Imagine a saint – a priest – so dedicated to God that he often went days without eating, and when he did eat, it was a boiled potato or a piece of hard bread.In his 1991 book, What Americans Believe (Regal Books; page 26), Evangelical pollster George Barna reported that a survey of 1005 Americans found that 60% of respondents, regardless of religious affiliation, believed that Satan was "only a symbol of evil," while 35% believed he is "a living being." Just over half of the respondents who described themselves as "born again Christians" believed Satan is a living being, while only 26% of Catholics agreed, with almost 7 out of10 Catholics saying Satan is only a symbol of evil.
Although many considered him unfit for the priesthood, he revived the crushed faith of an impoverished village and often spent eighteen hours a day hearing confessions, often sleeping only an hour or two each night.
As the reputation of this holy man of God spread, pilgrims began to seek him out, sometimes waiting days for him to hear their confession, heal their illnesses, and speak directly to their deepest needs. But not everyone was so pleased. This priest began to be attacked, sometimes physically and, at other times, emotionally and psychologically. He was verbally mocked, scorned, and abused. At night he was subjected to loud and violent noises for hours on end. He was pulled from bed in the middle of the night and, on one occasion, his bed was set on fire.
Despite this constant abuse, the priest never called the police or requested security. It wouldn’t have mattered, for the abuse and taunts did not come from another human, but from Satan. The priest, of course, was St. John Vianney (1786-1859), the Curé of Ars, whose feast is celebrated August 4.
Although rightly renowned for his holiness, asceticism, and spiritual insight, the Curé of Ars was also remarkable for his courage and steadiness in the face of the Devil. For some thirty-five years (1824-1858) Satan assaulted the Saint in a nearly endless number of ways, seeking to break the will and resolve of the great man of God: making harrowing noises, singing in a wicked voice, meowing like a cat, or shouting, "Vianney! Vianney! Potato eater!"
Living Being or Scary Symbol?Many people today would understood St. John Vianney's struggles with Satan to simply be the result of psychological problems that weren’t understood or properly identified in his day. They would explain that in a less scientific age people often attributed behaviors they didn't understand to the work of the devil, but now we can treat many such illnesses with proper medication and therapy. Behavior that once was deemed demonic or caused by spiritual oppression can be explained by science and psychology, as newspapers, magazines, and television programs instruct us on a regular basis.
While it’s not surprising that non-Christians or non-religious people might make such assessments, there’s evidence that more and more Christians are rejecting the ancient belief that Satan is a real, living being.
In December 1993, Time magazine featured a story and an opinion poll on angels. The poll revealed that 69% of respondents believed in the existence of angels, but only 49% believed in the existence of fallen "angels or devils." Two years later, in 1995, another Barna survey revealed that about 58% of American adults believed that Satan is "not a living being but is a symbol of evil."
And, finally, an October 2002 study by the Barna Group ("Americans Draw Theological Beliefs From Diverse Points of View") found that 59% of Americans reject the existence of Satan, instead believing he is merely a symbol of evil. The study stated: "Catholics are much more likely than Protestants to hold this view – 75% compared to 55% – although a majority of both groups concur that Satan is symbolic." The study also noted that the rejection of Satan’s existence apparently conflicted with the fact that 54% of respondents believed that "a human being can be under the control or the influence of spiritual forces such as demons." The religious group with the highest percentage (59%) of members who believe that Satan is a living entity was Mormon. The group with the lowest percentage, at 17%, was Catholic.
For some people, the path from denying Satan is a living being to denying his existence in any form – even an impersonal and abstract one – is a short one. As many have noted, this is probably how Satan would prefer it. The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) is credited with the saying that "the Devil's cleverest wile is to convince us that he does not exist." In his book, The Eternal Galilean, Archbishop Fulton Sheen warned readers: "Do not mock the Gospels and say there is no Satan. Evil is too real in the world to say that. Do not say the idea of Satan is dead and gone. Satan never gains so many cohorts as when, in his shrewdness, he spreads the rumor that he is long since dead."
Even though there are priests, catechists, and Catholic educators who may never speak of Satan, and who – either directly or indirectly – apparently deny his existence, Satan is not dead, nor has the Church demoted him to a vague, impersonal force. While a growing number of people, including an alarming number of Catholics, are being convinced (or have convinced themselves) that the Devil is just a figment of primitive imaginations, the Church’s teachings today about him are just as robust and clear as ever.
The Names and the Fall of Satan In a general audience titled "Confronting the Devil’s power," (November 15, 1972) Pope Paul VI said that it is a departure from "biblical Church teaching to refuse to aknowledge the Devil's existence; to regard him as a self-sustaining principle who, unlike other creatures, does not owe his origin to God; or to explain the Devil as a pseudo-reality, a conceptual, fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes." Here are expressed three major truths about Satan, all of them found in the Bible: the Devil exists, he is a creature who was created by God, and he is very real.
The name Satan appears numerous times in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. The Hebrew word satan refers to an adversary, or to someone who plots opposition to another. It is used several times in the Old Testament to describe the work of both human and heavenly beings sent to stop, or oppose, the actions of a wrongdoer and to act as an agent of judgment on behalf of God. Eventually, in the decades immediately prior to the time of Christ, the word began to be used as a proper name – Satan – for a heavenly creature who is in complete opposition to God and who seeks to ruin His work. In Jewish apocryphal writings he is understood to be the prince of evil spirits whose expulsion from heaven was due to his refusal to recognize man as the image of God (cf. Gen 1:26-27).
Throughout the New Testament he is referred to by many other names, including Beelzebul (Mk 3:22; Matt 10:25; 12: 24), Belial/Beliar (2 Cor 6:15), the evil one (Matt 13:19; Jn 17:15; 1 Jn 5:18, 19), the enemy (Matt 13:25, 28, 29; Lk 10:19), the ruler of the demons (Mk 3:22), the ruler of this world (Jn 12:31; 14:30), the great dragon (Rev 12:9), the serpent, or serpent of old (2 Cor 11:3; Rev 12:9, 14, 14; 20:2), and the tempter (Matt 4:3; 1 Thess 3:5). And, of course, he is called "the Devil" (Matt 4:1; 25:41; Lk 4:2; Jn 13:2; Acts 10:38), which derives from the Greek word diabolos (Latin, diabolus), which means "slanderer" or "accuser."
Showing posts with label Saints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saints. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Satan and Saint John Vianney
Ignatius Insight Scoop August 4, 2014:
Friday, November 29, 2013
The Sword of the Saint, Unsheathed
From http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1113-gardiner
Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise Against Clerical Homosexual Practices. By St. Peter Damian. Translated and edited by Pierre Payer. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 108 pages. $38.95.
By the time he published the Book of Gomorrah around A.D. 1049, St. Peter Damian had been preaching for some time against homosexuality. He told Pope St. Leo IX, to whom he directed this work, that he needed his support against those who despised him for this preaching. While others in authority remained silent, he lamented, homosexuality kept spreading: “Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men.”
That homosexuality was indeed a problem at that time may be inferred from the fact that the vice was addressed at the Council of Rheims (A.D. 1049) in the canon de sodomitico vitio. Also, Damian received, in reply to his treatise, what he had requested from Leo IX, “a decretal writing as to which of those guilty of these vices ought to be deposed irrevocably from ecclesiastical orders; and to whom, truly taking the view of discretion, this office can be mercifully granted.”
In the Book of Gomorrah Damian says he has preached against this sin “with a whole fountain of tears” because the sinner he addresses sheds none at all: “O miserable soul, I weep for you with so many lamentations because I do not see you weeping. I prostrate myself on the ground for you because I see you maliciously standing up after such a grave fall, even to the point of trying for the pinnacle of an ecclesiastical order.” Damian weeps from “fraternal compassion” because he sees a “noble soul made in the image and likeness of God and joined with the most precious blood of Christ” cast down from a great height of dignity and glory. Any Christian who commits sodomy, he explains, surpasses in sin the men of Sodom, for he “defies the very commands of evangelical grace.”
Damian reports that he has endured persecution for preaching against this sin, and he begs the Pope to use his sacred authority to quiet “the complaint of perverse men” who reason that “a statement brought forward by one person…is rejected by others as prejudice.” At one point he addresses the dissenters as men “who are angry with me and who hate to listen to this writer.” He tells the Pope that some of them “accuse me of being a traitor and an informer on the crime of a brother,” while others think it “valid to attack me who am on the attack” and to “accuse me of presumptuous prattle.” They also denounce him for not being “afraid of picking on Christians.”
No surprise, Damian observes, that he is not believed and that his “admonition is rejected,” since God’s own command is “taken lightly by the puffed-up heart of the reprobate.” His opponents even ignore the scriptural verses that condemn homosexuality because “the rashness of the complainers [does not] give in to divine testimony.” Still, he hopes that when the Pope speaks out, “the sick Church” will rise once again to her “rightful vigor.”
In his reply, Leo IX gives Damian his full support and warns those who would dare to criticize or question his papal decree concerning sodomy that they will be putting themselves in danger of being deposed from their rank. He agrees with Damian that severity against this sin is needed, that he who does not attack it encourages it, and that silence about it is rightly thought to incur guilt.
In this remarkable treatise, Damian condemns priests in authority who have been too indulgent with these sinners. As a result of their laxity, priests who have “fallen into this wickedness with eight or even ten other equally sordid men” have remained in their ranks. And so the sin has come “to be committed freely” without its practitioners fearing the loss of their priestly faculties. Damian calls this negligence rather than love because it allows a wound to spread in a neighbor’s heart, a wound “from which, I have no doubt, he dies cruelly.” Therefore, Damian himself will not “neglect to cure” that wound with the “surgery of words,” for if he remains silent, he too will deserve punishment. Rather than “fear the hatred of the depraved or the tongues of detractors,” Damian fears God, who warns him through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, “If you see your brother doing evil and you do not correct him, I will require his blood from your hand” (3:20). Damian will not be silenced, no matter how many tell him to put the sword of his tongue in the sheath of silence: “Who am I to see such a harmful outrage growing up among the sacred orders and, as a murderer of another’s soul, preserve the stricture of silence, and to dare to await the reckoning of divine severity? Do I not begin to be responsible for a guilt whose author I never was?”
