Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Saints

  • Saint Cecilia, Virgin Martyr

    Saint Cecilia, Virgin Martyr

    For those of you who are musicians, whether you play an instrument or sing, this is your feast day. Today we celebrate Saint Cecilia, a virgin and martyr of the early church who is the patron saint of musicians.

    Saint Cecilia was a force for good among those who knew her. She worked hard to convert as many as she could to the faith, and before her death, is said to have converted at least four hundred people. She was born to a rich family, and promised in marriage to a youth named Valerian. She prayed, fasted, and wore sackcloth, beseeching the saints and angels to guard her virginity.

    During her wedding ceremony, she was said to have sung in her heart to God, which, of course, is why she became the patroness of musicians. Before the consummation of the marriage, she informed Valerian of her vow of virginity and that she had an angel protecting her. He wanted to see the angel as proof. She said he would see the angel after he was baptized, which he was by Pope Urbanus. Returning, he found the angel at her side. Valerian’s brother Tibertius heard of the angel and his brother’s baptism, and he asked to be baptized too.

    After their baptisms, Cecila went about preaching and calling people to baptism, and Valerian and Tibertius would each day bury the saints who were murdered by the prefect of the city. Eventually Valerian and Tibertius were arrested and executed by the prefect after they refused to make sacrifice to pagan gods. Eventually Cecilia was arrested and condemned, although it took three attempts to put her to death.

    Saint Cecilia’s life and death put the obligation of evangelization on the front burner. If she could evangelize four hundred people at the eventual cost of her own life, can we witness to the faith with our life, and invite people to come to know Jesus by reflecting him in what we say and do? Saint Cecilia may be the patroness of musicians, but I think she can be said to be the patroness of evangelization as well.

    Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

  • The Solemnity of All Saints

    The Solemnity of All Saints

    Today’s readings

    I think we all bristle, unfortunately and mistakenly, at the idea of being a saint. Saints are those super-holy folks who are depicted in artwork and glorified in amazing stories. We are just ordinary people who struggle with our holiness, at best. But today, the Church is asking us to think about saints in a broader way. Yes, we include all those “official” saints that have been canonized through the ages. The Church rejoices in the saints because when someone becomes a saint, the Church recognizes that he or she is definitely in heaven, the goal of all our lives. That’s what the process of canonization is all about. And bringing people to heaven is the whole point of the Church. So, from the many saints of every time and place, we know of thousands of people that are certainly in heaven. This illustrates that God’s will is done, doesn’t it?

    But, as I said, I think the Church wants us to think about saints in a broader way. There is the story of a schoolteacher who asked her children what a saint was. One little girl thought about the saints she saw in stained glass windows, and said “Saints are people the light shines through.” Think about that for a minute – that little girl isn’t far from the kingdom of God there. Because all people are called to let the light of Christ shine through them, and saints are those people who have made that the business of their lives.

    Heaven is that great multitude that John the Revelator tells us about in today’s first reading: that multitude “which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” They are wearing, he tells us, white robes, which have been washed in the blood of the lamb. That seems very counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Everyone knows that blood stains like nobody’s business. But he’s speaking poetically here, and recognizes that nothing washes us sinners quite as clean as the saving blood of Jesus Christ.

    And that’s really the only way. Because we’re quite right when we bristle a bit at being called saints. We can’t be saints all on our own. We aren’t good enough, we can’t make up for our sins with any kind of completeness, and there’s basically no way that we can jump high enough to get to heaven. But this feast of All Saints recognizes that we don’t have to. We don’t have to because Christ has saved us through no merit of our own but based solely on God’s love for us. The fact that we can be called saints is a grace, and we dare not bristle so much that we turn away from that grace.

    It may help to know that most, if not all, of the saints struggled with holiness too. Think about Saint Paul himself: he began his career by persecuting Christians and we know that he had a hand in the stoning of Saint Stephen. Or think about Saint Augustine who was an intellectual man who disdained Christianity, until his mother’s prayers caught up with him. Or we might think even more recently of Saint Teresa of Calcutta who experienced a very dark time in her life when she could not even communicate with Jesus. But Jesus was still there and led her to heaven.

