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Saints
Aug 1, 2012 23:26:00 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 1, 2012 23:26:00 GMT
Last month we had St Bede, so this month we have St Aidan of Lindisfarne, whose feast is on 31 August. The image is of his statue on Lindisfarne. St Aidan was an Irish-born monk and bishop who came from Iona to evangelise Northumbria. Bede's account of his sanctity and success as an evangelist (he emphasises his humility and approachability, travelling the countryside on foot rather than on horseback as a less successful predecessor did) has been accused of drawing to a suspicious extent on Gregory the Great's portrait of the ideal pastor, but if St Aidan had not been remembered as a holy man Bede would hardly have portrayed him as such. Bede also emphasises his personal asceticism and generous charity, even when it brought him into conflict with kings who believed he was slighting their gifts by distributing them to the poor. One of the more chilling stories in Bede is the one of King Oswin publicly apologising to Aidan for complaining about the use made of his gifts; after which Aidan wept privately, and explained to his monks that this was because a humble king was so unheard-of that he realised Oswin was too good for this wicked world. Oswin was betrayed by a friend to his cousin and dynastic rival, who murdered him eleven days before Aidan died on Lindisfarne, and the news is said to have hastened the bishop's death. One of the implied themes of Bede's portrayal is that while Aidan kept, as Bede saw it, the wrong date of Easter (and for Bede this is extremely important) he nonetheless embodied every other virtue; whereas in the Northumbria of his own day Bede feared there were too many in the Church who kept the right date of Easter but had everything else wrong. So Aidan represents our ability to learn from the saints of the past in coping with our own difficulties, and perhaps Bede's tribute to him should inspire us to recognise what is good - sometimes outstandingly good - in those in our own Church (and outside it) who may differ from us in important matters. BTW this is not the same Aidan who is the patron saint of the diocese of Ferns. He lived about a generation earlier than this Aidan, who died in 651. For a summary of Bede's account, here is the entry from the old DNB - but note it is by an Anglican cleric and hence (especially in the last sentence) has a certain anti-Roman bias. en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aidan_(d.651)_(DNB00)
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Saints
Aug 7, 2012 22:16:17 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 7, 2012 22:16:17 GMT
Tomorrow is the feast of St Dominic in the OF calendar - it was celebrated on Saturday 4th in the EF calendar. I came across this vision of St Catherine of Siena in the June/July CHRISTIAN ORDER, which used it to claim divine authority for Thomist-Aristotelean philosophy as traditionally associated with the Dominican Order. I am sorry to say that I think this has got the wrong end of the stick, because private revelations, which are influenced by the preoccupations and concerns of the visionary as well as the divine message from outside, do not possess this sort of divine authority - for example, St Catherine claimed to have received a private revelation that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was untrue, and in the case of that doctrine it was the Franciscans (notably Bl. Duns Scotus and his editor, Ireland's own glorious Fr Luke Wadding) who understood the role of the doctrine in the scheme of salvation, while the Dominicans (and St Bernard of Clairvaux) were wrong, albeit through legitimate concerns. Perhaps it is easier for us to relate to a saint like St Patrick who confesses that he was once a great sinner and the stone rejected by the builders, whom God raised from the mud and placed on top of the wall, than to the claim which St Catherine attributes to Our Lord that St Dominic never sinned but always retained his baptismal purity - but perhaps it was so, and if so it was a glorious thing. What is really striking about this vision, though, is how it holds up Dominic as an exemplar of what God has in mind for us in a way which our Eastern and Orthodox brethren are more used to proclaiming than we are in the Latin Rite. Those of us who attend the EF Mass hear every time the first chapter of the Gospel According to St. John, including: But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Here in this account of St Dominic's glory, God makes use of St Catherine to bring home to us the full meaning of those words. Just as she finds it surprising and shocking that God should name Dominic as his adopted son and give him a place so little removed from the Only-Begotten Son, so it is surprising and shocking to think of ourselves in the same breath as a great saint such as St Dominic, let alone the Son of God. Yet that is what God offers to each one of us, and to everyone you pass in the street. Who among them will one day be the adopted sons and daughters of God? All who answer the Bridegroom's freely-given invitation. Whatever sins we have committed, He still offers us His grace, and if we receive it He will reward us like the labourers of the eleventh hour, from His inexhaustible wealth which gives yet is never diminished. Who can think such a thing as we consider this hard world? Yet so it is - HE stands at the door and knock, and we have only to answer. St Catherine, in the voice of God, speaks of the