January 24 - St. Francis de Sales - Part 2

Here are some tidbits from his biography that I haven’t yet mentioned:

 

Francis de Sales (1567-1622) was the first of six children of an aristocratic family.  His father had great ambitions for him – he literally had a Senate seat set aside for his son right out of school -- and was strongly opposed to his becoming a priest.  His father grudgingly agreed to his son’s plans for the priesthood only after the provost of Geneva died (the #2 man after the bishop), and he was able to arrange for his son to take the position.

 

When Francis was studying in Paris, he spent six weeks of spiritual attack convinced that he was predestined to hell.  (Recall that predestination was the hot topic of the day.)  He was released from this fear after praying a prayer of surrender to God's will in front of a statue of Mary, and he consecrated himself to her protection.

 

When he became a priest, the first thing he did was go on mission, alone, to the Chablais region near Geneva, which was very Calvinist.  He did not make a single convert for years.  He could not preach in public, and people refused to talk to him, feed him or help him in any way.  One winter night he secured himself high in a tree with his belt to escape from wolves, became frozen to the tree, and had to be rescued.  Two things eventually changed the situation.  First, Francis invented the religious tract (a dubious distinction if you ask me!).  He wrote down the positions of the Catholic Church on disputed issues and stuck them under people’s doors at night.  Second, the people of the Chablais came to admire and respect him for his kindness, affability, and continual ability to offer the other cheek when the first one was struck.  It is said that when he arrived in the Chablais, there were not one hundred Catholics, and when he left the Chablais, there were not one hundred Calvinists.  Over the course of his ministry, he is thought to have converted 72,000 people.

 

In retrospect, it’s easy to ask – why put all that effort into converting fellow Christians?  Remember that this is the era when Catholic-Protestant relations were at their absolute lowest, when each thought the other was “unsaved”, and their leaders hurled wild invectives at each other when they weren’t actively persecuting each other.  Given this situation, it was seen as incredible when Francis de Sales and Theodore de Beza, Calvin’s personal successor in Geneva, sat down with one another for amicable discussions.  To this day, Francis de Sales is remembered as an example of how to love everyone, not just the people who agree with you.

 

When Francis became bishop of Geneva in 1602, he was a very busy man.  He frequently traveled around his diocese and preached eloquently, and was on occasion seen with a halo of light around him as he preached.  People flocked to hear his sermons.  He made sure his people were well taught.  He invented a sign language so he could personally prepare a deaf man for his First Communion, and found him a job as well.  He also administered his diocese and co-founded an order of nuns that thrives to this day.

 

He thought that the main duty of bishop, however, was to provide personal spiritual direction to the people entrusted to his care.  As such, he spent hours every day writing letters to people who asked him questions, giving them practical advice on how they could be freed from their sins and live more Christlike lives.  From these letters came “Introduction to the Devout Life,” the manual of holiness for ordinary Christians. 

 

Next time, I’ll write about what I learned from that book.

January 24 - St. Francis de Sales - Part 1

This Sunday is the feast day of my patron saint, Francis de Sales (1567-1622).  As he is the patron saint of writers, his picture shows up on quite a few blogs, but I also chose him to be my patron saint at Confirmation last year.  So instead of writing a biography the way I usually do, I'm going to start by giving a few answers to the question:  Why St. Francis de Sales?

 

He was known for making Catholics out of Protestants.  I find it amusing that he helped bring another Protestant into the Catholic Church 400 years later. 

 

I used to live in his diocese.  He grew up in the Savoy region of eastern France.  He became bishop of Geneva, but because Catholicism was illegal in Calvinist Geneva, he lived in Annecy.  I spent 2 years living perhaps 10 miles from his house when I was a child.

 

He got a first-rate education in the humanities, studied at the College de Clermont in Paris, got his graduate degree in Italy, and was supposed to embark on a career in diplomacy, but decided instead to become a priest.  Clearly, we have nothing in common.  I got married and had kids instead. 

 

He wrote the first and best manual on holiness for busy moms.  His most famous work, “Introduction to the Devout Life,” is taken from letters he wrote giving spiritual advice to his cousin, Marie de Charmoisy.