    We are all of us on a journey, and we know that our true home is not in this place, however good it may be. We are on a journey to heaven, and that means that we are in the process of becoming saints. That journey consists in following the Way who is Jesus the Christ, our Lord and Redeemer. He has commanded, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” and there is no way to do that except to follow him.

    So, no, of course, not all of us will be canonized. Most of us will go to the Kingdom rather imperfect in many ways, and will have to work that out in the grace of Purgatory. But if we look to those canonized saints for inspiration, perhaps our relationship with the Lord will lead us and our brothers and sisters to that place where all the saints worship around the Throne of the Lamb.

    Today we, the Church militant, honor the Church triumphant: not only the great saints like Mary and Joseph, Patrick and Benedict, Michael and Gabriel, Francis and Dominic, but also those saints that God alone has known. We glory in their triumph that was made possible by them joining themselves to Christ. We take inspiration from their battles and from the faith that helped keep them in Christ when they could have turned away. If God could do that in their lives, he can certainly do that in ours too. Perhaps, if we are willing to accept it, he can fill us with saintly attributes: strength in weakness, compassion in the face of need, witness to faith in times when society lacks direction, and so much more.

    Those virtues are virtues that we think about when we call to mind those official, canonized saints. But they are virtues for which we can and should strive as well. The desire and the grace to attain those virtues comes from God himself, and the reward for receiving that grace and living those virtues is a heavenly relationship with God. What could be better than that?

    This is a lot of work, it may well go unrewarded this side of the Kingdom of God, and it’s not easy to live a saintly life, but Jesus makes a promise today to those who strive to do so: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven!”

  • Saint John Paul II, Pope

    Saint John Paul II, Pope

    Today, we celebrate the feast of Pope Saint John Paul II, who was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland.  After his ordination to the priesthood and theological studies in Rome, he returned to his homeland and resumed various pastoral and academic tasks.  He was ordained an auxiliary bishop and, in 1964, became Archbishop of Kraków and took part in the Second Vatican Council.  On October 16, 1978, he was elected pope and took the name John Paul II, honoring his two predecessors, Pope Saint John XXIII, and Blessed Pope Paul VI.  His exceptional apostolic zeal, particularly for families, young people, and the sick, led him to numerous pastoral visits throughout the world.  Among the many fruits which he has left as a heritage to the Church are above all his rich theological teaching and the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church and for the Eastern Churches. 

    In Rome on April 2, 2005, the eve of the Second Sunday of Easter (or of Divine Mercy, a feast to which he had particular devotion), he departed peacefully in the Lord. He was canonized by Pope Francis on that same feast in 2014, and was canonized in 2018, also by Pope Francis. Normally a saint’s feast day falls on the day of his or her death, but because that date would often fall during holy week, and because the Church desired that his feast be celebrated with due solemnity each year, his feast is today, on the anniversary of the date of the Mass for his inauguration to the pontificate.

    Saint John Paul’s contributions to the Church and the world are profound: contributing to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and reinvigorating the Church through authentic teaching and his own personal charisma. We may remember that he often echoed the Scriptural teaching of “Do not be afraid,” and modeled the freedom of living one’s faith and witnessing without apology. May we all be reinvigorated as we celebrate his feast, and devote ourselves totally to Jesus, through Mary, as he did.

    Saint John Paul II, pray for us.

  • Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs/Make a Difference Day

    Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs/Make a Difference Day

    St. Isaac and St. John were among eight missionaries who worked among the Huron and Iroquois Indians in the New World in the seventeenth century. They were devoted to their work and were accomplishing many conversions. The conversions, though, were not welcomed by the tribes, and eventually St. Isaac was captured and imprisoned by the Iroquois for months. He was moved from village to village and was tortured and beaten all along the way. Eventually he was able to escape and return to France. But zeal for his mission compelled him to return, and to resume his work among the native peoples when a peace treaty was signed in 1646. His belief that the peace treaty would be observed turned out to be false hope, and he was captured by a Mohawk war party and beheaded.

