Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Saints

  • Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    Today’s readings

    In today’s Gospel, Peter and the others are asked, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  We heard this Gospel story just last weekend.  Now, both Peter and Paul were committed to the truth about who Christ was.  They had too much at stake.  Having both messed up their estimation of who Jesus was earlier in their lives, they knew the danger of falling into the trap.  So for them Jesus could never be just a brother, friend or role model – that was inadequate.  And both of them proclaimed with all of their life straight through to their death that Jesus Christ is Lord.  We too on this day must repent of the mediocrity we sometimes settle for in our relationship with Christ.  He has to be Lord of our lives and we must proclaim him to be that Lord to our dying breath.  We must never break faith with Saints Peter and Paul, who preserved that faith at considerable personal cost.

    Perhaps Saints Peter and Paul can inspire our own apostolic zeal.  Then, as we bear witness to the fact that Jesus is Lord of our lives and of all the earth, we can bring a banal world to relevance.  Perhaps in our renewed apostolic zeal we can bring justice to the oppressed, right judgment to the wayward, love to the forgotten and the lonely, truth to a society that settles for relativism, and faith to a world that has lost sight of anything worth believing in.  One might say that that is the Church’s mission, but actually the mission is what is of primary importance.  And so we believe that the apostolic mission has a Church, and it’s time for the Church to be released from its chains and burst forth to give witness in the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

  • The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate a feast that is a bit unusual for us.  When we celebrate a saint’s day, it is usually celebrated on the feast of their death, not their birth.  But today we do gather to celebrate the birth of a saint, Saint John the Baptist, and the fact that we’re celebrating his birth points to the fact that St. John the Baptist had a very special role to play in the life of Christ.  In fact, the only other saint for whom we celebrate a birthday is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

    Just as for Jesus, we don’t know the precise day John the Baptist was born. So the feasts of their Nativity – their births – were traditions developed by the early Church. The dates the Church selected are significant.  Jesus’ birthday was placed around the time of the winter solstice, mostly to counteract pagan festivals of the coming of winter. John the Baptist’s birthday was then placed around the time of the summer solstice for similar reasons.  But there’s more to it even than that.  Saint Augustine reminds us that in the Gospel of John, there is a passage where John the Baptist says of himself and Jesus, “I must decrease, he must increase.”  So John’s birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become shorter, and Jesus’ birthday is placed at the time when the days start to become longer.  John the Baptist must decrease, Jesus must increase.

    Today’s readings have a lot to do with who the prophet is. St. John the Baptist was the last prophet of the old order, and his mission was to herald the coming of Jesus Christ who is himself the new order.  Tradition holds that prophets were created for their mission, that their purpose was laid out while they were yet to be born.  Isaiah, one of the great prophets of the old order, tells us of his commissioning in our first reading today.  He says, “The LORD called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.”  The rest of the reading tells us of his mission, a mission of hardship, but one of being compelled to speak the word of god as a sharp-edged sword.  His calling began as a call to preach to his own people, but by the end of the reading, it is clear that that commission became a call to preach to every nation on earth.

    Isaiah says that he was given his name while in his mother’s womb. The same was true of Saint John the Baptist, whose name was given to Zechariah and Elizabeth by the Angel Gabriel.  Names have meaning.  Maybe you know what your name means.  But far more significant are the names of the prophets we encounter in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Isaiah means “The LORD is salvation,” which pretty much encompassed the meaning of Isaiah’s mission, proclaiming salvation to the Israelites who were oppressed in exile.  The name given to the Baptist, John, means “God has shown favor.”  And that was in fact the message of his life.  He came to pave the way for Jesus Christ, who was the favor of God shown to the whole human race.

    Ultimately, the purpose for St. John the Baptist’s life was summed up in his statement: “I must decrease, He must increase.”  And so it must be for us.  Sometimes we want to turn the spotlight on ourselves, when that is exactly where it should not be.  For John the Baptist, the spotlight was always on Christ, the One for whom he was unfit to fasten his sandals.  Just as the birth of St. John the Baptist helped his father Zechariah to speak once again, so his life gives voice to our own purpose in the world.  Like St. John the Baptist, we are called to be a people who point to Christ, who herald the Good News, and who live our lives for God.  We are called to decrease, while Christ increases in all of us.  We are called to be that light to the nations of which Isaiah speaks today, so that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

    St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

  • Saint Anthony, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Anthony, Priest and Doctor of the Church

    St. Anthony is probably one of the best-known Catholic saints.  I’m sure many of us have prayed that familiar prayer, “Tony, Tony, look around, something’s lost and can’t be found.”  We all lose track of things from time to time, and it’s nice to have someone to help us find them.  But the real story of St. Anthony centers around finding the way to Christ.