 

He makes holiness sound attractive and attainable.  Let’s face it, some of the saints are less imitable than others.  Who wants to go live in the desert, wear a hairshirt and eat nothing but the Eucharist while attempting to pray around the clock?  Any takers?  Didn’t think so.  Now, who wants to experience the love of God and become a more loving, gentle and altogether happy person right in the comfort of your own home?  Doesn’t that sound like a great idea?

 

I’ll try to write a couple more posts on his life and writings this weekend!

January 21 - St. Agnes

Since I’m a history buff and love original sources (not because I'm lazy or anything), I’m going to let St. Ambrose tell us about St. Agnes.  Agnes was a child martyr executed in Rome in the year 304, during the vicious persecutions of Diocletian.  Ambrose gave this sermon on Agnes's feast day about a century after her death.

 

St. Agnes is said to have suffered martyrdom at age twelve.  The cruelty that did not spare so young a child was hateful, but the power of faith in the child was greater.  Was there room for a wound in that small body?  The sword could barely strike her, yet she had the inner strength to strike back.  Girls of her age usually can’t even bear a parent’s angry glance.  They cry at needles’ pricks as though they were wounds.  Agnes, however, faced her persecutors fearlessly.  When they attempted to force her to worship at the pagan altars, she stretched out her hands and made the sign of the cross over the sacrificial fires.  She was not fazed by the chains they wrapped around her.  And she freely offered her body to the executioner’s sword.

 

The executioner used both threats and allurements to try to change her mind.  He encouraged young men to beg her to marry them.  But she answered, “I already have a spouse, and I will not offend him by pretending that another might please me.  I will give myself only to him who first chose me.  So, executioner, what are you waiting for?  Destroy this body that unwanted eyes desire.”

 

Agnes stood and prayed.  Then she bent down her neck.  The executioner trembled as though he himself had been condemned.  His right hand shook and his face grew pale, but the virgin showed no fear at all.

 

So in one victim, we have a twofold martyrdom of purity and faith, for Agnes both remained a virgin and also obtained martyrdom.

 

There exist ancient variations of the story of St. Agnes, with some possible basis in actual events.  It is said that she was beautiful, and many men sought to marry her, but she refused them for the sake of Christ.  When she refused the son of the prefect of Rome, he was angered and reported her as a Christian to the local magistrate.  When she refused to give up her faith, she was sentenced to death, but not before being stripped and dragged to a brothel, as it was unlawful to execute a virgin.  However, only one of the men dared try to touch her.  He was immediately struck blind, but Agnes healed him.  The magistrate ordered her to be burned anyway, but she survived this, and she was decapitated.

 The church "St. Agnes outside the walls" was built over her grave in the time of Constantine, remodeled in the seventh century, and still stands today.

While the details of her story have been blurred with time, her situation as a twelve-year old girl who willingly faced death for Christ has inspired Christians throughout the ages.  Agnes shows us that holiness does not depend on age, experience, or own efforts, but is a gift that God offers us all.

January 20 - St. Fabian

Since St. Fabian and St. Sebastian were both martyred on January 20^th, the first in 250 and the second around 288, they are sometimes found together in paintings.  This, of course, leads to the artistic spectacle of an anachronistically dressed pope wincing in the direction of the arrow-stricken man, thinking, “Ouch.  Looks painful,” as St. Sebastian prays that God will rescue him from the man holding the curious-looking spear.

Fabian was pope during an age in which the job implied the distinct possibility of an early death, as opposed to, say, regal robes, a triple tiara, and cushy living quarters at the Lateran Palace.  Bishops of Rome in the third century were still very much underground figures, and often little is known about them beyond a line or two detailing their accomplishments in the Liber Pontificalis.

 

Because Fabian was much revered by his contemporaries, we know a little more than that.

 

Fabian was an undistinguished layman visiting Rome in the year 236 when Christians were assembling to elect a new bishop.  In the middle of the deliberations, a dove came down from the ceiling and landed on his head.  This was taken as a sign by everyone present that the Holy Spirit had chosen the unknown Fabian, and he was unanimously elected. 