    St. John worked among the Iroquois and ministered to them amid a smallpox epidemic. As a scholastic Jesuit, he was able to compose a catechism and write a dictionary in the Huron language, which made possible many conversions. He was eventually captured, tortured and killed by the Iroquois.

    Anything worthwhile costs us something, and that’s especially true of our faith. If we are serious about it, if we love God and want to be caught up in his life, we’re going to have to pay for it in some way. Saints Isaac, John, and their companions make that clear. One of the biggest costs to us, I think, is our comfort zone. To really live the faith, we have to get out of that comfort and do what God wants of us. In the Gospel, Jesus was telling his disciples that they would have to give witness to him. And they understood that that would cost them something – perhaps cost them their lives.

    We disciples are also going to have to pay some price for living our faith. Probably not something as drastic as being tortured and beheaded, but something fairly costly for us. For us today, perhaps that cost is giving up a beautiful fall Saturday to clean brass in the church, make stress blankets for Linden Oaks or mats for the homeless from used plastic bags, or closing the parish garden at the Vianney House, or any of the myriad of projects we are planning today.

    Today, on our Make a Difference Day, we give strong witness to our faith in our work. As we come together to pack meals at Feed My Starving Children, spend time in adoration praying for our community, or clean up the grounds along Renwick Road, our presence and concern may be the way God is using us to get someone’s attention and see his presence in her or his life. Living our faith is always going to cost us something and that something is likely to be status or popularity, or at least the wondering glance from people who aren’t ready to accept the faith. But the volumes that we speak by living our faith anyway might just lay the groundwork for conversion and become a conduit of grace. We are told that we don’t have to hammer out all the words we want to say; that the Holy Spirit will give us eloquence that we can only dream of. And it’s true, if we trust God, if we live our faith when it’s popular or unpopular, we will have the Spirit and the words. God only knows what can be accomplished in those grace-filled moments! I pray that you see Christ everywhere as you witness today.

  • Saint Francis of Assisi, Religious

    Saint Francis of Assisi, Religious

    Today, we celebrate the memorial of one of the most beloved saints of all time, Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis had a conversion that came when he was very young. He had contracted a serious illness, and spent a good deal of time in intense and difficult prayer. In that time of prayer, our Lord called Francis to renounce everything that people who live according to the flesh tend to desire, and to embrace everything that the world tended to shrink from. He did this by embracing a leper, and piled all of his earthly possessions – including the clothes he was wearing – before his father, who had demanded that he give restitution for the gifts he had given to the poor.

    Prayer before the cross in the crumbling church of San Damiano led Saint Francis to seek to reform the Church. Our Lord told him to “go out and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down.” Francis saw that our Lord was not merely referring to that church, even though it was nearly in ruins. He saw the ruin of the Church as a whole at a difficult period of history and sought to build it back up by authentically preaching and living the Gospel.

    He didn’t seek to found a religious order, but it happened anyway. People were drawn to the way that he lived the faith, and so he wrote a rule of life for his followers which began as a collection of texts from the Gospels. When he was pressed to form the Franciscan order, he did it willingly and did everything he needed to do to create the legal structure the Church required.

    During the last years of his life, Saint Francis received the stigmata. During his last hours, he received permission to have his clothing removed so that he could die naked on the earth, as Our Lord died. On his deathbed, he prayed the last addition to his Canticle of the Sun, “Be praised, O Lord, for our sister death.”

    Saint Francis is well-known for the Canticle of the Sun, and his famous prayer. But he is also credited with composing one of my favorite hymns, “All Creatures of our God and King.” His devotion to the Church, to the gospel, to the creatures of the earth, and most especially to our Lord inspires people even today. And his dedication to rebuilding the Church is one that our current pope took on when he chose his papal name. Through the intercession of Saint Francis, may we all find true joy in following our Lord and his call in all things.