Citing St. Paul’s condemnation not only of those who commit sodomy but also of those who “approve” it in others (Rom. 1:32), Damian observes that his adversaries’ silence can be interpreted as consent: Anyone who would “censure me when I dispute against mortal vice,” he says, should consider that Damian is trying to “promote fraternal salvation, lest while he persecute the reprover he might seem to favor the delinquent.” Although maligned and threatened for accusing his brothers, Damian refuses to be intimidated: “I would rather be cast innocent into the cistern with Joseph, who accused his brothers to his father for a terrible crime, than to be punished by the vengeance of divine fury with Eli, who saw the evils of his sons and was silent.” He even summons others to join him in his all-out battle to reform the clergy: “Whoever sees himself as a soldier of Christ should fervently gird himself to confound this vice, and not hesitate to wipe it out with all his strength. He should pierce it with the sharpest verbal arrows wherever it is found and try to slay it.” He will thus free the captive from “bonds by which he is held in slavery.”
Although it is “clearer than light” that homosexuals should not serve as priests, Damian says, some might plead “imminent necessity” and argue that there is “no one to perform a sacred function in a church.” In reply, he says that making shepherds of such “carnal men” will “result in the destitution of a whole people.” Their “burning ambition” to be priests is sure to “ensnare the people of God” in their own ruin. Although they may seem useful for their learning, they will lead the flock astray: “If the right order of ecclesiastical discipline is confused in a learned man, it is a wonder it is kept by the ignorant.” By the example of their presumption, these sinners lead the simple onto the “path of error” on which they walk with the “swollen foot of pride.”
What fruitfulness can be expected from men engulfed by “thick, dark blindness”? They have lost their “interior eyes” and cannot see the gravity of what they have done. Like the men of Sodom who tried to break into Lot’s house and seize the angels whom they mistook for young men, these carnal men “try to break in violently on the angels” by approaching God “through the offices of sacred orders.” Damian warns them: Take care lest you “provoke more sharply by your very prayers the one you offend openly by acting evilly.”
At one point in his treatise, Damian refers to the ancient Council of Ancyra (A.D. 314), which dealt with homosexuality in two canons. In canon 16 the Church Fathers declared that laymen who had committed sodomy before the age of 20 were not to receive communion for 20 years; and those who had committed it after the age of 20, for 30 years. Damian comments that if laymen in the early Church had to wait decades before receiving communion again, how can a priest who commits the same sin in his own day “be judged worthy not only to receive but even to offer and to consecrate the sacred mysteries themselves?”
In canon 17 of the same Council, the Fathers ordered those who had committed this sin to pray among the “demoniacs.” Damian comments: “When a male rushes to a male to commit impurity, this is not the natural impulse of the flesh, but only the goad of diabolical impulse. This is why the holy fathers carefully established that sodomists pray together with the deranged since they did not doubt that the sodomists were possessed.” Lamenting that this sin “evicts the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart,” the saint warns that it also “gnaws the conscience as though with worms” and “sears the flesh as though with fire.”
Even so, like a good pastor, Damian encourages these sinners to hope in God’s mercy through repentance. He rallies them to take a bold stand “against the importunate madness of lust. If the flame of lust burns to the bones, the memory of perpetual fire should extinguish it immediately.” He urges them not to let the “present satisfaction of one organ” cause them to be cast body and soul into everlasting fire. Calling them his brothers, he summons them to conversion: “If you were unable to spend time with Abraham far from the Sodomites, it is permitted to migrate with Lot, urged on by the destructive burning which is near at hand.”
The Book of Gomorrah demonstrates that it was no easier a thousand years ago than it is today to speak out against this vice and to bring active homosexuals to repentance, to an acknowledgement of the natural law, and to the practice of purity. In his little treatise, St. Peter Damian warns us against keeping silence in the face of such a growing evil and thus becoming complicit. He offers us a needed model of how to speak out fearlessly against the corruptions of our age.
St. Peter Damian, pray for us!
Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise Against Clerical Homosexual Practices. By St. Peter Damian. Translated and edited by Pierre Payer. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 108 pages. $38.95.
By the time he published the Book of Gomorrah around A.D. 1049, St. Peter Damian had been preaching for some time against homosexuality. He told Pope St. Leo IX, to whom he directed this work, that he needed his support against those who despised him for this preaching. While others in authority remained silent, he lamented, homosexuality kept spreading: “Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men.”
That homosexuality was indeed a problem at that time may be inferred from the fact that the vice was addressed at the Council of Rheims (A.D. 1049) in the canon de sodomitico vitio. Also, Damian received, in reply to his treatise, what he had requested from Leo IX, “a decretal writing as to which of those guilty of these vices ought to be deposed irrevocably from ecclesiastical orders; and to whom, truly taking the view of discretion, this office can be mercifully granted.”
In the Book of Gomorrah Damian says he has preached against this sin “with a whole fountain of tears” because the sinner he addresses sheds none at all: “O miserable soul, I weep for you with so many lamentations because I do not see you weeping. I prostrate myself on the ground for you because I see you maliciously standing up after such a grave fall, even to the point of trying for the pinnacle of an ecclesiastical order.” Damian weeps from “fraternal compassion” because he sees a “noble soul made in the image and likeness of God and joined with the most precious blood of Christ” cast down from a great height of dignity and glory. Any Christian who commits sodomy, he explains, surpasses in sin the men of Sodom, for he “defies the very commands of evangelical grace.”
Damian reports that he has endured persecution for preaching against this sin, and he begs the Pope to use his sacred authority to quiet “the complaint of perverse men” who reason that “a statement brought forward by one person…is rejected by others as prejudice.” At one point he addresses the dissenters as men “who are angry with me and who hate to listen to this writer.” He tells the Pope that some of them “accuse me of being a traitor and an informer on the crime of a brother,” while others think it “valid to attack me who am on the attack” and to “accuse me of presumptuous prattle.” They also denounce him for not being “afraid of picking on Christians.”
No surprise, Damian observes, that he is not believed and that his “admonition is rejected,” since God’s own command is “taken lightly by the puffed-up heart of the reprobate.” His opponents even ignore the scriptural verses that condemn homosexuality because “the rashness of the complainers [does not] give in to divine testimony.” Still, he hopes that when the Pope speaks out, “the sick Church” will rise once again to her “rightful vigor.”
In his reply, Leo IX gives Damian his full support and warns those who would dare to criticize or question his papal decree concerning sodomy that they will be putting themselves in danger of being deposed from their rank. He agrees with Damian that severity against this sin is needed, that he who does not attack it encourages it, and that silence about it is rightly thought to incur guilt.
In this remarkable treatise, Damian condemns priests in authority who have been too indulgent with these sinners. As a result of their laxity, priests who have “fallen into this wickedness with eight or even ten other equally sordid men” have remained in their ranks. And so the sin has come “to be committed freely” without its practitioners fearing the loss of their priestly faculties. Damian calls this negligence rather than love because it allows a wound to spread in a neighbor’s heart, a wound “from which, I have no doubt, he dies cruelly.” Therefore, Damian himself will not “neglect to cure” that wound with the “surgery of words,” for if he remains silent, he too will deserve punishment. Rather than “fear the hatred of the depraved or the tongues of detractors,” Damian fears God, who warns him through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, “If you see your brother doing evil and you do not correct him, I will require his blood from your hand” (3:20). Damian will not be silenced, no matter how many tell him to put the sword of his tongue in the sheath of silence: “Who am I to see such a harmful outrage growing up among the sacred orders and, as a murderer of another’s soul, preserve the stricture of silence, and to dare to await the reckoning of divine severity? Do I not begin to be responsible for a guilt whose author I never was?”
Citing St. Paul’s condemnation not only of those who commit sodomy but also of those who “approve” it in others (Rom. 1:32), Damian observes that his adversaries’ silence can be interpreted as consent: Anyone who would “censure me when I dispute against mortal vice,” he says, should consider that Damian is trying to “promote fraternal salvation, lest while he persecute the reprover he might seem to favor the delinquent.” Although maligned and threatened for accusing his brothers, Damian refuses to be intimidated: “I would rather be cast innocent into the cistern with Joseph, who accused his brothers to his father for a terrible crime, than to be punished by the vengeance of divine fury with Eli, who saw the evils of his sons and was silent.” He even summons others to join him in his all-out battle to reform the clergy: “Whoever sees himself as a soldier of Christ should fervently gird himself to confound this vice, and not hesitate to wipe it out with all his strength. He should pierce it with the sharpest verbal arrows wherever it is found and try to slay it.” He will thus free the captive from “bonds by which he is held in slavery.”
Although it is “clearer than light” that homosexuals should not serve as priests, Damian says, some might plead “imminent necessity” and argue that there is “no one to perform a sacred function in a church.” In reply, he says that making shepherds of such “carnal men” will “result in the destitution of a whole people.” Their “burning ambition” to be priests is sure to “ensnare the people of God” in their own ruin. Although they may seem useful for their learning, they will lead the flock astray: “If the right order of ecclesiastical discipline is confused in a learned man, it is a wonder it is kept by the ignorant.” By the example of their presumption, these sinners lead the simple onto the “path of error” on which they walk with the “swollen foot of pride.”
What fruitfulness can be expected from men engulfed by “thick, dark blindness”? They have lost their “interior eyes” and cannot see the gravity of what they have done. Like the men of Sodom who tried to break into Lot’s house and seize the angels whom they mistook for young men, these carnal men “try to break in violently on the angels” by approaching God “through the offices of sacred orders.” Damian warns them: Take care lest you “provoke more sharply by your very prayers the one you offend openly by acting evilly.”
