Category Archives: Saints

News, Saints

Here is Peter!

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Pope Francis Praying at the Tomb of St. Peter
Pope Francis Praying at the Tomb of St. Peter

The Year of Faith is going out with a bang!

For on Sunday, the bones of St. Peter will be on display for the veneration of the faithful in St. Peter’s Square for the first time in history. This momentous event will take place during the concluding Mass for the Year of Faith on November 24.

It was in 1950 that Pope Pius XII made the announcement that “the tomb of the prince of the apostles” had been found. For those of you who have visited Rome and toured the Scavi (excavations of Peter’s tomb), you know what an emotional impact that this viewing will have on the faithful. I will always remember the goosebumps I had while traveling on the subterranean ancient Roman floors beneath the Vatican crypt and hearing the guide say: Here is Peter!

confessio
Looking down to the tomb of St Peter, over the altar in St. Peter’s

The controversial story of the finding of Peter’s bones is told in a riveting and recently republished book by Fr. James Evangelist Walsh. Whether the bones are truly Peter’s can not be known for certain (though I am convinced), but let us say that the bones were found directly under the altar of St. Peter’s, they are of a robust man 60 or so years of age, the bones were wrapped in purple cloth interwoven with gold-thread (a sign of the  great dignity of the person) and the location of St. Peter’s was built over the awkward location of this tomb. What is known for certain is that pilgrims have venerated this location from the beginnings of the Church.

Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

 

 

Saints, Women's Communities

A Culture of Charity

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moermanThe Daughters of St Mary of Providence, founded by St. Louis Guanella in Italy, are celebrating 100 years of the Guanellian presence in the United States.

In our day, when you read stories that are absolutely depressing not to mention discouraging and horrific regarding the sanctity of human life, it is so refreshing and encouraging to look at the lives of these sisters and the love they have for the most vulnerable in our society. They were founded by St. Louis to care for marginalized persons who were orphaned, sick,  handicapped or elderly.

On June 13th, the National Catholic Register had an article entitled: “Barbarians from the North: Child Euthanasia in Belgium and the Netherlands.” LifeSite News reported earlier this year that 90% of children with Down Syndrome are aborted. The Telegraph reported on the 20th that a Somali girl had been smuggled into Great Britain to have her organs harvested. In other words, killed so someone else might live.

Guanella2I shudder to think of who or what entity is deciding on who lives and who dies in our world. Whose life is more valuable? Whose life is “less valuable” because they are paralyzed, infirm, mentally ill, disabled, old? Who is playing God?

And what does all this have to do with the Guanellian sisters? Well, their mission in part is to “help people with developmental disabilities meet life’s challenges and reach their highest potential in spiritual, emotional, mental and psychological growth, at the same time promoting their dignity as human beings.” Their founder, St. Louis, reminds us that “the handicapped, aged and orphans are God’s treasures.”

We are fortunate at the IRL to have in our midst the sisters’ Mount St. Joseph home, a residence for adult women with developmental disabilities. Located in Lake Zurich, Illinois, the sisters have been caring for these children of God since 1935 when the location, a farm, was purchased. Here each person is supported and challenged to live their life to the fullest extent possible while maintaining their dignity as human beings.

Cardinal Francis George, celebrating a 100th anniversary Mass with the sisters in May, said that they are a model of discipleship and it is through their service that they profess Jesus Christ. “It is the charity that they show in their lives that tells people that there is more to life than what is in front of us right now. That each of us has a personal dignity…we are related directly to a loving God who cares for us and therefore asks us to care for one another.”

Happy feast day of St. Louis Guanella to the communities that Louis founded: the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence and the Servants of Charity (for men).

 

 

 

Saints, Women's Communities

Nescio te! – I Know You Not!

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Sometimes people say when arguing about the Church’s stance on various issues that “Jesus was a product of His times, ergo, if He were on the earth today, we would have women priests, gay marriage, democratic elections for Pope,” etc. etc. etc…..

Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., in her classic book, A Right to be Merry, says that one thing that makes the daughters of St. Clare bristle is the notion that Saint Clare, with her missionary heart,  became a cloistered contemplative simply because it was the only form of religious life available to women in her day.

Mother wrote:

If Saint Francis had wanted his Second Order to be a missionary order, he was just the man to have made that a fait accompli in no time at all. No one was ever more “original” than the saint who walked at right angles to everything characteristic of his age.

