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Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

著者： Fr. Michael Black
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 "Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.

These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.Copyright Fr. Michael Black キリスト教 スピリチュアリティ 聖職・福音主義
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  • May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop

    May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop
    2024/05/27
    May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop
    Early Sixth Century–604
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of England

    The Church’s Augustus conquered by example

    Gaius Octavius Thurinus was a noble Roman. Julius Caesar became his stepfather when he adopted Octavius, posthumously, in his will. Octavius then added his dead stepfather’s name to his own, becoming Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. He defeated his political enemies in 31 B.C. and thus became the first Emperor of Rome. To recognize his status, the Roman Senate added another link to his long chain of names—Augustus. And it is as Augustus that he is known to history. This very Augustus called for the census forcing Mary and Joseph to transfer to Bethlehem: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Lk 2:1). Augustus reigned well and lived long, until 14 A.D. He is considered the iconic Emperor of the “Pax Romana,” a tranquil, vast, expanding, organized, rich, united, and unconquerable realm, an enormous map of which Augustus pondered from his throne in Rome. The eighth month was renamed to honor Augustus during his own lifetime.

    But greatness is not limited to the Roman Emperor or his Empire. The best of Rome was absorbed, filtered, purified, and reborn in the Catholic Church. As Rome declined, popes and bishops did not pickpocket the corpse of Rome or rifle through the drawers of its abandoned dressers. The transformation from Empire to Church was organic, slow, and unrelenting, like all true cultural change. It happened imperceptibly, year by year, person by person, family by family, town by town, until one day everything was different. The arc of cultural change doesn’t have a right angle. It is fitting and poetic, then, that the Church has her own great Augustus, indirectly evoking the laurel-crowned Emperor. In fact, the Church has two Augustines: Saint Augustine of Hippo, in North Africa, a Doctor of the Church; and Saint Augustine of Canterbury, today’s saint. But their marble statues are not in museums. They are in churches. Saint Augustine of Canterbury was born in an unknown year about a century after his Christian namesake’s death in 430 A.D. in North Africa. He also conquered a king, like his secular namesake, but not for his own glory.

    Saint Augustine of Canterbury is called the Apostle to the English (not to the British.) The history is complex. Christianity was deeply rooted in Roman Britain. British bishops attended Church Councils in France in the fourth century, and two famous Roman British Catholics well known to history lived centuries before Saint Augustine—Pelagius and Saint Patrick. But after the Romans abandoned Britain around 410 A.D., invasions of the pagan Saxons from Northern Europe mixed with native tribes to alter the cultural and religious landscape. Old Roman Britain faded as Anglo-Saxon England dawned. Christianity was relegated to the margins of the British Isles, surviving in remote regions and in an extensive network of monasteries, not parishes or dioceses, under the wise tutelage of Irish monks.

    This two-hundred-year British-Irish hibernation of Catholicism was aroused from its sleep when, in 595 A.D., Pope Saint Gregory the Great had a plan. The goal? Convert King Ethelbert. Why? Because he was an Anglo-Saxon pagan. The hope? His wife was Catholic. The means? A large missionary train. The man for the job? Saint Augustine. Our saint, an educated Benedictine monk from Rome, headed a large team that struggled through France on horseback, crossed the English Channel in simple boats, and finally walked to Ethelbert’s seat of power in Canterbury. The King of all Kent heard the missionaries and…converted to Catholicism! And then all his subjects converted as well. The plan worked. Mission accomplished!

    More missionaries followed. Schools were established. Monasteries were founded. Bishops were appointed. Priests were ordained. Parishes were opened. Rough Anglo-Saxon England put on the yoke of Christ and the lovely, rolling, deep green countryside of England became Mary’s dowry. Nothing is known of the life of Saint Augustine before 595 A.D. He is famous because he was a missionary monk and later bishop. His life and his mission are indistinguishable. He accepted a dare from the Pope and did the impossible. He was himself the foundation stone upon which a Catholic nation built its house of faith for almost a millennium.