At one point in his treatise, Damian refers to the ancient Council of Ancyra (A.D. 314), which dealt with homosexuality in two canons. In canon 16 the Church Fathers declared that laymen who had committed sodomy before the age of 20 were not to receive communion for 20 years; and those who had committed it after the age of 20, for 30 years. Damian comments that if laymen in the early Church had to wait decades before receiving communion again, how can a priest who commits the same sin in his own day “be judged worthy not only to receive but even to offer and to consecrate the sacred mysteries themselves?”
In canon 17 of the same Council, the Fathers ordered those who had committed this sin to pray among the “demoniacs.” Damian comments: “When a male rushes to a male to commit impurity, this is not the natural impulse of the flesh, but only the goad of diabolical impulse. This is why the holy fathers carefully established that sodomists pray together with the deranged since they did not doubt that the sodomists were possessed.” Lamenting that this sin “evicts the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart,” the saint warns that it also “gnaws the conscience as though with worms” and “sears the flesh as though with fire.”
Even so, like a good pastor, Damian encourages these sinners to hope in God’s mercy through repentance. He rallies them to take a bold stand “against the importunate madness of lust. If the flame of lust burns to the bones, the memory of perpetual fire should extinguish it immediately.” He urges them not to let the “present satisfaction of one organ” cause them to be cast body and soul into everlasting fire. Calling them his brothers, he summons them to conversion: “If you were unable to spend time with Abraham far from the Sodomites, it is permitted to migrate with Lot, urged on by the destructive burning which is near at hand.”
The Book of Gomorrah demonstrates that it was no easier a thousand years ago than it is today to speak out against this vice and to bring active homosexuals to repentance, to an acknowledgement of the natural law, and to the practice of purity. In his little treatise, St. Peter Damian warns us against keeping silence in the face of such a growing evil and thus becoming complicit. He offers us a needed model of how to speak out fearlessly against the corruptions of our age.
St. Peter Damian, pray for us!
Monday, November 11, 2013
Vatican to put St Peter’s relics on display for first time
From http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/11/11/vatican-to-put-st-peters-relics-on-display-for-first-time/
For the first time, the bones traditionally believed to be the relics of St Peter the Apostle will be on public display for veneration.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, said the veneration of the relics at the Vatican was a fitting way to conclude the Year of Faith on November 24.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the archbishop, whose office organised many of the Year of Faith events, said millions of pilgrims marked the Year of Faith by making a pilgrimage to St Peter’s tomb and renewing their profession of faith there.
“The culminating sign” of the year, he said, “will be the exposition for the first time of the relics traditionally recognized as those of the apostle who gave his life for the Lord here.”
The bones were discovered during excavations of the necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica in the 1940s near a monument erected in the fourth century to honor St Peter.
No pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic. However, after scientific tests were conducted on the bones in the 1950s and 60s, Pope Paul VI said in 1968 that the “relics” of St Peter had been “identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing”.
For the first time, the bones traditionally believed to be the relics of St Peter the Apostle will be on public display for veneration.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, said the veneration of the relics at the Vatican was a fitting way to conclude the Year of Faith on November 24.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the archbishop, whose office organised many of the Year of Faith events, said millions of pilgrims marked the Year of Faith by making a pilgrimage to St Peter’s tomb and renewing their profession of faith there.
“The culminating sign” of the year, he said, “will be the exposition for the first time of the relics traditionally recognized as those of the apostle who gave his life for the Lord here.”
The bones were discovered during excavations of the necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica in the 1940s near a monument erected in the fourth century to honor St Peter.
No pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic. However, after scientific tests were conducted on the bones in the 1950s and 60s, Pope Paul VI said in 1968 that the “relics” of St Peter had been “identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing”.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
The Little Saint Who Loved the Lord
From http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/the-little-saint-who-loved-the-lord/
As we travel along the Italian and French Riviera on our way to
Lourdes, France, we have always passed by Toulouse — and, previously, we
never thought to see what the Lord had for us there.
Then we were gifted to learn about a little saint, not well known in
the United States, but powerful in her region of France: St. Germaine du
Pibrac, who was born in 1579. Her shrine is about 15 miles east of
Toulouse, and it is a tribute to the "Little Saint of the Unwanted."
She is so well loved by the people of the area that her feast day, June
15, is a cause for celebration on June 15 and 16. The theme this year
is "With Germaine, Celebrate the Joy of Believing."
The turnout of local people is so great that the little church where
she is laid out was not big enough to accommodate all who came, so the
townspeople eventually built a beautiful basilica in her honor. It was
begun on the feast of her death in 1901 and completed in 1965.
Saintly Suffering
This precious girl’s story is one of the saddest accounts we have ever
written about. She was born with a crippled and paralyzed right arm and
scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that affects the neck. No one knew for
sure who her parents were. She might have been left at the doorstep as a
baby. She may have been the daughter of Laurent Cousin’s first wife. He
took her in as his child but never cared for her. He remarried, and his
new wife hated Germaine. She treated Germaine terribly. The child was
kept away from her stepfamily, allowed to sleep under a stairway in the
barn but never allowed to live in the house.
She lived in rags and never had a pair of shoes. She ate the stale
bread and water that was left for her at the front door of the house
every day.
The mood of her stepmother usually determined how badly St. Germaine
would be treated. At any given time, the local farmers could see welts
and bruises on her hands and face. Her father never interfered with his
wife’s ill treatment of the girl.
Holy Hunger
The only concession Germaine’s father seemed to give her was permission
to go to Mass every week, which she took advantage of whenever she
could. This is where the Lord spoke to her. He showed her how her life
could be; he gave her an understanding of the sacraments.
Germaine developed a hunger for the Mass. During the week, as she was
tending her sheep, she could hear the church bells ring for the
beginning of Mass. She wanted so badly to be there. Her spirit soared
from the field — she took part in the Mass spiritually.
Miraculous Moments
But a time came when that was not enough for her, due to her hunger for
the Eucharist, which was to be the catalyst that brought about one of
the miracles given to her.
One day, the Lord spoke to Germaine’s heart. She was out in the field,
tending the sheep, as usual. She heard the bells that called the people
to Mass and knew they were calling her to Mass, too.
So she took her distaff — a staff with a cleft end for holding flax,
which she used for spinning her wool — and thrust it into the ground.
Then she huddled her flock of sheep around the distaff and told them to stay there together, not to wander off.
She ran to the church to take part in the Mass, while the sheep stayed
behind, as instructed. That the sheep stayed together was a miracle,
considering there were wolves all around them.
God had helped her meet him in the Eucharist — and he continued to do so.
Germaine’s time at Mass was not only the high point of her day; it
became the driving force in her life. She would gladly suffer all that
her stepmother and the weather in the fields and her illness and
deformity handed out to her. But she could not do without her Lord Jesus
in the Eucharist.
Another miraculous manifestation that has been the talk of the village
and St. Germaine’s followers all these years is what is called the
"Miracle of the Flowers."
Germaine gave scraps of bread to the various beggars who came to her
for help. But the few scraps she was given for her meals were not
enough, so she snuck into the house to take crusts of bread from the
kitchen.
One day, after Germaine had taken bread from the kitchen and was
heading down the road to give it to some of the destitute people who
depended on her, her stepmother discovered what she was doing. She ran
after Germaine, calling her a thief, and demanded she open her apron so
that the bread would fall out. This took place in the center of town,
where everyone could hear. The stepmother planned it this way so that
she could justify her wicked behavior towards the girl before the whole
village. Germaine obediently opened her apron, thinking the bread would
fall out and she would have to suffer the wrath of her stepmother. But
the Lord stepped in, and, rather than bread falling out, beautiful
flowers cascaded to the ground. The flowers were not found in that area
of France, and definitely not in the wintertime, which is when this
occurred. Praise Jesus!
More Miracles
Eventually, Germaine’s illnesses caught up with her, and the Lord took
her to heaven, in 1601, at the age of just 22. When the villagers heard
about her death, they were devastated.
Great pains were taken to make the day she died the most memorable one of her life.
Her body was brought, in solemn procession, to the church she loved so much, and she was buried there.
That was the end of Germaine’s story, or so everyone thought. But 43
years later, in 1644, a woman in the parish died. She had requested to
be buried in the church near the altar. When the workmen dug up the
floor near the altar, which is where Germaine was buried, they found
Germaine’s body perfectly intact.
Miracle upon miracle came about through her intercession. A beautiful
urn was created for her body, which is venerated inside the church to
this day.
St. Germaine is a powerful intercessor. Get to know her. Ask for her help. She is very kind; she will come to your aid.
Monday, June 10, 2013
St. Columba and the Loch Ness Monster
From http://www.fisheaters.com/animals13.html
St. Columba (also known as "Columcille") was born of the O'Donnell Clan in Garten, County Donegal, Ireland, on December 7, 521; he died on 9 June, 597. In between, he founded monasteries in and evangelized Ireland and Scotland. The story of his meeting Nessie -- said to have taken place in A.D. 565 -- was first recorded by Adamnan in "The Life of Saint Columba" sometime in the late 7th Century. An excerpt:
CHAPTER XXVIII
How an Aquatic Monster was driven off by Virtue of the Blessed Man's Prayer.
On another occasion also, when the blessed man was living for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa; and when he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; his wretched body was, though too late, taken out with a hook, by those who came to his assistance in a boat.
The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed, that he directed one of his companions to swim over and row across the coble that was moored at the farther bank.
And Lugne Mocumin hearing the command of the excellent man, obeyed without the least delay, taking off all his clothes, except his tunic, and leaping into the water.
But the monster, which, so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the stream, and when it felt the water disturbed above by the man swimming, suddenly rushed out, and, giving an awful roar, darted after him, with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream.
Then the blessed man observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, "Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed." Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-staff between the man and the beast.
Then the brethren seeing that the monster had gone back, and that their comrade Lugne returned to them in the boat safe and sound, were struck with admiration, and gave glory to God in the blessed man. And even the barbarous heathens, who were present, were forced by the greatness of this miracle, which they themselves had seen, to magnify the God of the Christians.