    The gospel call to leave everything and follow Christ was the rule of Anthony’s life.  Over and over again God called him to something new in his plan.  Every time Anthony responded with renewed zeal and self-sacrifice to serve his Lord Jesus more completely.  His journey as the servant of God began as a very young man when he decided to join the Augustinians, giving up a future of wealth and power to follow God’s plan for his life.  But later, when the bodies of the first Franciscan martyrs went through the Portuguese city where he was stationed, he was again filled with an intense longing to be one of those closest to Jesus himself: those who die for the Good News.

    So Anthony entered the Franciscan Order and set out to preach to the Moors – a pretty dangerous thing to do.  But an illness prevented him from achieving that goal.  He went to Italy and was stationed in a small hermitage where he spent most of his time praying, reading the Scriptures and doing menial tasks.

    But that was not the end for Anthony’s dream of following God’s call.  Recognized as a great man of prayer and a great Scripture scholar and theologian, Anthony became the first friar to teach theology to the other friars.  Soon he was called from that post to preach to heretics, to use his profound knowledge of Scripture and theology to convert and reassure those who had been misled.

    So yes, St. Anthony is the patron of finding lost objects, but what I really think he wants to help us find, is our way to Christ.  As a teacher, a scholar and a man of faith, he was devoted to his relationship with God.  And so his intercession for us might go a little deeper than where we left our keys.  Maybe we find ourselves today having lost track of our relationship with God in some way.  Maybe our prayer isn’t as fervent as it once was.  Or maybe we have found ourselves wrapped up in our own problems and unable to see God at work in us.  Maybe our life is in disarray and we’re not sure how God is leading us.  If we find ourselves in those kinds of situations today, we might do well to call on the intercession of St. Anthony.  Finder of lost objects, maybe.  But finder of the way to Christ for sure.

  • St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs

    St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs

    Today’s readings

    One of 22 Ugandan martyrs, Charles Lwanga is the patron of youth and Catholic action in most of tropical Africa.  He and his companions were pages in the court of Mwanga, the Bagandan ruler.  He protected his fellow pages, aged 13 to 30, from the immoral demands of Mwanga, and encouraged and instructed them in the Catholic faith during their imprisonment for refusing the ruler’s demands.

    For his own unwillingness to submit Mwanga’s demands and his efforts to safeguard the faith of his friends, Charles was burned to death on June 3, 1886, by Mwanga’s order.  Charles felt the same kind of pressure to abandon what was right as did Tobit in today’s first reading.  Tobit knew it was just and right and honorable to bury the dead, although he was persecuted for doing so.  Yet he did what was right anyway, as did Charles Lwanga.  Both knew that faith wasn’t only to be lived when it was convenient.

    How are we called upon to stand up for others and protect each other from the immoral onslaughts of our own time and place?  Witnessing to what is right and good is often inconvenient, and for those like St. Charles, sometimes dangerous.  But that is what disciples do.  That is our ministry, the work to which we have all been called.

  • Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

    Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

    Today’s readings

    You surely recognize these beautiful words:

    I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
    the Only Begotten Son of God,
    born of the Father before all ages.
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
    through him all things were made.

    These words emphasize the divinity of Christ, an essential truth of our faith.  The Liturgy also says: “Through the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”  The Gospels show us time and time again that Jesus came to proclaim his divinity, his oneness with the Father, so as to be the means of salvation.  Almost all of his hearers rejected this message, except for all but one of his disciples, and the centurion who noticed that he was the Son of God as he hung dead on the Cross.

    The Arians, led by the priest Arius in the third century, did not believe in Jesus’ divinity.  They believed there was a time before Jesus existed, that he was not consubstantial with the Father, but rather was created by the Father.  This position denies the divinity of Christ, which is an unacceptable position for our faith.  If Christ is not divine, he has no power to save us, and we are still dead in our sins.  God forbid! – And he does forbid it!

    St. Athanasius was a great champion of the faith against the harmful teachings of Arius.  But it was a hard battle.  He was exiled not once but actually five times during the fight against Arius’s teachings.  His writings are almost all a great defense of the faith and are so sound that Athanasius was named a Doctor of the Church.

    We have St. Athanasius to thank for the wonderful words of our Creed.  We often say them, I think, without a whole lot of thought.  But we need to remember when we pray the Creed that each of those words was the result of dedicated work, intensive prayer, and hard fought defense against heresy.  Because of people like St. Athanasius, we may indeed come to share in the divinity of Christ.

  • Saint Catherine of Siena

    Saint Catherine of Siena

    Saint Catherine was born at Siena, in the region of Tuscany in Italy.  When she was six years old Jesus appeared to Catherine and blessed her.  As many parents do for their children, her mother and father wanted her to be happily married, preferably to a rich man.  But Catherine didn’t want that, she wanted to be a nun.