Dominican Order as specially chosen to preach the Word that offers to all this divine sonship. May it ever be so, and may they always be faithful to their trust. www.op-stjoseph.org/hist-testimony.htmlTestimony The following is an account of what Saint Catherine of Siena heard from God the Father about Saint Dominic and the Order of Friars Preachers, taken from: Blessed Raymond of Capua, O.P., The Life of Catherine of Siena,Translated by Conleth Kearns, O.P. (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, Inc.; 1980), ##204-205 [204] She seemed to see the Supreme Eternal Father bringing forth from his mouth his co-eternal Son; and the Son was plain before her eyes, clothed with the human nature which he assumed. As she watched, she saw a counterpart of this: she saw the most blessed Patriarch Dominic being brought forth from the breast of the Eternal Father; and him she saw clothed with light and dazzling splendour. Then she heard a Voice, proceeding from the Father's mouth, and saying in solemn tones: "Dearest daughter, I am the Father of these two sons; of the One by natural generation; of the other, by loving and affectionate adoption." She was amazed to hear these two put side by side like this, in a comparison which raised the Saint to such a lofty height. But to dispel her amazement the One who had spoken these words proceeded to explain them: [205] "This Son who is Mine by natural and eternal generation, was most perfectly obedient to Me in all things, even unto death, in the human nature which He assumed. So too, Dominic, this son who is Mine by adoption, shaped every act he did, from his infancy till the last day of his life, by obedience to my commandments. Never once did he disobey a command of Mine. He preserved without stain the virginity of his body and of his soul, and he never lost the grace he had received at Baptism, by which he was born again in the Spirit. Again, just as this Son of Mine by nature, being the Eternal Word who proceeds from My mouth, spoke out before the world all things I had laid upon Him, and thus, as He said himself to Pilate, 'gave testimony to the truth,' so too Dominic, My son by adoption, was a forthright preacher of My Truth to all men, heretics and Catholics alike. And he preached it not only in his own person, but through others also; nor only in his own lifetime, but through those who followed him. Through those followers the voice of Dominic's preaching is still heard today, and will continue to be heard. For just as my Son by nature sent out his disciples to preach, so did Dominic, My adopted son, send out his Friars. Consequently, just as My Son by nature is My very Word, so this adopted son is the herald and the bearer of My Word. And so My special gift to him and to his Friars is understanding of the words I have spoken, and the grace of never swerving from them. Again, just as My Son by nature directed all His life and all his acts, and all He taught both by word and example, towards this one object: the salvation of souls, so, too, did Dominic, My son by adoption. He directed all his energy and all his efforts towards the good of souls, to free them from the meshes of false doctrine or the snares of sin, in which they had been caught. One paramount purpose he ever kept before him as he planted that Order of his, and watched over its first beginnings: labour for the good of souls. For these reasons, then, he bore in his measure a close resemblance, in all he did, to Him who is My Son by nature. But by reason of that resemblance in deeds comes even a bodily resemblance between the two, which you have been allowed to see: My son by adoption, even in his bodily appearance, bore a close likeness to that All-Holy One who is My Son by nature and My Only-begotten." END
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Saints
Aug 26, 2012 20:14:52 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 26, 2012 20:14:52 GMT
Just a little quotation to remind us that the vast majority of saints are known unto God alone. From Peter Doyle MITRES AND MISSIONS IN LANCASHIRE: THE ROMAN CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF LIVERPOOL 1850-1900 pp29-30. Robert Bannister, a mission priest in Lancashire in the late eighteenth century, is corresponding with his nephew, also a priest, about catechesis: "The lives of the saints were also useful, but Butler's recently published LIVES were too remote for most ordinary Catholics, he believed. [Presumably the objection is that most of the saints described by Butler were vowed religious and clergy and as such hard to relate to everyday lay life, or that they worked miracles and accomplished marvellous deeds such as converting kingdoms, or practised extraordinary austerities - HIB.] Far more useful as a model would be QUOTE 'the life of some holy woman, or women, married to an idle husband having 7 or 8 shirtless children, herself too almost naked, neither servant maid to assist her nor anyone to comfort her... or a poor holy man tied to an errant vixen'. END QUOTE He knew the realities of his people's lives." Of course not all who suffer thus are saints, and it does not mean that such suffering is a good thing, but such are far more frequent than we realise. How long it takes us to realise how our own parents worked and suffered and sacrificed, so often when it is too late or almost too late to make our gratitude known to them? Yet those of them who take their cross and endure will receive their reward in heaven if not on earth, the crown of righteousness, the prize allotted to the saints.