St. Columba (also known as "Columcille") was born of the O'Donnell Clan in Garten, County Donegal, Ireland, on December 7, 521; he died on 9 June, 597. In between, he founded monasteries in and evangelized Ireland and Scotland. The story of his meeting Nessie -- said to have taken place in A.D. 565 -- was first recorded by Adamnan in "The Life of Saint Columba" sometime in the late 7th Century. An excerpt:
CHAPTER XXVIII
How an Aquatic Monster was driven off by Virtue of the Blessed Man's Prayer.
On another occasion also, when the blessed man was living for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa; and when he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; his wretched body was, though too late, taken out with a hook, by those who came to his assistance in a boat.
The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed, that he directed one of his companions to swim over and row across the coble that was moored at the farther bank.
And Lugne Mocumin hearing the command of the excellent man, obeyed without the least delay, taking off all his clothes, except his tunic, and leaping into the water.
But the monster, which, so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the stream, and when it felt the water disturbed above by the man swimming, suddenly rushed out, and, giving an awful roar, darted after him, with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream.
Then the blessed man observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, "Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed." Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-staff between the man and the beast.
Then the brethren seeing that the monster had gone back, and that their comrade Lugne returned to them in the boat safe and sound, were struck with admiration, and gave glory to God in the blessed man. And even the barbarous heathens, who were present, were forced by the greatness of this miracle, which they themselves had seen, to magnify the God of the Christians.
Friday, February 1, 2013
February 1: St. Brigid of Ireland
From the Catholic Encyclopedia
(Incorrectly known as BRIDGET).
Born in 451 or 452 of princely ancestors at Faughart, near Dundalk, County Louth; d. 1 February, 525, at Kildare. Refusing many good offers of marriage, she became a nun and received the veil from St. Macaille. With seven other virgins she settled for a time at the foot of Croghan Hill, but removed thence to Druin Criadh, in the plains of Magh Life, where under a large oak tree she erected her subsequently famous Convent of Cill-Dara, that is, "the church of the oak" (now Kildare), in the present county of that name. It is exceedingly difficult to reconcile the statements of St. Brigid's biographers, but the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Lives of the saint are at one in assigning her a slave mother in the court of her father Dubhthach, and Irish chieftain of Leinster. Probably the most ancient life of St. Brigid is that by St. Broccan Cloen, who is said to have died 17 September, 650. It is metrical, as may be seen from the following specimen: Ni bu Sanct Brigid suanachCogitosus, a monk of Kildare in the eighth century, expounded the metrical life of St. Brigid, and versified it in good Latin. This is what is known as the "Second Life", and is an excellent example of Irish scholarship in the mid-eighth century. Perhaps the most interesting feature of Cogitosus's work is the description of the Cathedral of Kildare in his day: "Solo spatioso et in altum minaci proceritate porruta ac decorata pictis tabulis, tria intrinsecus habens oratoria ampla, et divisa parietibus tabulatis". The rood-screen was formed of wooden boards, lavishly decorated, and with beautifully decorated curtains. Probably the famous Round Tower of Kildare dates from the sixth century. Although St. Brigid was "veiled" or received by St. Macaille, at Croghan, yet, it is tolerably certain that she was professed by St. Mel of Ardagh, who also conferred on her abbatial powers. From Ardagh St. Macaille and St. Brigid followed St. Mel into the country of Teffia in Meath, including portions of Westmeath and Longford. This occurred about the year 468. St. Brigid's small oratory at Cill-Dara became the centre of religion and learning, and developed into a cathedral city. She founded two monastic institutions, one for men, and the other for women, and appointed St. Conleth as spiritual pastor of them. It has been frequently stated that she gave canonical jurisdiction to St. Conleth, Bishop of Kildare, but, as Archbishop Healy points out, she simply "selected the person to whom the Church gave this jurisdiction", and her biographer tells us distinctly that she chose St. Conleth "to govern the church along with herself". Thus, for centuries, Kildare was ruled by a double line of abbot-bishops and of abbesses, the Abbess of Kildare being regarded as superioress general of the convents in Ireland.
Ni bu huarach im sheire Dé,
Sech ni chiuir ni cossens
Ind nóeb dibad bethath che. (Saint Brigid was not given to sleep,
Nor was she intermittent about God's love;
Not merely that she did not buy, she did not seek for
The wealth of this world below, the holy one.)
Not alone was St. Bridget a patroness of students, but she also founded a school of art, including metal work and illumination, over which St. Conleth presided. From the Kildare scriptorium came the wondrous book of the Gospels, which elicited unbounded praise from Giraldus Cambrensis, but which has disappeared since the Reformation. According to this twelfth- century ecclesiastic, nothing that he had ever seen was at all comparable to the "Book of Kildare", every page of which was gorgeously illuminated, and he concludes a most laudatory notice by saying that the interlaced work and the harmony of the colours left the impression that "all this is the work of angelic, and not human skill". Small wonder that Gerald Barry assumed the book to have been written night after night as St. Bridget prayed, "an angel furnishing the designs, the scribe copying". Even allowing for the exaggerated stories told of St. Brigid by her numerous biographers, it is certain that she ranks as one of the most remarkable Irishwomen of the fifth century and as the Patroness of Ireland. She is lovingly called the "Queen of the South: the Mary of the Gael" by a writer in the "Leabhar Breac". St. Brigid died leaving a cathedral city and school that became famous all over Europe. In her honour St. Ultan wrote a hymn commencing:
Christus in nostra insulaThe sixth Life of the saint printed by Colgan is attributed to Coelan, an Irish monk of the eighth century, and it derives a peculiar importance from the fact that it is prefaced by a foreword from the pen of St. Donatus, also an Irish monk, who became Bishop of Fiesole in 824. St. Donatus refers to previous lives by St. Ultan and St. Aileran. When dying, St. Brigid was attended by St. Ninnidh, who was ever afterwards known as "Ninnidh of the Clean Hand" because he had his right hand encased with a metal covering to prevent its ever being defiled, after being he medium of administering the viaticum to Ireland's Patroness. She was interred at the right of the high altar of Kildare Cathedral, and a costly tomb was erected over her. In after years her shrine was an object of veneration for pilgrims, especially on her feast day, 1 February, as Cogitosus related. About the year 878, owing to the Scandinavian raids, the relics of St. Brigid were taken to Downpatrick, where they were interred in the tomb of St. Patrick and St. Columba. The relics of the three saints were discovered in 1185, and on 9 June of the following year were solemnly translated to a suitable resting place in Downpatrick Cathedral, in presence of Cardinal Vivian, fifteen bishops, and numerous abbots and ecclesiastics. Various Continental breviaries of the pre-Reformation period commemorate St. Brigid, and her name is included in a litany in the Stowe Missal. In Ireland today, after 1500 years, the memory of "the Mary of the Gael" is as dear as ever to the Irish heart, and, as is well known, Brigid preponderates as a female Christian name. Moreover, hundreds of place-names in her honour are to be found all over the country, e.g. Kilbride, Brideswell, Tubberbride, Templebride, etc. The hand of St. Brigid is preserved at Lumiar near Lisbon, Portugal, since 1587, and another relic is at St. Martin's Cologne.
Que vocatur Hivernia
Ostensus est hominibus
Maximis mirabilibus
Que perfecit per felicem
Celestis vite virginem
Precellentem pro merito
Magno in numdi circulo. (In our island of Hibernia Christ was made known to man by the very great miracles which he performed through the happy virgin of celestial life, famous for her merits through the whole world.)
Viewing the biography of St. Brigid from a critical standpoint we must allow a large margin for the vivid Celtic imagination and the glosses of medieval writers, but still the personality of the founder of Kildare stands out clearly, and we can with tolerable accuracy trace the leading events in her life, by a careful study of the old "Lives" as found in Colgan. It seems certain that Faughart, associated with memories of Queen Meave (Medhbh), was the scene of her birth; and Faughart Church was founded by St. Morienna in honour of St. Brigid. The old well of St. Brigid's adjoining the ruined church is of the most venerable antiquity, and still attracts pilgrims; in the immediate vicinity is the ancient mote of Faughart. As to St. Brigid's stay in Connacht, especially in the County Roscommon, there is ample evidence in the "Trias Thaumaturga", as also in the many churches founded by her in the Diocese of Elphim. Her friendship with St. Patrick is attested by the following paragraph from the "Book of Armagh", a precious manuscript of the eighth century, the authenticity of which is beyond question: "inter sanctum Patricium Brigitanque Hibernesium columpnas amicitia caritatis inerat tanta, ut unum cor consiliumque haberent unum. Christus per illum illamque virtutes multas peregit". (Between St. Patrick and St. Brigid, the columns of the Irish, there was so great a friendship of charity that they had but one heart and one mind. Through him and through her Christ performed many miracles.) At Armagh there was a "Templum Brigidis"; namely the little abbey church known as "Regles Brigid", which contained some relics of the saint, destroyed in 1179, by William Fitz Aldelm. It may be added that the original manuscript of Cogitosus's "Life of Brigid", or the "Second Life", dating from the closing years of the eighth century, is now in the Dominican friary at Eichstätt in Bavaria.
Sources
Acta SS.; Acta
Sanct. Hib. ex Cod. Salmant.; COGLGAN, Trias Thaumaturga (Louvain,
1647); STOKER, Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore; ID., Three
Middle Irish Homilies; O'HANLON, Lives of the Irish Saints (1 February),
II; TODD, Liber Hyumnorum; Stowe Missal; Leabhar Braec; MESSINGHAM,
Florilgium; ATKINSON, St. Brigid in Essays (Dublin, 1892); HEALY,
Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars; STOKES, Early Christian Art in
Ireland; HYDE, Literary History of Ireland (1900); KNOWLES, Life of St.
