Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Saints

  • Saint Thomas Aquinas, bishop and doctor of the Church

    Saint Thomas Aquinas, bishop and doctor of the Church

    Today’s readings

    Today, we celebrate the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the pre-eminent theologians of our Church.   At the age of five years old, Thomas was promised to the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino.  His parents were hoping that one day he would become the abbot of that community, which was a very prestigious and politically powerful position.  He later went to Naples to study, and a few years later abandoned his family’s plans for him and instead joined the Dominicans.  By order of his mother, Thomas was captured by his brother and brought back home, where he was kept essentially in house arrest for a year.

    Once free, he resumed his stay with the Dominicans and went to Paris and Cologne to study.  He held two professorships at Paris, lived at the court of Pope Urban IV, and directed the Dominican schools at Rome and Viterbo.  He is very much known for his prolific writings, which have contributed immeasurably to theology and the Church.  Thomas spoke much of wisdom revealed in Scripture and tradition, but also strongly taught the wisdom that could be found in the natural order of things, as well as what could be discerned from reason.

    His last work was the Summa Theologiae, which he never actually completed.  He abruptly stopped writing after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273.  When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “I cannot go on…. All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”  He died March 7, 1274.

    Thomas has taught us through his life and writing that the only thing that can cause the house of the Church to crumble is ignorance.  We strengthen ourselves and our community by studying the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church, applying reason and revelation to the challenges of our world and our time.  “Hence we must say,” Thomas tells us, “that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act.  But he does not need a new light added to his natural light, in order to know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpasses his natural knowledge” (Summa Theologiae, I-II, 109, 1).

    In our Gospel today, Jesus speaks of one not being able to break into the strong man’s house.  We are blessed to have the fruits of Saint Thomas’s vast work to guide our understanding of God and strengthen us in the fight against evil.

  • Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr

    Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr

    Today we celebrate the feast day of Saint Agnes, a virgin and martyr of the Church.  She is thought to have lived and died in the third century, but little is really known of her life.  She is mentioned in the first Eucharistic Prayer in the list of saints: “Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the saints.”

    What is known about Saint Agnes might not be one hundred percent factual, but it is instead meant to foster our own lives of holiness and dedication to the Lord.  Legend tells us that Agnes was a young girl, probably twelve or thirteen years old, and very beautiful.  Many young men longed for her, lusted after her, really, and one such man, having looked at her lustfully, lost his eyesight.  But his sight was restored when Agnes herself prayed for him.

    Because of her dedication to Christ, she refused the advances of the men who lusted after her.  And one such man, having been refused, reported her to the government for being a Christian.  She was arrested and confined in a house of prostitution, and was eventually put to death, although the method of her death is unclear.  She was buried near Rome in a catacomb that was then named in her honor, and Constantine’s daughter later built a basilica in her honor.

    Saint Ambrose wrote of her in his discourse on virginity, saying: “This is a virgin’s birthday; let us follow the example of her chastity.  It is a martyr’s birthday; let us offer sacrifices; it is the birthday of holy Agnes: let men be filled with wonder, little ones with hope, married women with awe, and the unmarried with emulation.  It seems to me that this child, holy beyond her years and courageous beyond human nature, receives the name of Agnes [which is the Greek word for “pure”] not as an earthly designation but as a revelation from God of what she was to be.”

    May the intercession of Saint Agnes lead us all to a reclaiming of virtue and holiness, and above all, an uncompromising love for Christ.

  • Saint Anthony, Abbot

    Saint Anthony, Abbot

    When Saint Anthony – and this is not the Saint Anthony who helps us find lost things – was about eighteen years old, his parents died, and left him to care for his young sister and the family home.  They had left him with an inheritance to take care of this.  Saint Athanasius writes that one day, as Anthony was praying in church, he was reflecting on how the Apostles had left everything to follow Jesus when he heard this verse from Scripture: “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor – you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me.”

    So that’s what he did: he went out and gave most of the family property to the local villagers, and sold off all of his other possessions, giving the money to the poor.  He wanted no distractions for his sister and himself in living the Christian life.  The next time he visited church, he heard “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.” At this point, he gave away everything he had left, and put his sister up in the local convent, and went off to dedicate himself to living his call.

    Anthony devoted himself to asceticism, living in poverty, reflecting on Scripture, and growing in friendship with Christ.  He was a fearless leader of the Church through the Arian controversy, and spoke out boldly, hoping for martyrdom.  He founded a sort of monastery with scattered cells (as opposed to a great building), forming a fusion of the solitary life with community life.  He is known to be the father of monasticism.  Saint Anthony is said to have died at the ripe old age of 105 in solitude.

