Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Saints

  • Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin

    Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin

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    Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 to a Christian Algonquin woman. Her parents died in a smallpox epidemic – which left Kateri herself disfigured and half blind – when she was just four years old. She went to live with her uncle who succeeded her own father as chief of the clan. Her uncle hated the missionaries who, because of the Mohawks’ treaty with France, were required to be present in the region. Kateri, however, was moved by their words. She refused to marry a Mohawk brave, and at age 19, was baptized on Easter Sunday.

    Her baptism meant that she would be treated forever as a slave. Since she refused to work on Sundays, she was not given anything to eat on those days. She eventually took a 200 mile walking journey to the area of Montreal, and there grew in holiness under the direction of some Christian women in the area. At age 23, she took a vow of virginity.

    Kateri’s life was one of extreme penance and fasting. This she took upon herself as a penance for the eventual conversion of her nation. Kateri said: “I am not my own; I have given myself to Jesus. He must be my only love. The state of helpless poverty that may befall me if I do not marry does not frighten me. All I need is a little food and a few pieces of clothing. With the work of my hands I shall always earn what is necessary and what is left over I’ll give to my relatives and to the poor. If I should become sick and unable to work, then I shall be like the Lord on the cross. He will have mercy on me and help me, I am sure.”

    Kateri certainly knew what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”  She was able to put all of her life behind her, so that she could embrace the cross of Christ.  She took very seriously the kind of “white martyrdom” – bloodless sacrifice of one’s life for Christ – that Jesus calls us to today.  She may even have heard her Savior say to her, “Whoever finds her life will lose it, and whoever loses her life for my sake will find it.”

    Our call to personal holiness might not be as radical as Kateri’s was.  But we are called to embrace the cross and follow Christ wherever he leads us, and we may well be called upon to sacrifice whatever is comfortable in our lives to do it.  If we focus on that, we can take comfort in the Psalmist’s words today: “ the one that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”

  • St. Thomas the Apostle

    St. Thomas the Apostle

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    caravaggiodoubtingthomas.jpgYou know, sometimes I think we don’t know what we believe until we’re called upon to explain it.  Especially for those of us who are “cradle Catholics” – the ones who were baptized Catholic and have grown up in the faith all our lives.  We just accept the things the Church teaches, and never really stop to question them.  And that’s okay, but it’s also okay when we’re called upon to explain our beliefs, if we have to do a little research.  Because there’s always more to learn, and there is always more believing to be done!

    “Do not be unbelieving, but believe” is what Jesus tells St. Thomas today.  He might as well say that to all of us.  Because we should never stop exploring our beliefs, never stop learning about our faith.  We’ll never know it all anyway – at least not on this side of heaven.  On that great day when everything is revealed, things will be different, but until then, we have to renew that call to “not be unbelieving, but believe!”

    I had a couple preparing for marriage in my office the other day.  The bride is not Catholic, but they are preparing to have their wedding here at St. Raphael, so they have of course been going through our marriage preparation program.  He remarked when we met the other day that “this might sound bad, but I’ve been learning more about the faith in explaining it to her.”  I told him that didn’t sound bad at all, and that moments like that are an opportunity for us to grow in faith.  So many spouses of people going through RCIA have said the same thing: they learn as much as their non-Catholic spouse when the attend RCIA with them.  Learning about our faith is a life-long, joy-filled process.  Do not be unbelieving, but believe!

    And so we are going to give poor Thomas the doubter a break today.  Because we all need to grow in our faith.  And what a wonderful invitation we have from our Lord: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe!”

  • The Birth of St. John the Baptist

    The Birth of St. John the Baptist

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    john“What, then. will this child be?”  That question from today’s Gospel is certainly key for the celebration of the birth of St. John the Baptist, but definitely also appropriate for all of us too.  At the birth of John the Baptist, the Incarnation was starting to get noticeable.  God’s plan had already been worked out with Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah.  But now their relatives and neighbors were starting to see things happen.  Unusual things.  Like the birth of a boy to a couple way too old to be starting a family.  Naming him something that no one in their families had been called.  It’s no wonder that people were starting to notice the mystery and asked “what, then, will this child be?”