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Saints
Aug 26, 2012 20:54:56 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 26, 2012 20:54:56 GMT
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Saints
Aug 28, 2012 22:07:50 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 28, 2012 22:07:50 GMT
The picture of St Aidan of Lindisfarne will be changed at the beginning of next month, so I'll leave you with two further thoughts about him that have occurred to me. First - it appears from the listing in the CATHOLIC HERALD - and I hope I have misread it - that his feast is a memorial in England & Wales, but not in Scotland or Ireland. It is a pity that such a great saint should not be formally remembered in Scotland (he set out from Iona on his mission to evangelise Northumbria, and in his day the Kingdom of Northumbria covered much of what is now SE Scotland as well as NE England) or in his native Ireland. In his life of St Cuthbert Bede claims that Cuthbert was a shepherd on the Northumbrian hills, and that one night he saw a vision of a beam of light and of angels escorting the soul of Aidan to heaven, and was so struck by this that he entered the monastery of Lindisfarne. You can believe it or not if it pleases you, but it certainly very strikingly symbolises how the life and holiness of a saint can serve as a channel of God's grace in inspiring others to sanctity. The history of the relations between England and Ireland have not always been happy, and neither have relations between Catholics in England and Ireland been happy, but the story of Aidan and Cuthbert may serve as a reminder of what the Irish Church did for England, and of all the Irish clergy, religious and lay evangelists who laboured there to call that country back to Jesus and his Church. BEDE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY ON ST. AIDAN I have written thus much concerning the character and works of the aforesaid Aidan, in no way commending or approving his lack of wisdom with regard to the observance of Easter; nay, heartily detesting it, as I have most manifestly proved in the book I have written, "De Temporibus"; but, like an impartial historian, unreservedly relating what was done by or through him, and commending such things as are praiseworthy in his actions, and preserving the memory thereof for the benefit of the readers; to wit, his love of peace and charity; of continence and humility; his mind superior to anger and avarice, and despising pride and vainglory; his industry in keeping and teaching the Divine commandments, his power of study and keeping vigil; his priestly authority in reproving the haughty and powerful, and at the same time his tenderness in comforting the afflicted, and relieving or defending the poor. To be brief, so far as I have learnt from those that knew him, he took care to neglect none of those things which he found in the Gospels and the writings of Apostles and prophets, but to the utmost of his power endeavoured to fulfil them all in his deeds.
These things I greatly admire and love in the aforesaid bishop, because I do not doubt that they were pleasing to God; but I do not approve or praise his observance of Easter at the wrong time, either through ignorance of the canonical time appointed, or, if he knew it, being prevailed on by the authority of his nation not to adopt it. Yet this I approve in him, that in the celebration of his Easter, the object which he had at heart and reverenced and preached was the same as ours, to wit, the redemption of mankind, through the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven of the Man Christ Jesus, who is the mediator between God and man. And therefore he always celebrated Easter, not as some falsely imagine, on the fourteenth of the moon, like the Jews, on any day of the week, but on the Lord’s day, from the fourteenth to the twentieth of the moon; and this he did from his belief that the Resurrection of our Lord happened on the first day of the week, and for the hope of our resurrection, which also he, with the holy Church, believed would truly happen on that same first day/ of the week, now called the Lord’s day.
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Saints
Aug 29, 2012 18:53:19 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Aug 29, 2012 18:53:19 GMT
A little more Bede on Aidan. Note (a) Bede is explicitly contrasting Aidan with the negligent clerics of his own day, and this may colour his picture (b) the resemblance to St Patrick's insistence in the CONFESSION that he never accepted gifts, but gave them away (c) the contrast between Aidan's mildness in evangelisation and the harshness of the missionary who preceded him - this lesson is particularly important for orthodox Catholics who are harsh in condemning those who fall short, and in trads who despise everyone who does not adopt all their practices immediately and who wish to have things explained to them. Of course the liberals have their own faults in these respects, but since this board is primarily for those with traditionalist/conservative inclinations in matters of faith, we should pay most attention to our own faults, and remember that those whose fallacious arguments we dispute may nonetheless have virtues from which we can learn EXTRACT CHAP. V. Of the life of Bishop Aidan. [635 A.D.]