    In a day when we spend a lot of time and energy on the stuff that we have, and the care of our possessions, Saint Anthony’s life comes as a challenge.  He gave up everything to follow Christ, trusting that God would take care of him.  His left a great mark on human history, and his rule of monasteries has been the basis of many monastic rules ever since.  His challenge to us today is this: what do we need to give up to follow Christ more closely?

  • The Holy Innocents, Martyrs

    The Holy Innocents, Martyrs

    Today’s readings

    Right here in the middle of the joy of the Christmas Octave, we have the feast of what seems to be an incredibly horrible event.  All of the male children in the vicinity of Bethlehem two years old and younger are murdered by the jealous and, quite frankly, rather pathetic Herod.  But not only are his plans to kill the Christ Child (and thus remove any threat to his reign) thwarted by the providence of God, but also the horror of this event is transfigured into something rather glorious in terms of the Kingdom of God.

    As I said, in some ways, this is a horrible feast.  Sadly, this year, the events in Newtown, Connecticut make this feast all the more poignant and disturbing.  Add that to the millions who have been slaughtered by abortion, and the many children who die in inner-city violence every year, and we see just how precarious childhood can be in our time.  But the Church, in recognizing the contribution of the Holy Innocents to the kingdom, turns all of this sadness into hope and asserts that this is just the beginning of the world’s seeing the glory of Jesus Christ.  As disgusting and repugnant as Herod’s actions are to our sensibilities, yet these innocent children bear witness to the Child Jesus.  Saint Quodvoltdeus, an African bishop of the fifth century writes of them:

    The children die for Christ, though they do not know it.  The parents mourn for the death of martyrs.  The Christ child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself.  But you, Herod, do not know this and are disturbed and furious.  While you vent your fury against the child, you are already paying him homage, and do not know it.

    To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of victory?  They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ.  They cannot use their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory.

    I think the key to making sense of all this is in the first reading.  The line that really catches me, because it seems almost erroneous in light of the horrible event we remember today, is “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.”  We can see all kinds of darkness in an event like the murder of innocent children.  Yet only God could turn something that horrible around to his glory.  They may have lived extremely short lives on earth, yet their lives in eternity were secured forever.  They become some of the first to participate in the kingdom that Christ would bring about through his Paschal Mystery.

  • Saint John of the Cross

    Saint John of the Cross

    Today’s readings

    Today at Mass we hear from three prophets.  A prophet is a person who helps us to see God.  And during Advent these prophets help us to see God coming to be born in us.

    And we have to admit: lots of times we don’t see God.  We’re either too busy to notice God, or too wrapped up in ourselves to care about God, or just completely disinterested in the whole notion of God.  Sometimes we just don’t want to see God because we would rather be doing what we want to do and not what’s best for ourselves or others.  God can see through all of that, and prophets help us to see through it too.

    We hear from three prophets today.  The first is the prophet Isaiah, and we heard from him in today’s first reading.  The people of Israel had turned away from God a whole lot.  God often made a new covenant with them, and then after a while, they would lose interest and get distracted and turn away from God all over again.  So in today’s reading, Isaiah is trying to wake them up once again.  He tells them if they had stayed on the right path, the path God marked out for them when he made a covenant with them, if they had followed his commands, they would have been blessed by good fortune, many descendants, and a rich land and nation that would never have been destroyed.  It’s too late for that now, but maybe by seeing what caused their misfortune, they can turn back to God and let him heal them.  Which is something God is always longing to do.

    The second prophet we hear from today is St. John the Baptist, and we hear about him in today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus is frustrated with people of Israel – again! – because just about nothing could get their attention.  When John the Baptist went around fasting and staying away from strong drink, the people thought he was weird and couldn’t relate to his message to repent of their sins.  But when Jesus came along asking them to repent also, he ate and drank just as they did, so they judged him harshly and wouldn’t listen to him either.  They always had an excuse, and of course it was never their fault.  Kind of sounds like us sometimes, doesn’t it?  Basically, no matter who was calling them to reform their lives and no matter how they proclaimed that message, the people wanted to do what they wanted to do, and nothing was going to persuade them to change.

    The third prophet we hear from today is Saint John of the Cross, whose feast we celebrate today.  Saint John of the Cross was a Carmelite friar, a kind of monk who was vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience.  He was called by God and by his friend, Saint Teresa of Avila, to reform the Carmelite Order.  The Carmelites had relaxed some of their rules over time, and had basically turned away from the life that had been envisioned when the Order started.  Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila founded a reformed Carmelite Order, and Saint John suffered for it terribly.  In those days, religious affairs were all tied up in the government of the nation, and so there was a lot of politics.  People didn’t agree with Saint John, so he was taken prisoner for over nine months.  Even when he was released, his fellow friars who didn’t agree with him went around to all the monasteries making trouble for him.  He was oppressed for his preaching of reform almost until the day he died.