    And that’s a question that’s important for all of us.  Every time a new child is born, we might wonder what their life and their world will be like.  This Sunday, I baptized seven children and I couldn’t help but wonder where life would take them.  What, then, will they be?  Because we all have a purpose.  Just as John the Baptist was called from his mother’s womb to be the forerunner of Christ, so we all have a call – very much from our mother’s womb – something God has always intended for us to do.  It is, of course, the great project of our lives to work that out.  And we must pray daily for the discernment necessary for us to know God’s will so that we would be what God intended.  That’s the only way we can be really happy, I’m convinced of it.

    We are all, as the Psalmist says, wonderfully made.  We are all called to live a prophetic life that gives witness to Jesus Christ, just as his cousin John the Baptist did in his life.  When we finally embrace God’s will for us, that’s the only time we can be truly free.  Just as finally accepting God’s plan and naming the child according to God’s plan freed Zechariah’s tongue.  God’s will in our lives is never constrictive: it is freeing, and when we freely choose to follow, we can never be anything but happy.

    This wonderful feast of John’s birth is really a tradition.  Just like we don’t know the exact day of Jesus’ birth, John’s is not known either.  There were no birth certificates back then!  St. Augustine was the one who taught that this should be the date of John’s birth – six months before Jesus was born.  And he was born near the summer solstice, at the point where days start getting shorter, while Jesus was born at the winter solstice, at the point where days start getting longer.  This mimics John the Baptist’s statement in John’s Gospel that “He (meaning Jesus) must increase, and I (meaning John the Baptist) must decrease.

    What, then, will we be?  Where will God’s will take us?  God knows.  So we just pray for the grace to receive it, so that we can be really, truly free.  Because when we decrease so that Jesus can increase, great things can and will happen.

  • St. Anthony of Padua

    St. Anthony of Padua

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    saintanthonyYou know, it’s a bit of a happy coincidence that we have today’s first reading on this feast of St. Anthony of Padua.  St. Anthony, of course, is best known for his intercession on behalf of all of us who are forgetful and lose track of things from time to time, or, if you’re like me, even all the time!  But it is today’s first reading that really highlights the lost and found-ness that Anthony wants to help us with.

    St. Anthony himself was one who longed to seek after God.  He became an Augustinian as a young man.  Later, seeing the bodies of Franciscan martyrs brought back to his city, he became a Franciscan in order to be closer to God.  He wanted to be sent out on mission to preach to the Moors, but an illness prevented his doing that.  Instead, God had plans for Anthony to become a great man of learning, study, prayer and preaching.  Throughout his life, Anthony often found himself at the precipice of something new and adventurous.  God always had plans for Anthony’s life, and often, they were different from what Anthony expected.  But he was always willing to follow.

    One could see him in that cave with Elijah, finding God not in the heavy wind, or the fire, or even in the earthquake.  But knowing that the still, small voice, that tiny whispering sound, was undoubtedly the Lord doing a God-thing in his life. 

    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. Boniface, bishop and doctor

    St. Boniface, bishop and doctor

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    Be eager to present yourself as acceptable to God,
    a workman who causes no disgrace,
    imparting the word of truth without deviation.

    St. Paul encourages his friend Timothy today to remain faithful to God and the Gospel and to be a tireless worker for the Truth.  Those qualities make this reading such an appropriate one for the feast of St. Boniface, bishop and martyr.

    Boniface was a Benedictine monk in England.  He gave up the real possibility of being elected abbot of his community in order to reach out to the German people.  Pope Gregory II sent Boniface to a Germany where paganism was a way of life, and where the clergy were at best uneducated and at worst corrupt and disobedient.  Reporting all of this back to Pope Gregory, the Holy Father commissioned him to reform the German Church.  He was provided with letters of introduction to civil and religious authorities, but even so met with some resistance and interference by both lay people and clergy.  Yet, he was extremely successful, centering his reforms around teaching the virtue of obedience to the clergy and establishing houses of prayer similar to Benedictine monasteries.  Boniface and 53 companions were finally martyred during a mission, in which he was preparing converts for Confirmation.

    What guided Boniface, what guided Paul and Timothy, was the words of today’s Gospel reading, those words which tell us the greatest of the commandments:

    You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
    with all your soul, with all your mind,
    and with all your strength.
    And:
    You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

    When we love as we are loved, we cannot help but remain close to God and be vessels of grace to others and of life to the Church.  Boniface, Paul and Timothy were men who loved this deeply.  We are called to love that way too, today and every day, for the honor and glory of God.

