advance, the Epiphany proclamation still has value. It is a reminder of the centrality of the resurrection of the Lord in the liturgical year and the importance of the great mysteries of faith which are celebrated each year. USCCB

So true is the importance of the Resurrection in scriptural and community celebrations in the early church, that how Christian spiritual writers speak of or expound on the Resurrection becomes a criterion for discerning the value of what is written.  The Resurrection is the heart of the gospel and of Christianity.  The Christian story is, if you will, a story written backwards.  Its true beginning is the Resurrection which then causes Jesus disciples to realize the truth of what he said, did and was.  Thus, they wrote about their own experiences with him, about what he taught and how he healed and finally in two of the gospels we have something of his physical origin. The Spirit was the one guiding what they wrote even as the Spirit guided Jesus’ Incarnation and ministry.

The most beautiful presentation on Scripture I have ever encountered was the speech by Archbishop Edelby of Edessa during the Vatican Council II. He spoke of the Orthodox view of Scripture as a product of the Holy Spirit and compared the work of the Spirit in the Scriptures to the Spirit’s activity in the Incarnation, the Eucharist and the Resurrection.  That is the view of Scripture I have long cherished.  The Council incorporated some of Archbishop Edelby’s insights into the document with the insistence that true exegesis (interpretation) must consider all of what scripture says on a particular topic and must also recognize and work from the Living Tradition of the Church, while reading the Scriptures in the same Spirit in which they were written.  The Document Dei Verbum of Vatican II puts it this way:

“But since sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the same Spirit in whom it was written (Sed, cum Sacra Scriptura eodem Spiritu quo scripta est etiam legenda et interpretanda sit), no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity of the whole of the Scripture, taking into account the living Tradition of the entire Church, and the analogy of faith, if we are to derive their true meaning from the sacred texts. It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”

 As with all literature there are some basic principles for its interpretation.  If we are to derive the true meaning from the sacred texts of Christianity, we need to follow some rules:

1. Recognize the work of the Spirit.
2. Honor the context
3. Look to all the texts within scripture that treat of the topic
4. Take into account the living Tradition
5. Have regard for the Creed (analogy of faith)

This combination of listening to the Spirit and following the guidelines are the ways of gaining confidence that what we read and write is gospel truth.  As regards the Resurrection and listening to the Spirit, our first consideration is the context.

One of those first principles for biblical interpretation set out by the Christian Tradition is never to quote out of context.  What is the historical context of the notion of resurrection? Historically the Hebrews were extremely late in coming to accept any notions of resurrection and even then, resurrection most likely meant some sort of revivification.  The idea of resurrection became prominent in Judaism after the Babylonian Exile.  During the Exile they had been exposed to the teaching of Zoroaster, the Persian prophet who believed in life after death.  But not all Jews accepted the idea.  Even today there are Jewish Rabbis some of whom I have known, who do not believe in eternal life as a resurrection. The book of Second Maccabees among the last books of the First Testament to be written gives a truly clear reference to the notion of resurrection (2 Mac. 7:9).  The Spirit was at work as the notion was being refined in Judaism.  In the time of Jesus this was a hotly debated issue and Jesus in his reference to Abraham and Moses as “living” comes down on the side of resurrection.

” That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage

about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the

God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the

dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” Lk 20: 37,38. 

According to Luke, Jesus himself had arrived at, accepted, the teaching of the Pharisees that there is a resurrection based upon the Hebrew Scriptures (formulated during the Exile).  The book of Hebrews tells us that with this hope in mind, the human Jesus endured the cross. (Heb. 12:2). In the book of Acts Paul makes use of the division in Judaism over the notion of resurrection to create a disturbance that is to his advantage: “Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees, so he called out before the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees; I am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead.”  Acts 23:6.

Considering all of this, it is most likely that this phrase “if there is no resurrection” I (Cor 15:14a) should be interpreted something like this: “if you people do not even accept that the dead will rise, then how can you profess that Christ is risen. “In other words, if you do not accept the general notion of life after death, then you are not disposed to believe in the resurrection of Christ.  It is simply not warranted to take that phrase and make it say that Paul was proclaiming a universal scientific principle (evolution) to which even Jesus had to conform.   To interpret it that way is to twist scripture to make it conform to science.

Science and Revelation

No modern scientist has written more profoundly about science and theology than John Polkinghorne (who was both a remarkable physicist and a theologian) in many books but especially in Quantum Physics and Theology An Unexpected Kinship he lays out the parallels between Revelation and Science without confusing them.

In the chapter on Comparative Heuristics of Quantum Physics and Theology, Polkinghorne states the most basic questions regarding the essence of Christianity and the gospel which are questions about the Resurrection.  He indicates that evolution is not a satisfactory theological pathway for understanding Christ or the resurrection.