  • Saint Thérèse of Liseaux, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Thérèse of Liseaux, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

    Today, we celebrate the memorial of Saint Thérèse of Liseaux, the Little Flower, who was one who sought to proclaim the Lord in every simple act of her life. Saint Thérèse had a child-like faith: child-like, that is, in her trusting obedience to God’s will, even in the smallest of matters. She truly believed that small acts of faith and love would work wondrous miracles for the Kingdom of God.

    Thérèse was a very sickly young lady. A childhood illness left her weak for the rest of her life, and during her last year on earth, she was dying of tuberculosis. She entered the convent at the age of fifteen, and when she died she was just twenty-four years old. Yet in that short span of time she wrote much about her faith and encouraged others to embrace a simplicity of life and a dedicated obedience to God’s will. Those writings have had a profound influence on the spiritual lives of so many of the faithful. In 1997, Pope Saint John Paul II named her a Doctor of the Church, one of just four women to have that special title.

    Saint Thérèse was not one who sought the limelight. She did not seek to make a name for herself or become anything other than what God wanted her to be. In her view, even the most menial tasks in the convent could be transformed into great acts of love. And her preference for hidden sacrifice did indeed convert souls. Saint Thérèse is one of the most beloved saints in the Church. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, is read and loved throughout the world.

    Saint Thérèse’s rule of life, doing little things with great love, is one that can be such a freeing experience for all of us. Today, maybe we can try to find even one small task that doesn’t seem very glorious and do it with love and cheerfulness just as Saint Thérèse would. Perhaps we too can find joy in the routine and menial parts of our day, doing them with great love for the glory of the Kingdom of God.

  • Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Jerome is something of an enigma. Though he was a scripture scholar, he wasn’t the epitome of the quiet, scholarly saint that one might imagine him to be. Perhaps unfortunately, he was known for his quick temper and sometimes mean-spirited pen. If they had email or social media in those days, he’d probably be the one to fire off a quick nasty-gram without even taking time to think about it.

    But we need to be extremely thankful for Saint Jerome as we open up the Scriptures today. Without his tireless efforts, our understanding of Sacred Scripture would be quite limited, I think. It was Saint Jerome who spent so much time translating the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, creating what is known as the Vulgate translation. This was the standard text of the Scriptures for a long time in the Church, and is still an important basis for today’s English-language and other translations. His commentaries on the Scriptures are important to us to this very day.

    Jerome was a preeminent scholar. He studied the Scriptures all the time and was an expert in Biblical languages including Hebrew, Greek, Chaldaic and of course Latin. He also spent a good deal of time in the Holy Land, walking the path of Christ, staying in the places where he stayed, even living for a time in the cave believed to have been Jesus’ birthplace. He wasn’t just a scholar studying the Scriptures from a theoretical viewpoint; he was instead devoted to the Scriptures, letting them wash over his life with love. He once said that “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” To know the Lord, we have to immerse ourselves in Scripture.

    For those of you who are students or alumni of our Biblical Institute or our Bible Studies, today is a Patronal feast day for you. Saint Jerome’s love of Scripture has made it possible for all of us to come to know Christ in a more intimate way through our own study and devotion to the Word of God. Saint Jerome, pray for us, and lead us back to the Scriptures with the same love and devotion you had.

  • Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    Mass for the school children.

    Today is the memorial of Saint Vincent de Paul, who is one of my favorite saints. He knew what it meant to be a priest, and he lived it every day. But he didn’t start out wanting to be like that; he had a conversation experience along the way. And I think that makes him a very good saint for us to reflect on today, because we all need those kinds of conversion experiences in our lives, at some point or another.

    Back in the days when Saint Vincent became a priest, some priests had a rather easy life and found ways to become quite wealthy. So that is what he was expecting to happen for him when he was ordained. That was his goal in some ways until he heard the deathbed confession of a dying servant. That encounter led him to realize the extremely great needs of poor people in France at that time.

    That same servant’s Master had been persuaded by his wife to support the creation of a group of missionary priests to serve the poor. The countess asked Father Vincent to lead the group, and although he declined at first, he later returned to do it. That group is now known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Vincentians. They take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability and devoted themselves to serving the poor in smaller towns and villages. So Vincentian priests would be missionaries, in a way, to those small towns so that they could live among the people and serve the poor.