Brigid (1907). Cf. CHEVALIER, Bio-bibliogr. (Paris, 1905, 2nd ed.), s.v.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Saint Leutfridus
The America Needs Fatima Blog September 29, 2012:
The following text is an excerpt from a lecture given by Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira on June 20, 1967. It has been translated and adapted for publishing without the author’s revision. –Ed.
We will now read an excerpt on Saint Leutfridus, taken from the book: Physiognomy of the Saints, by Ernesto Hello.
Extraordinarily holy, but little known, Saint Leutfridus is an example for our mediocre days.
He was born of a good family in seventh century Neustria (present-day France). He left his family to become a Benedictine priest. After a great struggle, he founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross. He was gifted with prophesy and the ability to work miracles and was extremely severe.
One day a lady began to ridicule Saint Leutfridus for being bald. The saint replied: “Why do you poke fun at my natural defect? From now on, you will have no more hair on your head than I have on my forehead, and neither will your descendents.”
Coming across a man working in a field one Sunday, Saint Leutfridus raised his eyes to Heaven and prayed: “Lord, make this land eternally sterile.” From then on, neither grain nor wheat was ever seen in the field again. In its place, there were only thorns and thistles.
These are magnificent stories!
Saint Leutfridus had an abundant zeal for justice, but was even more ardently merciful.
This principle is important. Saint Leutfridus was both just and merciful. These two virtues must go hand in hand.
Saint Leutfridus was even ardently charitable while angry and when reprimanding…these were parallel lines of his life.
When one of his monks died, his brothers found three coins in his pocket. This showed that the deceased had violated his vow of poverty. Upon learning this, Saint Leutfridus ordered that his body be buried in profane ground.
Afterwards, he made a 40-day retreat, praying and weeping for the soul of this monk, who seemed lost.
Those whose piety is merely sentimental would not understand this. Confronted by this situation, they would pray: “Oh, poor man, grant him pardon,” and consider him saved. On the contrary, Saint Leutfridus ordered him to be buried in profane ground and then made a retreat, begging for the monk’s salvation. Our Lord, Himself, possessed this combination of sternness and mercy.
After these days of retreat, the Lord revealed to Saint Leutfridus that His mercy had saved the monk’s soul, even though His justice was prepared to condemn him.
During the interim between death and salvation, the monk was in a type of limbo. Then Saint Leutfridus made a retreat, did penance and the man was saved.
Someone could wonder how this was possible since the man was already dead and judgment takes place immediately when the soul separates from the body. It is hard to say, but we cannot put limits on God’s mercy. Perhaps He left the monk’s soul fused to his body, waiting for the sacrifice of Saint Leutfridus. In any case, this story clashes with the liberal idea that the monk would be automatically saved.
Saint Leutfridus was tremendously wrathful against the devil.
Often, people react to temptations by becoming afraid of the devil, but I have seen very few who react with holy hatred and furiously fight against him. We should all strive to attain this holy wrath.
When Satan approaches, we should be filled with anger and hatred, because the devil is the declared enemy of God and our souls. He wishes us every form of evil. Thus, when we are tempted, we should react with militant execration, like Saint Michael did.
Once, a friar called Saint Leutfridus from his cell to tell him that the devil was appearing in the chapel. Recognizing his old enemy, the saint ran to the Chapel and made the sign of the cross over the doors and windows, which closed, blocking all the exits.
Wisely, he captured the devil first, so that he could not get away.
Advancing towards the devil, the saint furiously beat him. The devil wanted to flee, but all the exits were blocked. Normally, he could have instantly left the body he had taken up, but apparently he had not permission to do so. God wanted to humiliate him further under Saint Leutfridus’ blows.
This is a splendid scene. The beating was physically given and spiritually felt, all under the Sign of the Cross. Just as the wicked souls are burned by Hell’s material fire, so too the devil’s soul was made to feel the saint’s blows.
Saint Leutfridus beat the body that was merely a doll of the devil.
Naturally, these blows tormented and humiliated the devil. We too can increase his torment. This is particularly excellent when Satan provokes an attack. Then, the counter-attack gives glory to Our Lady by showing that her children’s hatred of the devil is greater than his hatred of men.
God obliged the devil to flee by way of the belfry, so that he would feel his defeat more sensibly.
The devil was forced to flee by way of the tower, under the continued blows of Saint Leutfridus. We would love to have seen the saint deliver the final blow!
We can imagine the scene: Saint Leutfridus is an old man with white hair and a white beard, but still fit and possessing chestnut eyes. He is very strong and beats the devil with utter hatred, yet maintains perfect serenity. All the while, the devil’s doll, moaning and writhing, retreats from sight, by way of the belfry.
Since we only fight and struggle as far as our anger propels us, just wrath is important. We should strive to develop a holy wrath against the devil that is always vigilant and never sleeps.
Just as a mother with a very sick child sleeps with a wakeful heart, we too should sleep with our hearts in a state of continual vigilance. We should be able to proclaim that even while asleep, we remain a living torch of hatred against the devil.
Thus, we will be able to say: “I sleep, but my heart looks in hope for an occasion to give greater glory the Blessed Virgin.”
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The Infallibility of Canonization
The Hermeneutic of Continuity October 20, 2012:
It is a theologically certain doctrine that the canonisation of a saint is an infallible act of the Church's magisterium. I thought it might be useful to set down here some of the arguments that have been used by theologians. Just to be clear: the question is whether the doctrine:
"That the canonisation of a saint is an infallible act of the Church's magisterium."is itself theologically certain.
In his Quodlibets, St. Thomas Aquinas considered the question. Having affirmed that it was impossible for the Church to err in matters of faith, he went on to say:
“Because the honour which we show to the saints is a certain profession of faith by which we believe in the glory of the saints, it should be devoutly believed that not even in these matters can the judgement of the Church err.”(This is usually quoted in older books as Quodlibet 9.16 At the Corpus Thomisticum, you can find it at [68756] Quodlibet IX, q.8 corpus.)
Then a couple of references from the Jesuit Sacrae Theologiae Summa Vol 1 p.742 (My translations - and I am not able to double-check the references given):
Suarez said of the infallibility of canonisation:
"Although it is not de fide, I judge that it is sufficiently certain and that the contrary is impious and temerarious." (De Fide d.5 s.8 n.8)Benedict XIV noted that some older theologians denied the infallibility of decrees of canonisation but said that this divergence only proved that, on this point as with others, discussion was possible before the Catholic view was definitively fixed in the Schools. Defending this teaching, he said of the opinion which denied the infallibility of canonisation:
“If it is not heretical, it is nevertheless temerarious, bringing scandal to the whole Church ... savouring of heresy ... We say that he is the upholder of an erroneous proposition who dares to assert that the Pontiff in this or that Canonisation has erred, that this or that Saint canonised by him should not be honoured with the cult of dulia.” (De Canonisatione Sanctorum L.1 c.43 n.3)(The cult or veneration of dulia is a traditional way of referring to the veneration due to the saints as opposed to the cult of latria, or simply adoration, which is due to God alone and may not be given to any created thing or person.)
We can understand why canonisation must be infallible if we consider the difference between beatification and canonisation. Beatification is the permission of veneration locally or for particular groups. Such veneration is not commanded but tolerated and permitted.
In the case of canonisation, the Church not only tolerates and permits the veneration of a person but commends and prescribes such veneration to the whole Church. In the Church’s mission of leading the faithful to salvation, it is necessary that the formal and solemn presentation of a person by the supreme Pontiff as one who is to be imitated and venerated perpetually, should be part of the infallible magisterium of the Church.
Theologians further discuss whether the infallibility extends to the judgement that the saint had heroic virtues or simply to the judgement that the saint is in fact in heaven. The latter is more probable since the good of the Church does not require that every aspect of the canonisation process is flawless, only that Christ preserves the Church from requiring universal veneration of someone who is not in heaven.
So although we all want to give the Pope the benefit of our wisdom on how the canonisation process might be improved (and I don't claim that everything in the garden is rosy) we are nevertheless bound to believe that the saints that he does canonise are in heaven and worthy of our veneration.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
St. Francis of Assisi Was Not a Garden Gnome
Sancte Pater September 30, 2012:
By Father George Rutler
On October 4, we give thanks for one of the best known and least known of all saints. Least known, that is, because Francis of Assisi was not a garden gnome, or a doe-eyed hippy skipping with animals and hugging trees. Garden gnomes do not bear the Stigmata of Christ's wounds. A vegetarian? He berated a friar for wanting to abstain from meat on a feast day and said that on Christmas he would “smear the wall with meat.” An iconoclast? He was meticulous in the ceremonials of the Mass, insisting that every sacred vessel and vestment be the best, and his Rule dismissed any friar who parted from the Pope on the slightest article of Faith. A pacifist? He joined the Fifth Crusade, simmering ever since eleven thousand Muslims had invaded Rome and desecrated the tombs of Peter and Paul in the year 846. Francis went to North Africa in 1219 to convert the Muslims and confronted Sultan al Malik al-Kamil, who had just slaughtered five thousand Christians at Damietta. Francis fearlessly told the Sultan: “It is just that Christians invade the land you inhabit, for you blaspheme the name of Christ and alienate everyone you can from His worship.” While counselors called for the beheading of Francis according to Muslim law, the Sultan was so taken with the humility of Francis that he only had him beaten, chained and imprisoned, and then he released him.
We are engaged in similar challenges today. Of course, we are aware of the crisis in the Middle East, but the strife is worldwide. Consider Nigeria, whose Catholic population in the last century has soared to nearly twenty million. Last week, under Muslim pressure, the government stopped the Eternal Word Television Network from broadcasting. I have worked with this worldwide Catholic network for twenty-five years and have many Nigerian friends. Two days after the Nigerian bishops objected to this censorship, a Catholic church was destroyed by Muslims, who killed and wounded many worshipers. This seems to be under the radar of our own government and the mainstream media.