What he founded was was a Second Order of enclosed, praying nuns, because that is what he wished to found. Saint Clare, on her part, did indeed have a missionary heart. That is why she entered the cloister; to be a missionary to all the world.

Any daughter of hers who is not a missionary at heart is in danger of hearing hard words from her Seraphic Mother when she meets her after death: Nescio te!-I know you not!

News, Reflection, Saints

The Price of Being Loved

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The Head of St. John the Baptist

The price of being loved by the Almighty is high, as also is the price of growing in His love. The more precious the commodity, the higher the price; the most precious possession in the world is the love of God. You don’t get this, I don’t say for nothing or cheaply; you pay, and you pay dearly.

Can we be more specific? What does God expect of us who claim that we love Him as recompense for His prior goodness to us and as the wages, so to speak, to merit an increase of His bounty on our behalf? He finally expects these two things:

  • That we are willing to give up whatever pleasant things He may want us to surrender.
  • That we are willing to take whatever painful things He may want to send us.

Between these two, surrender and suffering, or as I prefer, sacrifice and the cross, lies the whole price range of divine love…. The love of God is paid for as Christ paid for the love of His Father with the hard currency of willing sacrifice and the holy cross.

When I was younger, and I thought, smarter, I didn’t talk quite this way. But experience is a good, though costly, teacher.

—Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Liturgical Year, Saints

Mother and Son

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I wonder how many mother and son feast days there are in the Church calendar besides the obvious ones involving Jesus and His Mother? Elizabeth and John the Baptist? St. Basil and his mother, St. Emilia?

St. Monica and St. Augustine are remembered, side by side, mother and son, on today’s and yesterday’s calendar.

Monica died in 387 and was buried in the city of Ostia, which was the port city of Rome. The city was covered by the sands of time but can be visited today and is found in a remarkable state of preservation. Monica’s relics were brought to Rome in 1430 and placed in the Basilica bearing her son’s name. In 1945, some young boys digging a hole in Ostia found a fragment of her funerary epitaph which had been written on stone.

In his writings, particularly in his Confessions, Augustine pays great tribute to his Mother whose tears and prayers brought Augustine to the baptismal font in Milan where St. Ambrose welcomed him into the Church. Strangely enough, Augustine is not buried in Rome but rather in Pavia, Italy, though he died in North Africa where he was bishop of Hippo.

Pope Benedict XVI was greatly influenced by Augustine’s theology. We might even say Monica as well for Benedict was appointed Cardinal-bishop of the Augustinian Church of Sant’ Aurea at Ostia where Monica’s remains were originally interred. The Holy Father also chose to have a shell on his Papal arms which harkens back to a legend about Augustine. It seems Augustine came across a young boy using a shell to pour sea water into a hole in the sand. When asked what he was doing the boy replied, “I am putting the ocean into this hole!” When Augustine said that this was impossible the boy responded: so too it is impossible for Augustine to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

When we despair and lose heart over a loved one’s distance from the Faith, it is good to remember the words spoken by a bishop to Monica, who wept over the dissolute lifestyle of her son:

“It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish.”

Saints

A Saintly Humility

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All founders of new religious institutes undergo severe trials as the community root’s are established but none can seem to top the anguish of today’s saint, St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787), bishop and founder of the Redemptorists (Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer).

To put it briefly, St. Alphonsus was tricked, due to his old age, infirmities and trust in his advisors, into signing a modified rule which eliminated or changed the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and perseverance. When he learned the truth of what he had signed, he wept bitter tears. Pope Pius VI, believing in Alphonsus’ complicity, ordered Alphonsus at age 86 to be expelled from his own congregation.

Ironically, Alphonsus was beatified by the same pope, an investigation having cleared Alphonsus’ good name. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1781 and is acclaimed as one of the Church’s greatest Moral and Marian theologians. In art, he is often depicted hunched over because he suffered from severe rheumatism. His congregation flourished after this death and today they number over 5000 priests and brothers around the globe who bring the Good News to the abandoned poor.

He appropriately said, “Persecutions are to the works of God what the frosts of winter are to plants. Far from destroying them, they allow them to strike their roots deeper in soil and make them more full of life. What really injures religious orders and brings the plant to decay like a worm gnawing at the root are voluntary sins and shortcomings. So let us put an end to these imperfections, let us correct ourselves, and God will protect us. The more violently persecution rages, the more closely must we become attached to Jesus Christ.”