  • Feast of Ss. Philip and James, Apostles

    Feast of Ss. Philip and James, Apostles

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    Today is the feast of St. Philip and the man we call “St. James the Lesser” because he is not the St. James that we know as a relative of Jesus and the traditional author of the book of James. Unfortunately, all that we know about this St. James is that Jesus chose him as an apostle. St. Philip we know a bit more about. We hear of him in the Gospel story of the feeding of the multitudes because he is the one who tells Jesus “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” In today’s Gospel we see him again as an apostle who is slow to believe. “Show us the Father,” he says, “and that will be enough for us.”

    So this, I think, is the feast for all of us disciples who don’t put ourselves in the limelight.  Maybe we’re slow to believe, or aren’t really sure how to accomplish the mighty deeds God requires of us.  Maybe we’re pretty unknown in discipleship circles.  And maybe that’s good enough for us.  Today’s feast says that’s okay.  It says that we will become great believers in God’s time, led by our Savior.  It says that we might need a little convincing that we can do the work God asks us to do, but that filled with the Holy Spirit, all things can be accomplished.  It says that we don’t have to be on the front page of the book to live our faith with conviction.

    Today is the feast of apostles who are called to make God’s love known despite their imperfections or apparent lack of ability.  It is a feast for all of us who know that we are called by God and led by the Spirit to do great things in Christ. To Philip and James and all the rest of the Apostles, Jesus said then, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” Jesus says that to us today, too, all of us disciples who are slow to believe and understand. “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do.” 

  • St. Athanasius, bishop and doctor of the Church

    St. Athanasius, bishop and doctor of the Church

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    Persecution was something very common in the early Church.  We see the beginnings of the persecution of St. Paul in our first reading.  Some Jews were starting to make trouble for Paul because he was challenging their way of worship and their way of life.  Living the Gospel is intensely challenging, and most people aren’t really looking for any kind of challenge.

    St. Athanasius, whose feast we celebrate today, was himself the victim of persecution.  As the bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, he was vocal in his opposition to the heresy of Arianism.  Arianism taught that Christ was not fully devine, in his human nature, and that he was not one with the Father.  It was difficult for Athanasius to combat this belief because Arius was himself from Alexandria and had some vocal and powerful friends.  Athanasius was exiled five times for his defense of the Divinity of Christ and his opposition to Arianism. 

    St. Paul and St. Athanasius embody what Jesus was getting at in the Gospel today.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices…” Jesus says.  And both Paul and Athanasius lived that.  But they both knew that their mourning would be much worse if they turned their back on the truth, if they turned their back on Christ.  They are the patrons of all who have to suffer – whether it be a little discomfort or social position, or whether it be at the cost of their lives – for the sake of the Gospel.  All of those glorious martyrs will know the joy that Jesus promises today:  “But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” 

  • St. Mark, Evangelist

    St. Mark, Evangelist

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    St. Mark the EvangelistWe 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.

     

  • St. John Baptist de la Salle

    St. John Baptist de la Salle

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    Our celebration today leads us to two great saints.  The first is St. Stephen in today’s first reading.  This is really the beginning of the end of his life.  His courageous words and steadfast commitment to the truth are beginning to find disfavor among some trouble makers.  The members of the “so-called Synagogue of Freedmen” are angry that they could not withstand Stephen’s wisdom, so they are starting to stir up trouble that will eventually lead to Stephen’s execution, but through it all, he finds his glory and peace in Christ.

    The second saint is the saint of today’s feast: St. John Baptist de la Salle.  John gave up a promising and rewarding career as a scholar-priest at an influential church, complete with a posh life that would take care of him for the rest of his life.  And he gave it up to work at a ministry he wasn’t all that excited about: educating young people.  Yet, the more he became convinced that this was his life’s calling, the more he dedicated himself to it.  He is the founder of the Christian Brothers, who have a ministry of education all over the world, and is the patron of school teachers. 

    His life resonates with St. Stephen in that he too met up with opposition.  He experienced heartrending disappointment and defections among his disciples, bitter opposition from the secular schoolmasters who resented his new and fruitful methods and persistent opposition from the Jansenists of his time, whose heretical doctrines John resisted vehemently all his life.

    Dedication to the truth can be a difficult thing to live.  There is always opposition to it.  But as St. Stephen and St. John Baptist de la Salle show us today, there is also joy and peace in it.