    And so, to make herself as unattractive as possible to the men her parents wanted her to meet, she cut off her long, beautiful hair.  Her parents were very upset and became very critical of her.  They also gave her the most difficult housework to do.  But Catherine did not change her mind: her goal was to become a nun and give herself entirely to Jesus.  Finally, her parents allowed her to become a nun, and her father even set aside a room in the house where she could stay and pray.

    When Catherine was eighteen years old, she entered the Dominican Third Order and spent the next three years in seclusion, prayer and works of penance.  Gradually a group of followers gathered around her—men and women, priests and religious.   They all saw that Catherine was a holy woman and they flocked to her for spiritual advice.  During this time she wrote many letters, most of which gave spiritual instruction and encouragement to her followers.  But more and more, she would speak out on many topics and would stand up for the truth.  Because of this, many people began to oppose her and they brought false charges against her, but she was cleared of all of wrongdoing.

    Because of her great influence, she was able to help the Church navigate a tumultuous period of two and eventually three anti-popes.  She even went to beg rulers to make peace with the pope and to avoid wars.  At one point, Saint Catherine asked the real pope to leave Avignon, France, where he had been staying in exile, and return to Rome to rule the Church, because she knew that this was God’s will.  He eventually took her advice, and this eventually led to peace in the Church.

    Saint Catherine was always eager to share the love of Christ.  She nursed sick people and comforted the prisoners she visited in jail.  Even though she spent a lot of time in prayer, she was still able to reach out to those who were hurting.

    Catherine had a mystical love of God, whose goodness and beauty was revealed to her more and more each day.  She wrote of God, “You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you.  But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more.  When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light.  I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are.”

    Saint Catherine is one of just three female Doctors of the Church, being named so by Pope Paul VI in 1970.  She is the co-patron saint, with Saint Francis, of Italy.  Through her intercession may we all have a deep appreciation and love for the depths of the mysteries of God.

  • Saint Mark, Evangelist

    Saint Mark, Evangelist

    Today’s readings

    We aren’t completely sure who St. Mark was.  He might have been the first bishop of Alexandria, Egypt.  Some scholars say he might have been the one described in chapter 14 of Mark’s Gospel, at the arrest of Jesus: “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”  But others question whether he ever saw Jesus in person at all.  We know that he was a companion of Peter and Paul in the missionary journeys, and that he was the first to write about Jesus’ life.  It is estimated that the Gospel of Mark was written around 60 or 70 AD, after the death of both Peter and Paul.  As you might expect since this was the first Gospel written, it is used as a source for both Matthew and Luke’s Gospels.

    Whoever Mark really was, I think the key idea for this feast today is that he was one who willingly embodied the command of Jesus that we have in today’s Gospel reading: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”  His missionary work, and his work as the Evangelist testify to his passion for the Gospel and his efforts to see that the whole world came to believe in Jesus.

    What we celebrate on his feast day, though, is that the work of that command is far from complete.  There is so much of the world that has yet to hear of Jesus.  Some of them are in far off lands, others are in our workplaces, schools, and communities.  Because of that, it is imperative that we all continue the work of Mark and the other Evangelists.  We are the ones who have to testify to the Gospel in word and in deed, witnessing to what we believe in everything that we say and do.  Our life’s work is not complete until we are sure that those who know us also know the Lord in and through us.

    “The favors of the LORD I will sing forever;” the Psalmist says today, “through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness.”  May we, like St. Mark, sing of the Lord’s goodness in every moment of our lives.

  • The Word from Father Pat: Saint Patrick’s Day

    The Word from Father Pat: Saint Patrick’s Day

    Christ with me,
    Christ before me,
    Christ behind me,
    Christ in me,
    Christ beneath me,
    Christ above me,
    Christ on my right,
    Christ on my left,
    Christ when I lie down,
    Christ when I sit down,
    Christ when I arise,
    Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
    Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
    Christ in every eye that sees me,
    Christ in every ear that hears me.

    I arise today
    Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
    Through belief in the Threeness,
    Through confession of the Oneness
    of the Creator of creation.

    Saint Patrick, The Lorica (Breastplate) Prayer

    Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

    I know it’s the Fifth Sunday of Lent, but I couldn’t resist a wee bit of celebration of the great and holy feast of Saint Patrick!  Certainly I revere Saint Patrick because he’s my patron, but also I revere him because of his steadfast witness to Christ.  Here was a man kidnapped from his native land and brought as a slave to Ireland.  He managed to escape and having done so, thought about nothing else but returning to the land.  He became a priest and returned to Ireland so that he could minister to the people and lead them to Christ.

    The role of the saints is to do just that for us: to point the way to Christ.  And Saint Patrick does that well in his Breastplate (or Lorica) prayer, part of which I’ve quoted above.  Some question whether he wrote the prayer himself, but regardless, it was certainly the kind of thing he would write and say, based on his life and his teachings.  I love the recognition of Christ in each person and all around us.  What if we really stopped to think about that on a daily basis?  How would it change the way we speak and act toward our brothers and sisters?