May Saint Francis be our model in how to deal with the threats of our own day: not enfeebled by sentimentality and relativism, but armed with a Franciscan zeal for the conversion of souls. We may not have Francis’ charm, but we have in our hearts and churches the same God. By the way, the popular “Prayer of Saint Francis,” which begins, “Make me a channel of your peace,” was actually the work of an anonymous author who published it in France in 1912. Its vague theology and lack of mention of Christ, express a semi-Pelagian heresy unworthy of the Saint of Assisi. Let the last words of the real Saint of Assisi be our guide: “I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what you are to do. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
How Charlemagne Discovered the Relics of Saint Anne the Mother of Mary
From http://cantuar.blogspot.ie/2012/07/how-charlemagne-discovered-relics-of.html
The emperor had an
exact and detailed account of the miraculous finding drawn up by a
notary and sent to Pope Saint Leo III, with an accom panying letter from
himself. These documents and the pope’s reply are preserved to this
day. Many papal bulls have attested, over and over again, to the
genuineness of Saint Anne’s relics at Apt.
On Easter AD 792,
Charlemagne discovered the relics of Saint Anne with the help of a deaf
handicapped boy. It's a wonderful tale for this feast day of Saint Anne.
Below is the
account, preserved in the correspondence of Pope Saint Leo III,
concerning the discovery of the relics of Saint Anne in the presence of
the Emperor Charlemagne.
Fourteen years
after Our Lord’s death, Saint Mary Magdalen, Saint Martha, Saint
Lazarus, and the others of the little band of Christians who were piled
into a boat without sails or oars and pushed out to sea to perish — in
the persecution of the Christians by the Jews of Jerusalem — were
careful to carry with them the tenderly loved body of Our Lady’s mother.
They feared lest it be profaned in the destruction, which Jesus had
told them was to come upon Jerusalem. When, by the power of God, their
boat sur vived and finally drifted to the shores of France, the little
company of saints buried Saint Anne’s body in a cave, in a place called
Apt, in the south of France. The church, which was later built over the
spot, fell into decay because of wars and religious persecutions, and as
the centuries passed, the place of Saint Anne’s tomb was forgotten.
The long years of
peace, which Charlemagne’s wise rule gave to southern France, enabled
the people to build a magnificent new church on the site of the old
chapel at Apt. Extraordinary and painstaking labor went into the
building of the great structure, and when the day of its consecration
arrived [Easter Sunday, 792 A.D.], the beloved Charlemagne, little
suspecting what was in store for him, declared himself happy indeed to
have jour neyed so many miles to be present for the holy occasion. At
the most solemn part of the ceremonies, a boy of fourteen, blind, deaf
and dumb from birth — and usually quiet and impassive — to the amaze
ment of those who knew him, completely distracted the at tention of the
entire congrega tion by becoming suddenly tremendously excited. He rose
from his seat, walked up the aisle to the altar steps, and to the
consternation of the whole church, struck his stick re soundingly again
and again upon a single step.
His embarrassed
family tried to lead him out, but he would not budge. He contin ued
frantically to pound the step, straining with his poor muted senses to
impart a knowledge sealed hopelessly within him. The eyes of the people
turned upon the em peror, and he, apparently in spired by God, took the
matter into his own hands. He called for workmen to remove the steps.
A subterranean
passage was revealed directly below the spot, which the boy’s stick had
indicated. Into this pas sage the blind lad jumped, to be followed by
the emperor, the priests, and the workmen.
They made their way
in the dim light of candles, and when, farther along the pas sage, they
came upon a wall that blocked further ad vance, the boy signed that
this also should be removed. When the wall fell, there was brought to
view still another long, dark corridor. At the end of this, the
searchers found a crypt, upon which, to their profound wonderment, a
vigil lamp, alight and burning in a little walled recess, cast a
heavenly radiance.
As Charlemagne and
his afflicted small guide, with their companions, stood be fore the
lamp, its light went out. And at the same moment, the boy, blind and
deaf and dumb from birth, felt sight and hearing and speech flood into
his young eyes, his ears, and his tongue.
“It is she! It is
she!” he cried out. The great emperor, not knowing what he meant,
nevertheless repeated the words after him. The call was taken up by the
crowds in the church above, as the people sank to their knees, bowed in
the realization of the presence of something celestial and holy.
The crypt at last
was opened, and a casket was found within it. In the casket was a
winding sheet, and in the sheet were relics, and upon the relics was an
inscrip tion that read, “Here lies the body of Saint Anne, mother of the
glorious Virgin Mary.” The winding sheet, it was noted, was of eastern
design and texture.
Charlemagne, over
whelmed, venerated with pro found gratitude the relics of the mother of
Heaven’s Queen. He remained a long time in prayer. The priests and the
people, awed by the graces given them in such abundance and by the
choice of their countryside for such a heavenly manifestation, for three
days spoke but rarely, and then in whispers.
St. James, the Muslim Moorslayer
Spero News July 25, 2012:
On the 23rd of May in the year of our Lord 844, near a place called Clavijo in the Rioja region of Spain, legend recalls that a miracle occurred that would alter the tide of history then washing over the Iberian peninsula. José González de Tejada, a Spanish historian of the 19th century, wrote “It was at that time that Saint James appeared, mounted on a strong and beautiful white horse. The sight of him enlivened the Christians and so terrified the infidels who then cowardly turned their backs and retreated, leaving the field covered with Moorish corpses and running with rivers of their blood that, it is said, flowed to the Ebro River some two leagues away from that place.”
This image of the apostle of Jesus, James the Greater – so-called because he was the first of that time to heed the call of the Lord – would serve the resurgent Catholics of Spain well in their centuries of struggle against Muslim Moorish occupation. Muslims had come to Spain in 711 at the invitation of a Spanish Christian prince who had made war on a fellow Christian. Having established a foothold across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Moors would then advance and then cover the entire Iberian peninsula south of the Pyrenees and drive into France, only to finally break against the iron wall of Frankish infantry led by Charles Martel in 732 near Poitiers on the outskirts of Paris. Once the Moors retreated south of the Pyrenees, Spain and Portugal would become a prize to be contested by Muslims and Christians for centuries. The Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne himself would lead a crusade into Spain, only to retreat and come to grief over the death of his lieutenant Roland at the hands of renegade Basques.
The figure of a saint mounted on a white charger gave wings to Spanish resistance to Moorish occupation. Saint James himself was a martyr, killed by his own people over religious differences. But the mounted hero of the battle of came to symbolize the beginnings of an Hispanic nationalism that was to carry Spain ultimately to its unification under the Catholic Monarchs Fernando and Isabel and their endorsement of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to what he thought was the Spice Islands. The crusades against the Moors throughout Spain for nearly eight centuries became known as the Reconquest, since it was agreed that Muslim usurpers must be thrown back to Morocco from whence they came. Since Spain was occupied with its own crusades, very few Spanish knights and crusaders apart from some from Catalonia were to follow their English, French and German confreres to the Holy Land. And that Spanish Reconquest, with its religious and secular motivations, was to continue under the guise of conquest in the Americas like a relentless tidal wave that swept both pitiless Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, and pious and humane Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, to their destinies in a new land where Spain would be remembered for the implacable fervor of its sons, for good and for ill.
‘James’, in the Castilian and Catalonian languages, is rendered variously as ‘Jaime’, ‘Jaume’, ‘Jacobo’, and ‘Yago’. It is the last of these names that the patron of Spain and its furious knights became known. ‘Santiago’ is, of course, ‘Saint James’ and it is Santiago by which he is known in Spanish history. The bones of the Apostle James are found in the cathedral at at Santiago de Compostela, which has been a place of Christian pilgrimage rivaled only by Rome and the Holy Land for more than 1000 years. The saint’s name was invoked during the centuries of fighting between Moors and Christians: ‘¡Santiago y cierra España!’ – Saint James and Spain, charge! This was the battle cry that had its origins at the Battle of Clavijo and that would be famously shouted at the Battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212 when rival kings and princes of the Iberian peninsula joined forces against the Almohad Caliph Muhammad al-Nasr.
Orders of knights were established in Spain both to protect pilgrims to Santiago deCompostela, and to do battle with the Moors. At the bloody battle at Navas deTolosa, the Knights of Saint James, the Knights of Calatrava, and the Templar Knights were heavily engaged and suffered great losses, only adding to their renown and mystique. The Knights of Saint James ‘Los Caballeros de Santiago’ became among the most prominent of Spanish cavalry, and later figured in the Conquest of the Americas – as evidenced by the many cities and towns in the Americas bearing the name ‘Santiago’. The legendary appearance of Saint James was the beginning of the Jacobean tradition, that through the centuries has become a peaceful pilgrimage of those seeking spiritual and corporeal health, walking along the Camino de Santiago – the Road to Saint James.
A great deal of ink, as well as blood, has been spilt since the alleged appearance of Saint James with sword in hand and astride a white horse, some twelve centuries ago. It is said that the Moors also saw the vision, and cried “Allah has come to the aid of Santiago!” – the heaven-sent mounted knight thereafter known as SantiagoMatamoros, Saint James the Moorslayer. History and legend, religion and the affairs of state, were forged into a story that would sustain and unify an embattled Hispanic nation for centuries, giving it a character that would last well into the 20thcentury.
It has long been said, and repeated by balladeers, chroniclers and historians, that King Ramiro of Asturias, the son of Alfonso the Chaste, had refused to render a nefarious tribute to the Moors that had been imposed by long before. According to legend, the Kingdom of Asturias had long suffered under what became known as the annual Tribute of One Hundred Maidens. This was a tribute of Christian souls sent to pacify the Emir of Córdoba, that included not only the 100 unmarried girls, but also more than 50 women. Shamed by this sacrifice to the minotaur in Cordoba, Ramiro decided to do battle instead.