FROM this island, then, and the fraternity of these monks, Aidan was sent to instruct the English nation in Christ, having received the dignity of a bishop. At that time Segeni,abbot and priest, presided over that monastery. Among other lessons in holy living, Aidan left the clergy a most salutary example of abstinence and continence; it was the highest commendation of his doctrine with all men, that he taught nothing that he did not practice in his life among his brethren; for he neither sought nor loved anything of this world, but delighted in distributing immediately among the poor whom he met whatsoever was given him by the kings or rich men of the world. He was wont to traverse both town and country on foot, never on horseback, unless compelled by some urgent necessity; to the end that, as he went, he might turn aside to any whomsoever he saw, whether rich or poor, and call upon them, if infidels, to receive the mystery of the faith, or, if they were believers, strengthen them in the faith, and stir them up by words and actions to giving of alms and the performance of good works.
His course of life was so different from the slothfulness of our times, that all those who bore him company, whether they were tonsured or laymen, had to study either reading the Scriptures, or learning psalms. This was the daily employment of himself and all that were with him, wheresoever they went; and if it happened, which was but seldom, that he was invited to the king’s table, he went with one or two clerks, and having taken a little food, made haste to be gone, either to read with his brethren or to pray. At that time, many religious men and women, led by his example, adopted the custom of prolonging their fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, till the ninth hour, throughout the year, except during the fifty days after Easter. Never, through fear or respect of persons, did he keep silence with regard to the sins of the rich; but was wont to correct them with a severe rebuke. He never gave money to the powerful men of the world, but only food, if he happened to entertain them; and, on the contrary, whatsoever gifts of money he received from the rich, he either distributed, as has been said, for the use of the poor, or bestowed in ransoming such as had been wrongfully sold for slaves. Moreover, he afterwards made many of those he had ransomed his disciples, and after having taught and instructed them, advanced them to priest’s orders.
It is said, that when King Oswald had asked a bishop of the Scots to administer the Word of faith to him and his nation, there was first sent to him another man of more harsh disposition,who, after preaching for some time to the English and meeting with no success, not being gladly heard by the people, returned home, and in an assembly of the elders reported, that he had not been able to do any good by his teaching to the nation to whom he had been sent, because they were intractable men, and of a stubborn and barbarous disposition. They then, it is said, held a council and seriously debated what was to be done, being desirous that the nation should obtain the, salvation it demanded, but grieving that they had not received the preacher sent to them. Then said Aidan, who was also present in the council, to the priest in question, "Methinks, brother, that you were more severe to your unlearned hearers than you ought to have been, and did not at first, conformably to the Apostolic rule, give them the milk of more easy doctrine, till, being by degrees nourished with the Word of God, they should be capable of receiving that which is more perfect and of performing the higher precepts of God." Having heard these words, all present turned their attention to him and began diligently to weigh what he had said, and they decided that he was worthy to be made a bishop, and that he was the man who ought to be sent to instruct the unbelieving and unlearned; since he was found to be endued preeminently with the grace of discretion, which is the mother of the virtues. So they ordained him and sent him forth to preach; and, as time went on, his other virtues became apparent, as well as that temperate discretion which had marked him at first.
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Saints
Sept 2, 2012 19:34:33 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Sept 2, 2012 19:34:33 GMT
Since I have been discussing Bl. John XXIII a bit on the Vatican II threads, I thought I would have him this month. The choice of a photo of him with Ven. Pius XII (note - normally icons will only be of Blesseds or canonised saints, since Venerables are not supposed to be the object of public cult - you may pray to God for them to intercede for you, but you are not supposed to invoke their intercession directly. If I have got this wrong, can someone please clarify?) is meant to suggest that we should see what they had in common and should try to understand them as they were rather than badging them as "liberal" or "conservative".
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Saints
Sept 4, 2012 9:49:57 GMT
Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 4, 2012 9:49:57 GMT
I called into the Orthodox chapel in Frankfurt Airport in recent weeks and found that St Alexander Schmorrell was there among the icons.