    Later, along with Saint Louise de Marillac, he organized the rich women of Paris to collect funds for his missionary projects, founded several hospitals, collected relief funds for the victims of war and ransomed over 1,200 galley slaves from North Africa. Over time, this became a parish-based society for the spiritual and physical relief of the poor and sick. This became the inspiration for the organization now known as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. We have an active chapter of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society in our parish, and they go out to meet those in need and help them to find the help they need. They are an important part of the Church’s mission to take care of the poor.

    Saint Vincent was also very interested in helping with the formation of priests. He wanted the priests to realize the needs of the poor and to know that the idea of becoming rich isn’t supposed to be part of priestly life. He converted his attitudes from the cynical and even slothful (or lazy) ambitions of the clergy in those days, and turned instead to follow what became his true passion, his real calling, which was bringing Christ to the needy and the downtrodden.

    So Saint Vincent is a good model for all of us. We too are called to be true servants of our Lord, by looking out for the needs of those who maybe don’t have as many advantages as we do, and by caring for the poor and being true friends of those in need. Helping even one person in need is our way of helping Jesus to continue his ministry of loving all people and bringing them to heaven.

  • Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest

    Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest

    Today’s readings

    At the age of 15, Francesco Forgione joined the Capuchins and took the name of Pio. He was ordained in 1910 and was drafted during World War I. After he was discovered to have tuberculosis, he was discharged. In 1917 he was assigned to the friary in San Giovanni Rotondo.

    On September 20, 1918, as he was making his thanksgiving after Mass, Padre Pio had a vision of Jesus. When the vision ended, he had the stigmata in his hands, feet and side. Padre Pio rarely left the friary after he received the stigmata, but busloads of people soon began coming to see him. He would hear confessions for as much as ten hours a day; penitents had to take a number so that their confession could be heard. Many of them have said that Padre Pio knew details of their lives that they had never mentioned.

    Padre Pio died on September 23, 1968, and was canonized in 2002.

    The Gospel today contains one of my favorite lines: “Take care, then, how you hear.” It almost seems like a throw-away line, but really, I believe, it’s an essential instruction from Jesus. We disciples are to take care how we hear. Not what we hear, although that’s probably part of it, but how we hear.

    Do we really hear the Word of the Lord? Does the gospel get into our head and our heart and stir things up? Do the words of Jesus get our blood flowing and our imaginations racing? Does hearing the gospel make us long for a better place, a more peaceful kingdom, a just society? That’s how it worked for Padre Pio, and that’s how it’s supposed to work for all of us disciples.

    Take care, then, how you hear.

  • Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

    Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

    Today’s readings

    For those of us who strive to live as disciples, today’s feast is really a great joy. I say that because Matthew was qualified to be a disciple of Jesus in much the same way that we are qualified to be disciples of Jesus – which is to say, not at all, really. Matthew was a tax collector, working for the Roman occupation government. His task was to collect the tax from each citizen. As long as he did that, whatever he collected over and above the tax was his to keep. Now the Romans wouldn’t condone outright extortion, but let’s just say that they weren’t overly scrupulous about what their tax collectors were collecting, as long as they got paid the proper tax.

    So Matthew’s reception among the Jews was quite like they might receive a one of our candidates for the presidency or even news of a tax audit in our own day. No one wants to see that. The Pharisees were quick to lump men like Matthew with sinners, and despised them as completely unworthy of God’s salvation. But Jesus didn’t:

    “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
    Go and learn the meaning of the words,
    I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
    I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

    Which brings us back to us. We should be very grateful to celebrate the call of a man who was anything but worthy. Because he was called, we know that our own calls are authentic, unworthy as we may be. Because he was offered healing, we know that we can have that, too. But all that grace isn’t just ours any more than it was just Matthew’s: just as he spread the Good News by writing and preaching of the Gospel, so we are called to spread the Good News to everyone we know. We are called to write the Gospel in our own day, in the pages of our own lives. Matthew’s call is a day of celebration for all of us sinners, who are nonetheless called to do great things for the Kingdom of God.