 

Fabian’s election ushered in a period of peace for the Church.  He appointed new deacons, sent missionaries to Gaul, and appointed people to write down the stories of the martyrs so they would be remembered.

 

In 250, he himself was martyred when the new emperor Decius reinstituted the persecution of Christians.  Some of the newer Christians who had joined the church in peacetime were tempted to sacrifice that pinch of incense to the Roman gods, and save their own lives, but Pope Fabian set an example by being one of the first to die.

 

He was buried in the Roman catacombs, and the inscription on his tomb survives to this day.

January 20 - St. Sebastian

Here he is.  St. Sebastian.  The guy with the arrows.  You can’t miss seeing him in any great art museum.  Renaissance painters loved him because he provided a socially acceptable opportunity to paint a nude male torso with arrows sticking out of it. 

 

Plus, his story is fantastic.

 

Sebastian (lived approximately 257-288) joined the army in Rome around the year 283 to provide secret protection and support to fellow Christians who were being persecuted.  Once, twin brothers Marcus and Marcellinus were in prison awaiting execution for their faith, and their non-Christian family was pleading for them to renounce the faith and stay alive.  Sebastian intervened, preaching so fervently about the eternal glory that awaited them in heaven that not only did Marcus and Marcellinus remain firm in their faith until the end, but their family converted as well.  When Chancellor Nicostratus, who was in charge of the prisoners, caught wind of this, Sebastian made the sign of the cross over the lips of Zoe, his deaf-mute wife, and healed her.  She began to speak and professed her faith in Jesus as Lord.  Nicostratus then brought in the other 16 prisoners to be converted.

 

Marcus, Marcellinus, Nicostratus, and Zoe were all martyred.

 

Sebastian also cured Chromatius, the prefect of Rome, from gout.  He and his son converted.  Chromatius freed all of the prisoners under him, freed his slaves, and retired to the countryside.  His son was martyred.

 

Meanwhile, Sebastian was appointed captain of the Praetorian Guard by Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, who were unaware that he was Christian.  When Diocletian found out, he sentenced Sebastian to death by firing squad.  Sebastian was tied to a stake and shot by archers “till he was full of arrows as a hedgehog.”

 

Miraculously, he survived.

 

When a Christian widow went to retrieve his body, she found him still alive.  She secretly nursed him back to health.  As soon as he was able, Sebastian went out into the street and taunted Diocletian as he passed by.  The astonished emperor, taking no chances, ordered him clubbed to death on the spot.

 

He was a very popular saint in his own time and become even more popular in the Middle Ages, when he was known as the patron saint of plague sufferers.  Everyone admired the heroism of Sebastian, the saint who was martyred twice.

Fun stuff!

Ever heard Tom Lehrer's "The Element Song," where he names all of the elements of the periodic table to the tune of "Modern Major General?"  Then you know what to expect from "The Saint Song."

Here it is on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnt-P38ykc4

January 17 - St. Anthony the Great

Anthony (251-356) is the most famous of the Desert Fathers, and is called the “founder of monasticism.”  He was born in Egypt to Christian parents who were wealthy landowners.  When he was 18 years old, his parents died, and he became the guardian of his younger sister.  Shortly after this he arrived late to church one Sunday, walking in just as the Gospel lesson was about to be read.  The lesson was “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

 

Taking these words quite literally, Anthony sold everything he owned and gave it to the poor, and after placing his sister with a community of Christian virgins, he went to the outskirts of the city and became the disciple of a local hermit. 

 

He went to live alone in the desert, and underwent intense spiritual warfare for many years.  At one point devils physically beat him.  Anthony prayed and shouted, “I flee not from your stripes, for even if you inflict more, nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ!  He then sang, “Though a camp be set against me, my heart shall not be afraid.”  He was found the next day bleeding and nearly dead by a friend coming to bring him food, who carried him to a church.  There, Anthony had a vision of light in which he heard the voice of God consoling him and giving him back his health and strength. 