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Saints
Sept 15, 2012 20:55:39 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Sept 15, 2012 20:55:39 GMT
I recently came across a copy of the unfinished autobiography of St Edith Stein/Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Central Catholic Library, and I have been reading it. It is called LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY and was begun soon after the Nazi seizure of power as a conscious counter to their image of Jews as malevolent alien parasites; it carries her story and that of her family up to around 1918, when it breaks off. A few reflections: (a) Her mother - who brought up a large family and successfully managed the family timber business in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) after her husband's sudden death from a seizure comes across as a truly admirable woman. One can see why Edith was distressed by the tensions that arose between them over her mother's annoyance at her daughter's conversion to Christianity. (b) Edith's fundamental affection for her relations is also apparent. (It must be said that she is quite scarifyingly forthright in her descriptions of such matters as marital problems and personal tensions within the extended family - I suspect this indiscretion is down to a philosopher's regard for truth and to a sense that if you are making the case for the defence you must be absolutely honest and not suppress anything.) At the same time, it is very clear that she found it slightly suffocating as well as sustaining, and that her story is in part that of an intelligent young provincial bourgeois in fin de siecle Europe reaching out to a wider world beyond her family's immediate concerns. (Her mother and some other family members seem to have been less than enthusiastic about her desire to be an academic and do original work in philosophy - they would have preferred her to qualify as a teacher and settle down.) Her rejection of her family's Jewish religious belief is related to this (she has a passing reference to her irritation with Talmudic legalism on such matters as what constitutes carrying a burden on the Sabbath etc. (c) One of the striking things that comes from reading the book is a sense of how German these people were, in their political allegiances (she refers to relatives from an area of Silesia which passed to Poland as the result of a plebiscite; several who had moved to other parts of Germany returned to cast pro-German votes in the referendum, and when the vote was lost those who lived there preferred to dispose of their homes and businesses and move to Germany rather than remain under Polish rule) and in their whole cultural makeup. I happen to have been reading George L Mosse's THE CRISIS OF GERMAN IDEOLOGY recently, (it deals with the "volkisch" milieu of Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany - the sense that an older purer Germany of small towns and peasantry was being corrupted and overwhelmed by urbanisation and industrialisation, and that a return to a simpler and more natural German life was required - and how this fed into the coming of NAtional Socialism) and some of the references which the editors of Edith Stein's text could not explain can be elucidated from Mosse - for example, she was dismayed by the portrayal of moral corruption among university students in the popular novel HELMUT HARRINGA, which Mosse discusses at some length. Obviously this does not mean that she was "volkisch" herself, just that the discontents of late-Wilhelmine Germany had a certain degree of overlap (especially in regard to such matters as progressive educational theory). Her portrayal of these very German Jews makes it all the more chilling to know that those of them who were not murdered like Edith Stein herself ended up in exile, driven out as "Asiatic parasites" to enrich other countries with their talents (one of Edith Stein's cousins who is mentioned several times in the text became an eminent mathematician in America). The editors' epilogue includes a possibly apocryphal story from a soldier who claims to have seen a transport full of Jews from Holland in the railyards in Breslau and to have exchanged a few words with a tall woman in nuns' garb whom he later believed to have been Edith Stein. He said she told him: "This is my beloved hometown. I will never see it again. We are being taken to our deaths." Within a few years of her murder the German Breslau which she knew would disappear as a result of the criminal actions of the National Socialists - supported by so many of its citizens - and the mass expulsions from eastern Germany that followed the defeat of the regime. One last thought - it struck me on reflection that it is appropriate that Edith Stein should have been declared a patron saint of Europe. The idea of European Jews as utterly alien beings, transplanted Asiatics distorting and corrupting European life, has a long and disgraceful history to which, alas, many Christians and Catholics have contributed. (Think, for example, of the imagery applied to Jews by Chesterton and Belloc, which often includes portrayals of Muslim Arabs as exploiting and undermining a Christian European peasant culture which they fail to understand because of their simplistic desert monotheism - the code being that Jews, who as non-Trinitarians are also of course "pure" monotheists, are as alien to Christian Europe as if they were Arabs. I am sorry to say that the Chesterbellocian exaltation of the honest European peasant has certain affinities with the invocation of his peasant roots by the apostate Catholic, nazi collaborator, and all-round scoundrel MArtin Heidegger - whom incidentally, as I learned at the recent Clarendon Street lecture on Edith Stein, blocked her academic promotion, plagiarised some of her work, and helped to get her fired from her university position by drawing her to the attention of his NAzi friends after they came to power.) Such attitudes, like the quest for a purified German or Greek Christianity or other national Christianity, inexorably leads to contempt for Christianity itself as another alien oriental importation undermining classical (or Germanic, or whatever) European civilisation; the mindset is quite unmistakable in Charles Maurras (still revered by certain SSPX members) for example. The naming of Edith Stein as a patron of Europe, then, is a rebuke to such attitudes and a reminder that the history of Europe cannot be understood without the role of the Jews both in secular and in salvation history. St Edith, pray for us.