Uniting the entire region, Ramiro gathered a powerful army that he hurled against the Moors at Albelda de Iregua, near Logroño – the capital of La Rioja. The Moors proved to be nearly matchless opponents, having been reinforced by levies from Morocco. These encircled Ramiro’s forces, who were then thrown back towardsClavijo where they took refuge at the castle there. On the night of his defeat, Ramiro had a dream which promised a victory against the Moors arrayed around him. Assured of being accompanied by the heavenly knight Santiago, Ramiro and his men went to battle on the next day, defeating the Moors at a place that has ever after been known as the Field of Slaughter.
Just a day later, while Moorish and Christian corpses still littered the ground, Ramiro declared in the nearby town of Calahorra that all Christians should go as pilgrims to the shrine of Saint James at Compostela in gratitude for what appeared to be a victory sent from God. Linking the martial victory to Christian religion in 1270, King Alfonso the Wise wrote in his General Chronicle the words of Saint James in Ramiro’s dream before the Battle of Clavijo, “’Know that Our Lord Jesus Christ divided among the Apostles all of the provinces of the earth. And to me he gave only Spain to guard. King Ramiro, strengthen your prayer and be strong and firm in your deeds, knowing that I am Saint James. And it will come true tomorrow that you will have victory over all of those Moors, with God’s help.’”
So the legend began. When it seemed that the Moors would carry the day, a brilliant Santiago appeared on his white horse and wielding an enormous sword that decapitated 70,000 Muslims at once, thus earning a humble Jewish fisherman of the 1st century, James the son of Zebedee, the sobriquet of Moorslayer.
Invocations of Saint James, an apparent atomic weapon of the medieval age, only multiplied after his brilliant sword was unsheathed at Clavijo. And it was Spain as an entity that also emerged from the forge of battle. Spain, which remains divided by mountains and valleys, language and custom, was unified at least while disparate kingdoms such as Aragon, Asturias, Navarra, Catalonia, and Valencia were killing Muslim Moors. It was at the Battle of Coimbra in 1064 that Santiago again intervened in favor of Christian Iberians when the troops of Fernando I of Leon encountered a Moorish army in Portugal. It was there that the battling of Christians against Muslims became known as a Crusade to rid European soil of Islam. Thus, gradually, Catholic religion became an identifying identity long before the Castilian language would become the Spanish lingua franca by the 15th century and the Age of Discovery.
Oddly enough, it was a Mozarab – a Christian of Moorish or Jewish ancestry – who urged him to seize Coimbra. Sisnando Davidiz became the count of Coimbra and ruled during the apogee of Mozarabic culture on the peninsula. Known for fostering relative peace with Muslim neighbors to the south of the city, he nonetheless hedged his bets and fortified the region with peerless castles. His bones rest in the cathedral of Coimbra, but are not noted for visits from pilgrims, despite his efforts in the cause of Santiago.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Who Was the Most Influential Saint of His Time?
From http://catholicexchange.com/who-was-the-most-influential-saint-of-his-time/
Reread that headline carefully. The question is not who is the most influential saint of all time, but rather of his or her time. The answer to the former is probably easy. I imagine many of us would tick of one of the following—St. Francis, St. Catherine, St. Patrick, St. Anthony, St. Joseph, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Dominic, to name just a few—it’s a long list. But the second question—who was most influential in his lifetime?—is a bit of a head-scratcher.
Think of your own answer to this question and e-mail me (bealenews@gmail.com) your thoughts before reading further. (Please, in addition to listing your nominee, give a reason. I may post the runners-up in a follow-up, but I’ll keep your names out of it!) I imagine that few of us, including yours truly, would have come up with the answer that noted Catholic historian Warren Carroll does:
Answer: St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Here’s what Carroll writes of him:
No man before or since who held no office of power throughout his life bestrode his age as did this monk of genius and of leashed but flaming passion, juridically only one of the many hundreds of abbots in the Church, yet the terror and inspiration of emperors and kings, the shield and sword—and where necessary the goad—of Popes. No historical determinist theory, no calculations of material or institutional power and influence can begin to account for St. Bernard of Clairvaux and what he did.
This is high praise, even for a saint, but St. Bernard deserves it. During his life, he launched a sweeping reform of the religious life in Europe, squashed a major anti-trinitarian heresy, nearly single-handedly averted a schism in the Papacy, and sparked a new crusade to Jerusalem, according to Carroll’s account. His achievements do not stop there. St. Bernard, among other things, also drew up the rule for the legendary Knights Templar and was one of the founders of the Cistercian order. He is also credited with writing about ten treatises. And, it is to him, that we owe prayers like the “Memorare” to Mary and hymns such as “O Sacred Head Surrounded.” Indeed, it is hard to think of a saint whose do deeply touched so many different areas of the social, political, and spiritual life of his time.
CE also recommends:
Reread that headline carefully. The question is not who is the most influential saint of all time, but rather of his or her time. The answer to the former is probably easy. I imagine many of us would tick of one of the following—St. Francis, St. Catherine, St. Patrick, St. Anthony, St. Joseph, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Dominic, to name just a few—it’s a long list. But the second question—who was most influential in his lifetime?—is a bit of a head-scratcher.
Think of your own answer to this question and e-mail me (bealenews@gmail.com) your thoughts before reading further. (Please, in addition to listing your nominee, give a reason. I may post the runners-up in a follow-up, but I’ll keep your names out of it!) I imagine that few of us, including yours truly, would have come up with the answer that noted Catholic historian Warren Carroll does:
Answer: St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Here’s what Carroll writes of him:
No man before or since who held no office of power throughout his life bestrode his age as did this monk of genius and of leashed but flaming passion, juridically only one of the many hundreds of abbots in the Church, yet the terror and inspiration of emperors and kings, the shield and sword—and where necessary the goad—of Popes. No historical determinist theory, no calculations of material or institutional power and influence can begin to account for St. Bernard of Clairvaux and what he did.
This is high praise, even for a saint, but St. Bernard deserves it. During his life, he launched a sweeping reform of the religious life in Europe, squashed a major anti-trinitarian heresy, nearly single-handedly averted a schism in the Papacy, and sparked a new crusade to Jerusalem, according to Carroll’s account. His achievements do not stop there. St. Bernard, among other things, also drew up the rule for the legendary Knights Templar and was one of the founders of the Cistercian order. He is also credited with writing about ten treatises. And, it is to him, that we owe prayers like the “Memorare” to Mary and hymns such as “O Sacred Head Surrounded.” Indeed, it is hard to think of a saint whose do deeply touched so many different areas of the social, political, and spiritual life of his time.
CE also recommends:
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
The saint who refused point blank to accept the Resurrection
From http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/spirituallife/saintoftheweek/2012/07/03/the-saint-who-refused-point-blank-to-accept-the-resurrection/
Thomas, who initially refused point blank to accept the fact of the Resurrection, is very much a saint for our time.
With St Peter, he appears as the most human of the Apostles. In fact the two of them resemble each other in several ways: in their spontaneously generous enthusiasm, in their failures of understanding, and in the final, enduring triumph of their faith.
Mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels only as one of the Twelve, Thomas is far more prominent in St John, where he is also given the name Didymus, Greek for “twin”. Since in Aramaic tau’ma also means “twin”, Thomas Didymus is a tautology. His other half has been lost to history, though there has been wild speculation that he might have been St Matthew.
In John 11, when the disciples are wary of the dangers of returning with Jesus to hostile Judaea, Thomas warms the heart with his gloriously carefree declaration of loyalty: “Let us go too, and be killed along with Him.”
Later, in John 14, when Jesus speaks of going away to prepare a home for his followers, Thomas clearly does not comprehend – but which of us would have done? – what He is talking about.
“But, Lord, we do not know where Thou art going,” he blurts out “how are we to know the way there?” Nor, perhaps, was he greatly enlightened by Jesus’s reply: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
Again, if we put ourselves into Thomas’s place, what could be more understandable than his doubts about reports of the Resurrection? “Until I have seen the marks of the nails on his hands, until I have put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, you will never make me believe” (Jn 20:25).
Eight days later, in the locked room in Jerusalem, Thomas was granted the proof he had demanded. “Let me have thy finger,” Jesus tells him. “See, here are my hands. Let me have thy hand; put it into my side. Cease thy doubting, and believe.”
Who among us, though, would have been capable of surrendering to the miracle with Thomas’s magnificently unadorned simplicity?
“Thou art my Lord and my God,” he declared.
“And Jesus said to him, Thou hast learned to believe, Thomas, because thou hast seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have learned to believe.” (Jn 20: 26-28).
In that implied rebuke lies the challenge of Christianity.
According to one tradition Thomas subsequently preached in Parthia (the north-east of modern Iran). According to another, he journeyed to India, and was martyred at Mylapore, near Madras.
Much more importantly, though, he lives eternally in that moment of humbled witness to the reality of the Resurrection.
Thomas, who initially refused point blank to accept the fact of the Resurrection, is very much a saint for our time.
With St Peter, he appears as the most human of the Apostles. In fact the two of them resemble each other in several ways: in their spontaneously generous enthusiasm, in their failures of understanding, and in the final, enduring triumph of their faith.
Mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels only as one of the Twelve, Thomas is far more prominent in St John, where he is also given the name Didymus, Greek for “twin”. Since in Aramaic tau’ma also means “twin”, Thomas Didymus is a tautology. His other half has been lost to history, though there has been wild speculation that he might have been St Matthew.
In John 11, when the disciples are wary of the dangers of returning with Jesus to hostile Judaea, Thomas warms the heart with his gloriously carefree declaration of loyalty: “Let us go too, and be killed along with Him.”
Later, in John 14, when Jesus speaks of going away to prepare a home for his followers, Thomas clearly does not comprehend – but which of us would have done? – what He is talking about.
“But, Lord, we do not know where Thou art going,” he blurts out “how are we to know the way there?” Nor, perhaps, was he greatly enlightened by Jesus’s reply: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
Again, if we put ourselves into Thomas’s place, what could be more understandable than his doubts about reports of the Resurrection? “Until I have seen the marks of the nails on his hands, until I have put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, you will never make me believe” (Jn 20:25).