Saints

Anima Christi

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St. Ignatius of Loyloa

SOUL of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O good Jesus, hear me.
Within Thy wounds, hide me.
Separated from Thee let me never be.
From the malignant enemy, defend me.
At the hour of death, call me,
To come to Thee, bid me,
That I may praise Thee in the company
Of Thy Saints, for all eternity.

Amen

Saints

The Red Cross of Charity

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The members of the Order of St. Camillus Servants of the Sick, in addition to the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience profess a fourth vow: “To serve the sick, even with danger to one’s own life.” This vow is no shallow or meaningless promise. The Order’s numbers were often decimated by epidemics or by caring for the injured on battlefields.

St. Camillus’ life is an example to all mothers to never give up hope on their children. Camillus was a rowdy, reckless boy given to gambling. After a stint in the military and a leg injury requiring numerous hospitalizations, Camillus took up work in a Capuchin monastery where he experienced a profound conversion. During a stay at St. James Hospital in Rome, he gathered some like-minded men around him to tend the sick.

Pope John Paul II, speaking to the Camillian family  on 450th anniversary of the birth of St Camillus de Lellis (May 25, 1550) said, that St. Camillus offered “insights and advice most of which would be adopted by the science of nursing in our day. He maintained that it was important to consider all the dimensions of the sick person with attention and respect, from the physical to the emotional, from the social to the spiritual. In a well-known passage of his Rule he invites us to ask the Lord for the grace ‘of motherly affection for our neighbor,’ so that ‘body and soul can be served with true love. Indeed, with God’s grace we want to serve the sick with the affection that a loving mother is wont to show her sick only child.'”

The Camillians wear a red cross over their cassocks, predating the Red Cross by hundreds of years!

 

News, Saints

St. Anthony Comes Around

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Last Sunday and Monday, we at the IRL who lodge at the Conventual Franciscan Friary at Marytown, were blessed to be able to view and venerate the relics of St. Anthony of Padua which are on tour from Padua, Italy. Throughout the two days, there were masses, vespers, adoration, and many people who came to be near the earthly remains of this very popular Franciscan priest and Doctor of the Church.

As you can see from the picture, the reliquary is stunning. May this patron saint of lost articles and this so eloquent evangelist for the Faith, intercede for us this day and help us throughout our lives.

Here is a St. Anthony Novena:

Novena to Saint Anthony for Any Need

St. Anthony, you are glorious for your miracles and for the condescension of Jesus Who came as a little child to lie in your arms. Obtain for me from His bounty the grace which I ardently desire. You were so compassionate toward sinners, do not regard my unworthiness. Let the glory of God be magnified by you in connection with the particular request that I earnestly present to you.

[State your request here.]

 

As a pledge of my gratitude, I promise to live more faithfully in accordance with the teachings of the Church, and to be devoted to the service of the poor whom you loved and still love so greatly. Bless this resolution of mine that I may be faithful to it until death.

St. Anthony, consoler of all the afflicted, pray for me.

St. Anthony, helper of all who invoke you, pray for me.

St. Anthony, whom the Infant Jesus loved and honored so much, pray for me. Amen.

 

 

Liturgical Year, Saints, Women's Communities

Hearts Like Thine

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The Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus have as part of their charism the mission to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart. This picture was sent to me by one of the sisters whose congregation in 2009 opened a place of prayer in Paray-le-Monial, France, where St. Margaret Mary received the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They hope this place of prayer will strengthen their fidelity to their charism and bring them many, holy vocations! May our hearts become more like Thine, O Lord, on this Solemnity devoted to your Sacred Heart!

Long for heaven, fly to the Lord as on wings, and never lose your peace. Cease not to work for the glory of God and the salvation of your soul until the Lord decides to say: “It is time.”

Remember that here you have no lasting city, but are awaiting another. Live then like the traveler or exile who, on returning to the fatherland, takes only what is necessary from earth.   And yet collect heavenly treasures zealously.

Through the Immaculate hands of Mary, entrust all your merits to the Heart of the Lord Jesus.

—St. Joseph Sebastian Pelczar, Founder of the Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart  of Jesus