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Saints
Sept 26, 2012 17:51:20 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Sept 26, 2012 17:51:20 GMT
Today is the feast in the EF calendar (and, in Canada, in the OF calendar; in the US it is on 19 October) of St Isaac Jogues and his companions, the Jesuit Martyrs of North America. Naturally, they are better known in North America than here, but the dedication shown by St Isaac and other Jesuit missionaries still has the power to inspire. Ask their intercession for the Jesuit Order, which certainly needs it. From a US Catholic blog [the illustration is from St Louis Cathedral, which has one of the greatest expanses of mosaics in the world and is certainly a remarkable sight. I visited it in 2006 and prayed at the tomb of Cardinal Glennon, one of its builders, who originally came from Westmeath and who died in Aras an Uachtarain in 1946 on the way back from the consistory at which he was made a Cardinal. The future Pope John XXIII, who was then Nuncio in Paris, met him and the other American cardinals-elect on their way to the consistory and was impressed that though the oldest of them he seemed the liveliest and most cheerful.) stlouiscatholic.blogspot.ie/2012/09/feast-of-st-isaac-jogues-and-st-jean-de.htmlEXTRACT Born in Orléans, France, Jogues entered the Society of Jesus in 1624. In 1642, he was sent to New France as a missionary to the Huron and Algonquin allies of the French. While on his way by canoe to the country of the Hurons, Jogues was captured by a war party of Mohawk Iroquois, in the company of Guillaume Couture, René Goupil, and several Huron Christians. Taken back to the Mohawk village, they were tortured in various gruesome ways, Jogues himself having several of his fingers bitten or burned off. Jogues survived this torment and went on to live as a slave among the Mohawks for some time, even attempting to teach his captors the rudiments of Christianity. He was finally able to escape thanks to the pity of some Dutch merchants who smuggled him back to Manhattan. From there, he managed to sail back to France, where he was greeted with surprise and joy. As a "living martyr," Jogues was given a special permission by Pope Urban VIII to say the Holy Mass with his mutilated hands, as the Eucharist could not be touched with any fingers but the thumb and forefinger. Yet his ill-treatment by the Mohawks did not dim the missionary zeal of Jogues. Within a few months, he was on his way back to Canada to continue his work. In 1645, a tentative peace was forged between the Iroquois and the Hurons, Algonquins and French. In the spring of 1646, Jogues was sent back to the Mohawk country along with Jean de Lalande to act as ambassador among them. However, some among the Mohawks regarded Jogues as a sorcerer, and when the double-calamity of sickness and crop failure hit the Mohawks, Jogues was a convenient scapegoat. On October 18, 1646, Jogues was clubbed to death and beheaded by his Mohawk hosts near Auriesville, New York, along with Goupil and LaLande... END OF EXTRACT
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Sept 26, 2012 18:20:59 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Sept 26, 2012 18:20:59 GMT
A blogger notes yesterday was the feastday of St Sergius of Radonezh. I had not realised that he was included in the General Roman Calendar of saints (though I would have expected him to be in some of the Eastern Catholic calendars, since he lived before the Union of Brest-Litovsk; the general rule is that Eastern Churches can venerate saints who were in their calendars before reunion even if they were not in communion with Rome - hence St Gregory Palamas, the defender of the claim that Orthodox meditation techniques known as hesychasm provide direct contact with the divine, is in some eastern-rite calendars, to the great annoyance of certain trads who regard this claim as self-evidently outrageous - but saints who actually caused a schism are not included; so Syriac Christians or Copts reconciled with Rome would not be allowed to retain Nestorius or Dioscorus in their calendars.) Given my fascination with the saints of Northumbria, it is also interesting to see that yesterday, as well as being the feast of St Finnbarr, patron of Cork, was the feast of Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow/Wearmouth, beloved mentor of Bede the Venerable. Ceolfrith died while on his way to Rome, where he had intended to spend his last days. A great Vulgate Bible which he had brought to present to the Pope was rediscovered in the nineteenth century in a Florentine library and shows the high standard of scribal work at Jarrow. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergius_of_Radonezhtouchstonemag.com/merecomments/2012/09/st-sergius-of-radonezh-2/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceolfrid
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Oct 3, 2012 20:05:32 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Oct 3, 2012 20:05:32 GMT
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Oct 19, 2012 10:55:28 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Oct 19, 2012 10:55:28 GMT
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Oct 31, 2012 20:45:45 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Oct 31, 2012 20:45:45 GMT