    The words of Saint Patrick’s prayer are the essential Lenten discipline.  God is God and we are not.  We need God in very real ways, not just when we are at the end of our ropes, but primarily in the every-dayness of our lives.  We need Christ because every day there is a battle for our souls, and we can’t save them of our own power.  And so Lent calls us to see Christ as Saint Patrick did: before and behind us; above and beneath us; on our right and on our left; in our resting as in our activity; in every person we encounter and most especially in the depths of our own hearts.  Christ is everywhere, filling our lives, beckoning us to repentance, urging us to follow him.

    Saint Patrick imitated Christ by giving up the comfort of his life to do the work of Christ.  In doing that, he points the way to Christ for all of us.  We too are called on to give of ourselves, to give up our own needs and wants and desires, to become people who truly live the Gospel in the way we care for others.  We are called to see Christ in every moment and every place.

    I celebrate Saint Patrick’s day maybe a little different than is stereotypical.  Yes, I like my corned beef and cabbage (and Grandma’s Irish Soda Bread), but I observe this day as a renewed call to holiness of life, a renewed call to give of myself more deeply in priestly ministry, a renewed call to repentance and dependence on Christ my Savior.  I pray that we might all find Christ in the celebration of this great and holy day!

    Yours in Christ and His Blessed Mother, and the glory of Saint Patrick,
    Father Pat Mulcahy, Pastor

  • Our Lady of Lourdes/World Day of the Sick

    Our Lady of Lourdes/World Day of the Sick

    Today’s readings

    Bernadette Soubirous was a sickly young woman.  But on February 11, 1858, her entire life changed when a beautiful lady, clothed in white, with a rosary over her arm and a yellow rose on each foot, appeared to her and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”  In the years since, the site of those wonderful apparitions, Lourdes, has been a place of pilgrimage and healing, but even more of faith.  Church authorities have recognized over 60 miraculous cures, although there have probably been many more.  To people of faith this is not surprising.  It is a continuation of Jesus’ healing miracles—now performed at the intercession of his mother.  Some would say that the greater miracles are hidden.  That is, many who visit Lourdes return home with renewed faith and a readiness to serve God in their needy brothers and sisters.

    In today’s Gospel, people flock to Jesus for healing.  Whenever people heard he was in the area, they would flock to him, bringing their sick loved ones on mats and laying them in the marketplaces so that as he passed, they might touch his cloak, and be healed.  And they were healed.  One can only imagine how faith in his power to heal grew as these miracles continued.

    Many continue to be healed in body, mind and spirit today.  Maybe it’s the remission of cancer, or deliverance from the flu.  Perhaps the intercessor was Saint Blaise, who we recently remembered, or Saint Peregrine, or Our Lady of Lourdes who we celebrate today.  However it is accomplished, healing is the ministry of our God.  Maybe that healing isn’t the physical one we hope for, but instead some spiritual gift or growth in faith.  God answers our prayers in all sorts of ways, though the prayers of many intercessors.

    In 1992, Pope John Paul II proclaimed today as the World Day of the Sick, “a special time of prayer and sharing, of offering one’s suffering for the good of the Church and of reminding us to see in our sick brother and sister the face of Christ who, by suffering, dying and rising, achieved the salvation of humankind.”  In our prayer today, we remember all of those who are sick, and we offer our own illnesses and frailties for the accomplishment of God’s will in our world.

  • Saint John Bosco, Priest

    Saint John Bosco, Priest

    Today’s readings

    Saint John Bosco was a master catechist who knew the meaning of Jesus’ question in today’s Gospel: “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?”  He was a priest who was concerned with the whole person of the young people he taught: he wanted them to fill both their minds and their souls.

    John was encouraged to enter the priesthood for the specific purpose of teaching young boys and forming them in the faith.  This began with a poor orphan, who John prepared for First Holy Communion.  Then he was able to gather a small community and teach them the Catechism.  He worked for a time as a chaplain of a hospice for working girls, and later opened an oratory – a kind of school – for boys which had over 150 students.  The needs of teaching them also encouraged John to open a publishing house to print the catechetical and educational materials used in the classrooms.

    He was known for his preaching, and that helped him to extend his ministry by forming a religious community – the Salesians – to concentrate on education and mission work in 1859.  He later formed a group of Salesian Sisters to teach girls. By teaching children self worth through education and job training, John was able to also teach the children of their own worth in the eyes of God.

    Jesus says in the Gospel, “For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light.  Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.”  Saint John Bosco was tireless in his devotion to teaching this truth to young people.  In today’s Eucharist, may our thanksgiving be for the teachers in our lives, but perhaps we can also commend the teachers and catechists of today’s young people to the patronage of Saint John Bosco.