 

After this, Anthony went further into the desert and shut himself up in an abandoned Roman fort for the next twenty years.  Friends occasionally brought him bread, and disciples moved nearby and received spiritual counseling from him through a crevice in the wall.  On the day he finally emerged from the fort, he was so healthy and peaceful that everyone was amazed at the work God was doing in him.  It was at this point that Anthony began to organize his disciples into monasteries.  They lived in separate huts, engaged in prayer and manual labor, and joined together for worship on Sundays.  As he lived to be 105 years old, solitary desert life clearly agreed with him.

Anthony was so greatly respected in his own day that when he traveled to Alexandria to comfort the Christians in prison in 311, during the final wave of persecutions, the governor would not arrest him even after Anthony confronted him face to face.  In 325 he was invited to speak in defense of the Trinity at the Council of Nicea in 325, despite having no official position or authority.

 

Despite his difficult way of life and the temptations he is so known for facing, his friends described him as cheerful, confident, valorous, and full of divine peace.

 

Anthony did not learn how to read or write until well into adulthood (he memorized much of Scripture by hearing other monks read to him!), but Anthony's disciples wrote down many of his sayings.  Here is some of the wisdom of Anthony:

 

I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world, and I said, groaning, “What can get through from such snares?"  Then I heard a voice saying to me, “Humility.”

 

Our life and death are with our neighbor.  If we gain our brother, we gain our God; but if we scandalize our brother, we have sinned against Christ.

 

A time is coming when people will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.”

 

Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it in accordance with the testimony of the Holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.

 

This is the work of a great man: always to take responsibility for his own sins before God and to expect temptations until his last breath.

January 16 - St. Berard and companions

St. Berard (died 1220) was a well-educated Italian nobleman who gave up his wealth and rank to join the Franciscans in their earliest days.  He was accepted into the order by St. Francis himself, and like the other Franciscans, he owned nothing, begged for his daily bread, and traveled from town to town preaching the gospel.

 

He spoke Arabic, and in 1219 he led a missionary team to Morocco.  With his companions Peter, Otho, Accurcius, and Adjutus, he began preaching in the marketplace.  They were immediately arrested and ordered to leave the country.  When they began preaching again, the exasperated sultan ordered them executed.  They were beaten, offered bribes to give up their faith, and finally beheaded by the sultan himself.  They were the first Franciscan martyrs.

 

The word martyr means “witness,” and every martyr is a witness to the faith.  But in a case like this, it is easy to wonder what purpose their deaths served.  It is not reported that they made any converts among the Muslims.  Likewise, it is easy for us to wonder what God is doing with our lives.  We trust that he is working through our lives, but sometimes it is beyond us to see how.

 

This is not the end of St. Berard’s story.

 

The relics of him and his companions were carried back to Portugal.  Upon viewing their relics, and thinking of their heroism, the young Anthony of Padua was inspired to imitate them.  He joined the Franciscans and become a traveling preacher.  Anthony of Padua was wildly successful in his preaching career, becoming one of the greatest preachers and miracle-workers of the Catholic Church, and one of its most beloved saints.  (I will have to post some of those miracles….)

So God knows better than we do how our lives, lived for him, can have an impact on other lives, and can build the Kingdom in ways we would never expect.  It is up to us to faithfully do the work he has given us, and trust him. 

God has created me to do Him some definite service;  He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission -- I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.  I have a part in a great work;  I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  -- John Henry Cardinal Newman.

Miracle of the Day

Another miracle story from Augustine's City of God.  I'm loving his chapter on miracles!