A new month, a new saint. The feast of St Martin de Porres (1579-1639) is on November 3rd (OF calendar - he was canonised by John XXIII fifty years ago, just too late to be included in the last update of the EF calendar) and I have been dropping in to the novena to St Martin at St Saviour's to pray for sick relatives, so I thought he would be a good choice. www.catholicmatters.com/nov03.htm He was very popular among Irish Catholics up until recently - partly I think because of the novelty of a black saint in a society where many/most would never have seen blacks, partly because of a spillover from the American context (support for his canonisation was seen in part as an expression of support for racial equality at a time when it was becoming harder and harder for white Americans to ignore the gap between their professed principles and their treatment of blacks). Part of his appeal, once you get to know a bit more about him, is simply that he is a very attractive saint, who devoted his life to caring for the sick and helpless at great physical danger and trouble, and who came from a very hard background (his father was a Spanish nobleman who abandoned his mistress, an ex-slave, and his two children by her - Martin and a sister - and left them to grow up in a slum). He was very gentle and patient, and his kindness extended to animals, of which he had a large number (those who could not be accommodated in the priory were consigned to his extremely patient sister). The image of the dog, cat, and mouse drinking from the same bowl is straight out of the testimonies collected from contemporaries when the process for his beatification was begun. He founded a hospital and an orphanage for street children in Lima, where he lived - both of which are still in operation; I suspect the picture prettifies the image of his hospital considerably, but it is one of the few I could find online which included it at all. It also includes the broom - a symbol of the hard and dirty work he did throughout his life at the Dominican priory - and makes his skin considerably darker than other images. Martin attached himself to the Dominicans initially not even as a laybrother but as a donato or "gift" - a much lower status, doing work seen as too hard and degrading even for laybrothers. Blacks and other non-whites were not admitted even as laybrothers - Martin was the first because of the reputation for sanctity he developed (and possibly also because his father, who had risen to high office, complained that for his son not to be admitted to the order was a stain on his honour, as if his treatment of his own flesh and blood had left him with any honour worth the name). Before we start getting too high-minded at the expense of the seventeenth-century Peruvians (who still tend to emphasise racial distinctions), let us remember that just as Martin's cause was entering its final stages Bl. Cyprian Iwene Tansi, who became the first Nigerian Cistercian, applied to an Irish Cistercian monastery (I don't know which one but I would love to find out) and was not only rejected but racially insulted. One response some people will have to Martin is to see him as an Uncle Tom, and I confess I was horrified when I read in Fr Benedict Groeschel's essay on Martin that at one stage he suggested that the friars should sell him as a slave in order to clear a debt due for some building work on the friary (to do him justice, the Prior was so taken aback by this that he not only refused the offer but repented of his previous treatment of Martin). It is clear however that his gentleness was not servility but absolute dedication to his vocation of caring for the sick and disadvantaged, based on absolute self-surrender to God. It is also I fear a sign of the times that when I heard the preacher today describing Martin's foundation of an orphanage, or his taking up the street orphan Juan Vazquez as a protege and giving him a start in life (Juan became one of the most important witnesses in his beatification process) I immediately thought of recent scandals - but the fact that the corporal works of mercy have been used to mask criminal actions by clerics, and that Catholic charitable institutions have often been corrupted, and we should NEVER forget this, should NEVER mean that those who gave their lives to the works of mercy in the name of Jesus should be forgotten. To do that is to bear false witness just as much as to deny the reality of those crimes, which the devil inspires precisely to obscure and blot out the image of the Good. The preacher today also compared Martin to an Irish martyr commemorated today - the Jesuit laybrother and martyr Dominic Collins, hanged in his native Youghal in 1601, who among his many adventures cared for those suffering from bubonic plague in an isolation hospital, just as Martin did in Lima. livingspace.sacredspace.ie/F1030S/ St Martin, teach us to be humble without being servile or bitter. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Martin_de_Porres_(sculpture)
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Saints
Nov 25, 2012 17:19:58 GMT
Post by hibernicus on Nov 25, 2012 17:19:58 GMT
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