The most potent statement of the New Testament on Resurrection is what Jesus himself says in John’s gospel. When Jesus goes to console Martha and Mary over the death of their brother Lazarus,

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would

not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,

God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha

said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes

in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes

in me will never die. Do you believe this?”  Jn. 11:21-26

Jesus is reminding her of the belief held by many Jews that there is a resurrection to life after death and she affirms that yes, she believes that.  Then Jesus says something of far greater import: “I am the resurrection and the life…”  It would have been one thing to say I will raise others; I will be raised, but the words are I AM the Resurrection!  If we hold to the teaching of the Tradition and of Vatican II, we cannot dismiss these words as just something John put into Jesus’ mouth.  John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, even as Mary under the power of the Spirit conceived Jesus.  If we acknowledge the power of the Spirit in the Incarnation, we must acknowledge it in Scripture and in the Resurrection.

The Spirit wants us to know that yes, Jesus IS the Resurrection, that is, he is the cause and source of all resurrections.  It is not evolution that brings about Resurrection.   After death everyone will participate in Christ’s resurrection, and it is something that far exceeds the results of evolution.   We do not get the fullness of truth from science but from the Christian Revelation.  Granted science gives us insights, faith and reason are not in conflict but complimentary.  They are both part of the greater truth.  While not denying science in any way, we cannot let it dictate what we are to believe or how we are to regard the truths of faith.  That is putting the cart before the horse, having the tail wag the dog.

The Church has never emphasized Incarnation (Christmas) over Resurrection (Easter).  She has understood from the beginning that the gospel is built upon the experience of the Resurrection.  When we demote the Resurrection to the outcome of evolution, we gut the gospel of its essence. We lose the gospel’s insistence that the Resurrection was a victory over sin and death—over sin because we have the grace to do better, over death because thanks to the Resurrection, it is not permanent. The self-emptying of the Incarnation is only half of the story.  The rest of the story is the even fuller self-emptying of the passion and death and that is followed by the Father’s response in raising Jesus bringing him and all creation into the fullness of God’s life.  This is not mere stage setting—giving good example or accompanying us in the pain of death.  This is salvation as we are rescued from the effects of sin and the permanence of death. The first disciples understood this so clearly that they professed, as we see in Paul and in John’s gospel, that it is a “new creation.”  The first creation is still in place but now it is penetrated with the glory of the Resurrection.  Great emphasis is laid upon the miracles of giving sight to the blind in the gospels and indeed it is a giving of sight when we see with the eyes of faith the glory of the Resurrection as did the disciples after Jesus’ ascension.

Will the deacon please come forward and proclaim the announcement of the Resurrection as we begin the Epiphany celebration!

Advent

Thinking about Advent, a time of anticipation, of longing, I was struck by the medical finding about release in the brain of dopamine which is the pleasurable neurotransmitter.  Biologists have found that there is an anticipatory spike in dopamine prior to the experience that creates a major dopamine release.   Anticipation itself creates this experience of joy and pleasure.  Anticipation of going to the dance, the banquet, the ball game, the meeting with a loved one creates a spike in dopamine preparatory to the actual experience.  This surely is what Christianity is all about –anticipation of life in the Resurrection.  As the Creed expresses it: “And I look forward to the Resurrection of the dead and the life to come.”    How marvelous it is that we have a whole season in the liturgical life dedicated to this reality.  Advent mixes joy and longing, depravation and anticipation.

 

 

The Season of Creation

Pope Francis has invited us to follow the example of our Orthodox brothers and sisters and take time–a special liturgical season–to reflect on the theology of creation, on God’s creative activity.  I have determined to do this with a daily reflection based upon the Gospel of John the Beloved.  The theme of creation, the creation stories are like a magnificent backdrop for John’s gospel or like a beautiful melody haunting the pages of this gospel.

The stories that John the Beloved most indwelt were the creation stories.  There are three of them in Genesis.  Two differing versions in the first chapters and another two combined into one in the Noah myth.   In addition, there is another creation narrative in the book of Job. We can learn from studying this background, listening to this melody.

September 1 Beginning

“In the beginning…” John opens his gospel with the same words used to open the first creation story in Genesis.  In the beginning when God created the world Gen 1:1—In the beginning when the Word was with God and was God… Jn 1:1. John is letting us know that his gospel is a creation story, the New Testament version of the First Testament’s creation stories—the story of the new creation.  To understand our destiny, it is necessary to understand our origins and John tells us that our origin, the origin of all creation is in the Word through whom all things were made.  We share the same origin as the rest of creation.  From the very beginning our lives are intertwined with all life in the cosmos coming from the bosom of the Word.