In the city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts, a disease which, physicians say, is incurable. Ordinarily, therefore, they either amputate, and so separate from the body the member on which the disease has seized, or they abandon all remedies so that the patient's life may be prolonged a little, following the advice of Hippocrates, though death is inevitable even if somewhat delayed. This lady we speak of had been advised to do so by a skillful physician, who was intimate with her family; and she betook herself to God alone by prayer. On the approach of Easter, she was instructed in a dream to wait for the first woman that came out from the baptistery after being baptized, and to ask her to make the sign of Christ upon her sore. She did so, and was immediately cured. The physician who had advised her to apply no remedy if she wished to live a little longer, when he had examined her after this, and found that she who, on his former examination, was afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her what remedy she had used, anxious, as we may well believe, to discover the drug which should defeat the decision of Hippocrates. But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied, with religious politeness, though with a contemptuous tone, and an expression which made her fear he would utter some blasphemy against Christ, "I thought you would make some great medical discovery for me." She, shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied, "What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been four days dead?"

January 13 - St. Hilary of Poitiers

When I was about twelve years old, one day just after church a good friend and I got into an argument over whether Jesus was God.  “He’s the Son of God,” my friend argued.  “How can he be God at the same time?”  I stubbornly stuck to my position that he was both, but having no particular interest in theology at the time, I had no idea how to back up my odd-sounding claim.

 

This was the theological hot topic of the fourth century, when, according to St. Jerome, “the world groaned and marveled to find that it was Arian.”  The Arians believed that Jesus was the Son of God, but not God, that while Jesus was still our Savior and God’s most important creation, he was not “with God in the beginning.”  This belief was widespread within the Church during the fourth century.  While it is well known that all of the Roman emperors save one were Christian after the conversion of Constantine, it is less well known that they were mostly Arian Christians.  The Emperor Constantine himself was baptized on his deathbed by an Arian.  While the bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325 overwhelmingly upheld the orthodox view of Jesus’s divinity, Arian beliefs persisted.

 

Hilary of Poitiers (c. 315-368) suffered for his conviction that Jesus was God.  He grew up as a pagan in Southern Gaul, and became a teacher of rhetoric.  He became convinced of the importance of leading a virtuous life, and decided that polytheism had nothing to offer him.  He converted to Christianity around the age of 30 after reading the Pentateuch and the Gospel of John and deciding, “Here is the true God.”  He was appointed Bishop of Poitiers by popular acclaim at the age of 35, which was rather unusual since he was a layman with a wife and daughter.  He became a vocal defender of the orthodox view of the Trinity against the Arians.

 

Meanwhile, the Arian-friendly Emperor Constantius was putting great pressure on the Church.  When he demanded that all of the bishops in the West sign a condemnation of Bishop Athanasius, another great defender of the Trinity, Hilary refused, and Constantius banished Hilary to Phyrigia in Asia Minor.  Refusing to be cowed, Hilary used the time to research and write his greatest work, De Trinitate, and preached so effectively that the Arian bishops in Phrygia begged Constantius to send him home.  But no one told him he had to go directly home, so he took a leisurely route through Greece and Italy, preaching as he went.

 

One of the most admirable qualities of Hilary of Poitiers was his calm demeanor in the face of opposition.  He maintained relationships with those who persecuted him, and he maintained intellectual credibility across the Christian spectrum.  He is remembered as thoughtful, gentle, humble, and pastoral.  It is very easy to associate “standing for the truth” with “being strident, proud, and stubborn.”  Hilary reminds us that as Christians, we are called to be both courageous for the truth yet meek and humble before God and men.

 

Hilary wrote hymns praising the Trinity, hoping the common man would pick up on the theology.  This must have worked well, since just about every hymn written for the next 1500 years seems to end with a verse like this (the tune is “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” so start humming):

 

Glory be to God the Father

Glory be to God the Son

Glory be to God the Spirit

Ever three and ever one.

Consubstantial, co-eternal

While unending ages run.

 

Finally, while I have no statistics on this, I have the impression that Arian beliefs are once again becoming stronger within Christianity today.  Of course, they are prone to reoccur wherever preaching is weak, but I suspect that the modern combination of sola scriptura, relativism and historical apathy – “my reading of the Bible is as good as anyone else’s reading of the Bible” – also tends to produce modern-day Arians.

 

St. Hilary of Poitiers, pray for us.