Eight days later, in the locked room in Jerusalem, Thomas was granted the proof he had demanded. “Let me have thy finger,” Jesus tells him. “See, here are my hands. Let me have thy hand; put it into my side. Cease thy doubting, and believe.”
Who among us, though, would have been capable of surrendering to the miracle with Thomas’s magnificently unadorned simplicity?
“Thou art my Lord and my God,” he declared.
“And Jesus said to him, Thou hast learned to believe, Thomas, because thou hast seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have learned to believe.” (Jn 20: 26-28).
In that implied rebuke lies the challenge of Christianity.
According to one tradition Thomas subsequently preached in Parthia (the north-east of modern Iran). According to another, he journeyed to India, and was martyred at Mylapore, near Madras.
Much more importantly, though, he lives eternally in that moment of humbled witness to the reality of the Resurrection.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
The carpenter who kept hundreds of fugitive Catholics alive
From http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/spirituallife/saintoftheweek/2012/03/22/the-carpenter-who-kept-hundreds-of-fugitive-catholics-alive/
Nicholas Owen (c 1550-1606) was one of four sons of Walter Owen, a carpenter who lived in Oxford. Inheriting his father’s skill, he came to specialise in the construction of concealed priest-holes in country houses. Many Catholics on the run owed their lives to him.
Nicholas Owen (c 1550-1606) was one of four sons of Walter Owen, a carpenter who lived in Oxford. Inheriting his father’s skill, he came to specialise in the construction of concealed priest-holes in country houses. Many Catholics on the run owed their lives to him.
“I verily think,” noted Fr John Gerard, “that
no one can be said to have done more good of all those who laboured in
the English vineyard.
“He was the immediate occasion of saving many hundreds of persons, both ecclesiastical and secular, which had been lost and forfeited many times over if the priests had been taken in their houses.”
Owen is first encountered in 1581 in connection with the martyrdom of Edmund Campion, whose servant he may have been. At all events, he maintained Campion’s innocence of treason with such force that he himself was imprisoned.
He must have been tough to survive the appalling conditions, which killed one of his fellow prisoners. Yet he was a small man who walked with a pronounced limp after a pack horse fell on top of him and broke his leg.
From 1586 Owen was in the service of Fr Henry Garnet, the Jesuit Provincial, with whom he travelled extensively, staying at Catholic houses where he constructed supremely well-disguised hiding places.
A few authentic examples survive: for example, at Sawston Hall near Cambridge, Huddington Court in Worcestershire and Coughton Court in Warwickshire.
To maintain security Owen would never discuss this work. While constructing a priest-hole he would ostentatiously engage in repairs in some other part of the house during the day, and work on his hiding places at night.
In 1594 Owen accompanied another priest, Fr Gerard, to London, to help him with the purchase of a house. While in town, however, they were betrayed by a servant of the Wiseman family, for whom Owen had constructed a refuge at Broadoaks in Essex.
The authorities, aware that Owen was a repository of many secrets of recusant life, tortured him most horribly, but without extracting any compromising information. After his release he helped Fr Gerard escape from the Tower of London by means of a rope strung across the moat.
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 again made Owen a wanted man. With three other Jesuits he took refuge at Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire. When the house was raided, 100 men were employed to search for them, but failed to find the priest-hole.
After eight days the starving Owen slipped out of the hiding place unobserved and tried to pass himself off to his captors as a priest in order to save Fr Garnet.
The ruse failed, and Owen was mercilessly tortured in the Tower, until on March 22 1606 his entrails burst out when he was on the rack, and he expired.
“He was the immediate occasion of saving many hundreds of persons, both ecclesiastical and secular, which had been lost and forfeited many times over if the priests had been taken in their houses.”
Owen is first encountered in 1581 in connection with the martyrdom of Edmund Campion, whose servant he may have been. At all events, he maintained Campion’s innocence of treason with such force that he himself was imprisoned.
He must have been tough to survive the appalling conditions, which killed one of his fellow prisoners. Yet he was a small man who walked with a pronounced limp after a pack horse fell on top of him and broke his leg.
From 1586 Owen was in the service of Fr Henry Garnet, the Jesuit Provincial, with whom he travelled extensively, staying at Catholic houses where he constructed supremely well-disguised hiding places.
A few authentic examples survive: for example, at Sawston Hall near Cambridge, Huddington Court in Worcestershire and Coughton Court in Warwickshire.
To maintain security Owen would never discuss this work. While constructing a priest-hole he would ostentatiously engage in repairs in some other part of the house during the day, and work on his hiding places at night.
In 1594 Owen accompanied another priest, Fr Gerard, to London, to help him with the purchase of a house. While in town, however, they were betrayed by a servant of the Wiseman family, for whom Owen had constructed a refuge at Broadoaks in Essex.
The authorities, aware that Owen was a repository of many secrets of recusant life, tortured him most horribly, but without extracting any compromising information. After his release he helped Fr Gerard escape from the Tower of London by means of a rope strung across the moat.
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 again made Owen a wanted man. With three other Jesuits he took refuge at Hindlip Hall in Worcestershire. When the house was raided, 100 men were employed to search for them, but failed to find the priest-hole.
After eight days the starving Owen slipped out of the hiding place unobserved and tried to pass himself off to his captors as a priest in order to save Fr Garnet.
The ruse failed, and Owen was mercilessly tortured in the Tower, until on March 22 1606 his entrails burst out when he was on the rack, and he expired.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The monk who was burned by a demon in his sleep
From http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/spirituallife/saintoftheweek/2012/01/16/the-monk-who-was-burned-by-a-demon-in-his-sleep/
St Fursey (January 16) helped advance Christianity in East Anglia and northern France
Fursey
(died 648) was an Irish monk who helped to advance Christianity in both
East Anglia and northern France. Precisely where and when Fursey was
born is unknown. According to a seventh-century life, he established a
monastery at Louth, some 35 miles north of Dublin.
The Venerable Bede records that Fursey experienced a vision, in which angels carried him out of his body to a great height. Looking down into a gloomy valley, he saw four fires. The first, an angel explained, was Falsehood; the next Covetousness; the third Discord and the last Injustice. Gradually these fires drew together into one mighty conflagration.
Fursey became alarmed. The angel, though, reassured him: “It will not burn you because you did not kindle it; for although it appears as a great and terrible fire, it tests everyone according according to his desert, and will burn away sinful desires.” Fursey did not entirely escape, for one of the demons who tortured fallen spirits in the flames thrust a victim against him, causing him to be burnt on his (presumably ghostly) shoulder and jaw.
Fursey recognised the man, and remembered that he had appropriated some of his clothes after he died. Restored once more to his body, he found that he had a permanent scar on his shoulder and jaw.
Bede heard this story from a monk who had met Fursey. His informant recalled that, although it was a bitterly cold day when he saw the saint, who was but thinly clad, the holy man was sweating profusely – “either”, as Bede suavely observes, “because of the consolation or the terror of his recollections”.
Around 637 Fursey crossed the Irish Sea to begin his life as a missionary. His first field of endeavour was in East Anglia, where King Sigbert wanted to restore Christianity after the depredations of the pagan Redwald.
Inspired by another vision, Fursey built a monastery on some land given him by Sigbert at Cnobheresburg (Burgh Castle in Suffolk). Soon, though, he turned over the administration of the monastery to his brother Fullan, and went to live with another brother, Ultan, who had become a hermit.
After he had spent some 10 years in East Anglia the kingdom was attacked by the paganissimus Penda of Mercia. Fursey fled across the Channel, where he was welcomed by the Frankish King Clovis II.
The King’s wife Balthild was an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat who had been sold into slavery in Gaul. Whether or not through this contact, Fursey was able to found another monastery at Lagnac, near Paris on the River Marne, before dying on a journey in 649.
Disputes over where he should be buried testified to the high regard in which he was held. Finally he was laid to rest in Péronne, where his cult continued to grow.
St Fursey (January 16) helped advance Christianity in East Anglia and northern France
By Spiritual Life on Monday, 16 January 2012
The Venerable Bede records that Fursey experienced a vision, in which angels carried him out of his body to a great height. Looking down into a gloomy valley, he saw four fires. The first, an angel explained, was Falsehood; the next Covetousness; the third Discord and the last Injustice. Gradually these fires drew together into one mighty conflagration.
Fursey became alarmed. The angel, though, reassured him: “It will not burn you because you did not kindle it; for although it appears as a great and terrible fire, it tests everyone according according to his desert, and will burn away sinful desires.” Fursey did not entirely escape, for one of the demons who tortured fallen spirits in the flames thrust a victim against him, causing him to be burnt on his (presumably ghostly) shoulder and jaw.
Fursey recognised the man, and remembered that he had appropriated some of his clothes after he died. Restored once more to his body, he found that he had a permanent scar on his shoulder and jaw.
Bede heard this story from a monk who had met Fursey. His informant recalled that, although it was a bitterly cold day when he saw the saint, who was but thinly clad, the holy man was sweating profusely – “either”, as Bede suavely observes, “because of the consolation or the terror of his recollections”.
Around 637 Fursey crossed the Irish Sea to begin his life as a missionary. His first field of endeavour was in East Anglia, where King Sigbert wanted to restore Christianity after the depredations of the pagan Redwald.
Inspired by another vision, Fursey built a monastery on some land given him by Sigbert at Cnobheresburg (Burgh Castle in Suffolk). Soon, though, he turned over the administration of the monastery to his brother Fullan, and went to live with another brother, Ultan, who had become a hermit.
After he had spent some 10 years in East Anglia the kingdom was attacked by the paganissimus Penda of Mercia. Fursey fled across the Channel, where he was welcomed by the Frankish King Clovis II.
The King’s wife Balthild was an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat who had been sold into slavery in Gaul. Whether or not through this contact, Fursey was able to found another monastery at Lagnac, near Paris on the River Marne, before dying on a journey in 649.
Disputes over where he should be buried testified to the high regard in which he was held. Finally he was laid to rest in Péronne, where his cult continued to grow.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
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