    Each of these prophets had been given a message by God.  Isaiah and Saint John the Baptist called the people of Israel to turn back to God.  Saint John of the Cross called his fellow Carmelites to turn back to the ideals on which their Order was founded.  All of them suffered for their witness to the truth.  Prophets don’t usually have an easy life.  But if we will get past the politics and get over ourselves, we might hear from them a call that leads us back to God who will make us happier than we’ve ever been.

    During Advent, we remember that Christ is always near to us, and we remember that we must always turn back to him and let him be born in our hearts once again, stronger than ever.  And so during Advent, we hear from the great prophets like Isaiah, John the Baptist, and John of the Cross who are calling us to turn back to God and to prepare a way for Christ in our lives, in our hearts, and in our world.

    Today in our Psalm we hear what God is trying to tell us through all these prophets:

    Blessed the one who follows not
    the counsel of the wicked
    Nor walks in the way of sinners,
    nor sits in the company of the insolent,
    But delights in the law of the LORD
    and meditates on his law day and night.

    And we will be happy too, if we hear God’s call through the prophets and follow in his ways.

  • Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

    Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

    Today’s readings

    In every age, young people have the difficult task of remaining pure.  Some ignore the task, but some take it up at great personal cost.  This was true of Saint Lucy, who desired to remain pure because of her commitment to Christ.  She was born of noble parents in Sicily around the year 283.  Her father died early in her life, and so she was dependent on her mother.  She consecrated her virginity to God and sought to renounce worldly possessions in favor of caring for the poor.  Her mother, after suffering from a hemorrhage for several years, decided to make a pilgrimage to Catania, to see the relics of St. Agatha.  She was indeed cured of her disease, and in her joy consented to Lucy’s desire to give greatly to the poor.

    But that generosity, probably mixed with frustration over her commitment to virginity before marriage, was viewed with great skepticism by her unworthy suitor, who denounced her as a Christian to the Governor of Sicily.  She was condemned to a life of prostitution, but prayer rendered her immovable and she could not be dragged off to the house of ill repute!  At that point, logs were piled around her and a fire was set, which had no effect on her at all.  She was finally dispatched with a sword and suffered martyrdom for her belief in Christ.

    As one of the prominent figures of Advent, St. Lucy points the way to the coming Christ.  The details of her story have been disputed, however the point of the story is not to provide a historical record, but rather a spiritual record.  Her commitment to Christ provided a rich and unobstructed pathway for the entrance of her Lord into her heart.

    We too have challenges along the way to Christ.  We might not be called to give our lives rather than forsake our virginity or even our belief in Christ, but we are called to lay down our lives to cover the rough places in the road so that others can come to find Him.  Along the way, we are encouraged by great saints like Agatha and Lucy.  Every single one of them points us in the right direction: to Christ our God who comes to be incarnate among us in every age.

  • Saint Ambrose, bishop and doctor of the Church

    Saint Ambrose, bishop and doctor of the Church

    Today’s readings

    While he was still a catechumen, St. Ambrose was chosen as bishop of Milan and was consecrated on December 7, 374. Ambrose was a classically educated man, a revered Scripture Scholar and a solid preacher. It is his preaching that in some ways influenced St. Augustine to convert to Catholicism, and it was Ambrose who baptized Augustine.

    Ambrose was a man not just of great learning, but also great courage. He strongly defended the Church against attacks by the Arians, and also by the empire. Ambrose specifically admonished Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of 7,000 innocent people. The emperor did public penance for his crime.

    St. Ambrose’s sermons and his works tell us that he was a very educated man who was willing to roll up his sleeves and get involved in the issues of the day. He practiced what he preached and he was not shy about calling people to repentance. He was able to influence learned men such as Saint Augustine, and won many converts to the Church.

    Isaiah says in our first reading this morning that “Those who err in spirit shall acquire understanding, and those who find fault shall receive instruction.”  Thanks be to God the Church has had men like Saint Ambrose to help people come to understanding and to provide instruction in the ways of the Gospel.

  • Saint Nicholas

    Saint Nicholas

    The general rule of thumb is that the saints are always supposed to point us to God.  The stories of the saints aren’t always real factual, and we cannot rely on them for actual historical records.  That’s not their purpose.  The stories of the saints are designed to illuminate the saints’ lives in a colorful way and to get us thinking about strengthening our relationship with God.