January 11 - Blessed William Carter

The only person I know who’s reading this blog is a Protestant – my husband.  So I had to think long and hard about whether to cover the story of a Catholic who was tortured and killed for the faith by Protestants.  I finally decided to do so, because a heroic martyr deserves to be remembered whether that martyr is killed by pagans or Anglicans.  (Obviously, I bear no animosity towards Anglicans;  I like Anglicans and can’t imagine them nowadays advocating violence towards anyone.)  And as distasteful as it is to recall that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christians routinely killed Christians for their faith, I think it is very important to know the history, if only so that the devil may never incite different groups of Christians to such mistrust and hatred again.

 

In England, the kings and queens were almost always Anglican after 1534, when Henry VIII declared himself to be the head of the Church in England.  Catholics were persecuted for centuries, because to be Catholic was seen as traitorous to one’s country.  It was a capital crime, for instance, to be a Catholic priest in England, or to help a priest hide.  But during times of nationalistic fervor between 1534 and 1681, such as the invasion of the Spanish Armada, ordinary English Catholics were made scapegoats and executed.

 

William Carter (1548-1584) was an ordinary Catholic layman, a printer, who was executed for treason under Elizabeth I.  He printed Catholic books under the false name “Johannem Bogardi,” but he was eventually caught.  William was arrested for printing “lewd” (i.e. Catholic) pamphlets, possessing pro-Catholic books, and hiding vestments in his house.  He was imprisoned for 18 months, held in the Tower of London, and tortured on the rack.  His wife died while he was in prison.  Finally, he was put on trial.  The key charge against him was that he had called for the assassination of the queen, because one line in a book he had printed expressed confidence that the Catholic Hope would triumph, and that pious Judith would slay Holofernes.  The jury deliberated for 15 minutes before sentencing him to death, and the next day he was hung, drawn, and quartered.

Let us pray that we have the courage of martyrs like William who are willing to live dangerously, suffer, and die for their faith.  And let us pray that we shall never bear any resemblance to those who persecuted him, remembering Jesus’s admonishment that he who is angry with a brother has murdered him in his heart.  I am a Catholic among Protestant friends and family, and I need to constantly remember that discussions of doctrinal differences between Christians must not lead to pride or anger, but to greater love and understanding for one another.

January 10 - St. Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330-395), one of the Greek fathers of the church, was a great theologian and apologist for orthodox Christianity in the days when it was challenged by Arians, who denied that Jesus was fully divine.  Gregory became bishop of Nyssa in Armenia, but his Arian opponents managed to have him exiled for two years on trumped-up charges.  He returned to Nyssa and later played a significant role in the Council of Constantinople, which condemned the Arian heresy.  He wrote Bible commentaries and catechetical works for new Christians, and he traveled extensively preaching sermons.

Since Catholics celebrate the baptism of Jesus today, here is an excerpt from one of Gregory's sermons on baptism:

 

Do not dismiss the divine washing.  Don't think of it as something common because it uses mere water.  For the power at work is mighty, and wonderful are the things that work by that power....

 

There are many things that appear to be contemptible, but accomplish mighty works.  This is especially true if you search the ancient history.  Moses' rod was a hazel switch -- common wood that any hands might cut and carry, and use as they please before tossing it into the fire.  But when God wanted to work miracles through that rod -- great miracles, beyond the power of words to express -- the wood was changed into a serpent.  Another time, he struck the water, and he turned the water into blood;  then he called forth a countless brood of frogs;  then he divided the sea, cut to its depths without flowing together again.

 

Likewise, the mantle of one of the prophets, a simple goatskin, made Elisha famous throughout the whole world.

 

The wood of the cross holds saving power for everyone, even though it is, I'm told, a piece of a common tree of little value.

 

A bramble bush showed the presence of God to Moses.

 

The remains of Elisha raised a dead man to life.

 

Clay gave sight to a man who was blind from the womb.

 

All these, though they were material things without soul or sense, were made instruments for the working of miracles when they received the power from God.

 

In the same way, water, though it is nothing but water, renews someone to spiritual rebirth, when the grace from above makes it holy.  

 

Thank you, God, for raising us to new life in Christ through the saving waters of Baptism.  And thank you for continuing your good work in us.