    I was thinking about that as I was reading the stories of St. Nicholas.  He died probably around the year 350 or so, so we don’t really know a lot about him.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stories!  One of the best known is that St. Nicholas came from a very well-to-do family.  He became aware of a family in his village that had three daughters who were close to marrying age.  The father was very poor and could not provide a dowry for his daughters, so that meant in that time, they would generally have to resort to prostitution.  St. Nicholas had no intention of seeing that happen.

    So one night, he walked by the man’s house and tossed a bunch of gold coins wrapped up in a cloth through the window.  The man rejoiced the next morning on finding it, and so he gave thanks to God.  He was able to provide a dowry for his oldest daughter.  A while later, the second daughter was to be married, and St. Nicholas repeated the same action.  The man again woke up to find the gold, and what did he do?  He gave thanks to God!  And then he was able to provide for his second daughter’s dowry.  A short time after that, St. Nicholas did the same so that the youngest daughter could have a dowry, and this time the man woke up when he heard the gold hit the floor in his house.  So he ran out the door and began to follow Nicholas, and eventually realized who it was he was following.  He knelt down and wanted to kiss the saint’s feet, but Nicholas would not let him, and made him promise not to tell of it as long as he lived.

    And so this was the story that led to the giving of gifts on St. Nicholas’s feast day.  And it’s just a little twist of the tongue in English that turned St. Nicholas into Santa Claus.  I think the celebration of St. Nicholas shines an interesting light on our gift giving.  St. Nicholas did not want to be known for his generosity.  He wanted to keep it quiet and was content to have the man give the glory and praise to God for the generous gift.  How willing are we to do the same?  Or does our gift giving have a sort of one-upsmanship to it?  The giving of gifts is not bad or good; it is the intent of the giver and the heart of the receiver that really matters.  When we wrap up our gifts in these Advent days, and when we unwrap them on Christmas, I wonder if we can tuck some prayer in it somewhere.  Maybe we can find a way to give glory to God among all the hectic-ness of our Christmas season.

  • Saint Francis Xavier, Priest (Diocesan Patron)

    Saint Francis Xavier, Priest (Diocesan Patron)

    Today’s readings: 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 16:15-20

    We celebrate the memorial of St. Francis Xavier as a feast today, because he is the patron saint of the Diocese of Joliet. Francis Xavier was a sixteenth century man who had a promising career in academics. He was encouraged in the faith by his good friend, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and went to join the new community founded by Ignatius, the Society of Jesus, better known today as the Jesuits.

    Francis had a passion for preaching the Gospel and living a life of Gospel simplicity. He would live with and among the poorest of the poor, sharing their living conditions, ministering to the sick, and preaching and teaching the faith. He lived in the East Indies for a time, before going on to minister to the Hindus, Malaysians, and Japanese. Francis even learned a bit of Japanese in order to communicate well with his people and to preach to them. He dreamed of going on to minister in China, but died before he could get there.

    Francis Xavier truly took to heart the words of St. Paul who said he made himself all things to all people in order to save at least some. Francis made it his life’s work to live as his people lived, preaching to simple folk, and calling them to Jesus. He was also able to live freely Jesus’ Gospel call today: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

    Now we might not have the opportunity to live as Francis Xavier did and to actually go out to distant shores to preach the Gospel. But we certainly are still called to preach it with our lives. We are called to witness to Christ to everyone we meet: family, friends, coworkers, neighbors-anyone the Lord puts in our path. Our diocese chose Francis Xavier for our patron because our founders took seriously the call to proclaim the Gospel to every person in this diocese. We are called upon to do the same, according to our own life’s vocation and state of life. May all who hear our words and see our actions come to believe and be saved.

  • Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr

    Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr

    Today’s readings

    Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Josaphat, who was born in what is now Poland to Orthodox parents.  He later became a Basilian monk, and was chosen bishop of Vitebsk, in what is now Russia.  His task was to bridge the divide between the Roman and Orthodox Church, but this was not easy, because the Orthodox monks did not want union with Rome; they feared interference in liturgy and customs.  But over time, using synods and other instruction, he was able to win many of the Orthodox in that area to the union.

    But the fight was far from over.  A dissident faction of the church was formed, and they fomented opposition to Josaphat.  Eventually the mob murdered him and threw his body into a river.  The body was recovered and is now buried in St. Peter’s basilica.  Josaphat is the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome.

    Josaphat had an insurmountable task to accomplish.  But he had faith that God would give him what he needed to accomplish the mission.  Jesus calls us to have faith even the size of a mustard seed, in order that we might accomplish insurmountable tasks in his name.  We may have to give more than we know in order to accomplish our calling.  But by faith, God can use us to do mighty deeds.   Through the intercession of St. Josaphat, let us face the impossible.