    Saint Augustine, your long years of prayer, asceticism, and reading as a monk prepared you for greater things. May all who seek your intercession prepare themselves in times of quiet for future challenges. May all missionaries be as daring as you in fulfilling what is asked of them.
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    6 分
  • May 26: Saint Philip Neri, Priest

    May 26: Saint Philip Neri, Priest
    2024/05/26
    May 26: Saint Philip Neri, Priest 1515–1595 Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of Rome, humor and joy Everyone saw the halo Saint Philip Neri often begged alms from his wealthy friends and acquaintances to redistribute to needy children. On one occasion, he approached a friend, held out his hand, and asked him, once again, for a few coins: “How about some help for the children.” The man slapped him hard across the face. Saint Philip quickly recovered from the shock, extended his cupped hand again, and said, “That was for me, now how about something for the children?” Saint Philip was born into a well-educated, Catholic, middle-class home. He carried himself all his life with the bearing of an amiable, well-read, finely dressed, shrewd individual who knew no enemies. After growing up in Florence, he moved to Rome and spent many years as a layman studying theology and helping the poor in practical ways. While still a layman, Philip founded a group to care for the many impoverished pilgrims who came to Rome. He befriended the great reformer Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who wanted Philip to become a Jesuit. But after encouragement from his confessor, Philip was ordained a secular priest in 1551. Soon afterward, he had to formalize the large following he generated that wanted to live more fully the life he preached and modeled. Saint Philip was so well loved and so well known in Rome that he is sometimes called its “Third Apostle” after Saints Peter and Paul. His personality radiated a natural warmth and cordiality. His priestly ministry could be fairly characterized as “evangelization by walking around.” He walked the streets of Rome from end to end continually throughout his long life. His life was a long conversation with a thousand characters on street corners, in shops, factories, churches, parks—wherever. He reached out to the destitute, prostitutes, poor children, and the uneducated. Saint Philip would often gather a group to visit seven churches in a row. As they went from one church to another, the group would picnic and listen to the musicians whom Saint Philip brought along for entertainment. These outings, understandably, became hugely popular. Leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and scholars were also drawn to him, in addition to common folk, and formed the impressive circle of committed Catholics who first joined his apostolic efforts. Saint Philip and his companions were given charge of a parish where they held evening sessions filled with song, readings from the lives of the martyrs, the praying of the psalms, and rich conversation. Saint Philip called these gatherings the “oratory,” in part because the participants also listened to musical pieces called “oratorios.” So when it came time to formalize his newly founded community in Church law, the name “Oratory” was chosen. The Congregation of the Oratory, which is still thriving today, was recognized by the Holy Father in 1575 and given the magnificent, new parish of Santa Maria in Varicella, known as Chiesa Nuova (The New Church), in the heart of Rome. Oratorians are mostly diocesan priests and some laymen who live together in a loose brotherhood, taking no vows, while pursuing various individual ministries. The many dozens of oratories around the world are joined in an informal confederation, whereas canonical bonds tie the many houses of a religious order together in a far tighter union. Saint Philip is one of the bright lights of the Counter-Reformation. He blazed a new path, like other reformers. But the new path he blazed was really just the old path, walked differently. Saint Philip was the silent observer, the cheerful listener, the priest always there, who spoke hard truths but always bent on the non-essentials. He mortified himself but never talked about it. He was poor but wore nice clothes. He looked like everyone else, yet…there was that intangible something: the sparkle in his eye, his polish, his lively concern, his clever wit, his courtesy, his wide education, his humor, and his constant turning of the conversation back to God. He was like everyone else, but he wasn’t, really. He radiated what twentieth-century psychologists would call the “halo effect.” Everyone saw the invisible halo casting a glow over Saint Philip, and people crowded around to stand in his mellow light. Saint Philip did not start a university, reform an institution, write a classic, or formulate a new rule. He changed the world the only way it can truly be changed—one soul at a time. This army of one was canonized in 1622. His body rests in a glass coffin in Chiesa Nuova, the sumptuous Mother Church of the Oratory, where pilgrims come in faith, kneel before him, and seek his powerful intercession. Saint Philip Neri, your good nature and charm, united with your theological orthodoxy and life of deep prayer, made you a powerful apostle for the people of Rome. May all evangelists, especially priests, see in ...
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    7 分
  • May 25: Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor

    May 25: Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor
    2024/05/23
    May 25: Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor
    c. 672–735
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of scholars

    Life’s drama is found in going deeper, not wider

    There is no world bigger than a monk’s cell. Those four, high walls shape thought like hard, steep banks contain the flow of a river. Rock curtains hanging on both sides force the raging river to carve a path through the landscape, always forward, always deeper. Here the tall banks stop the pounding river from pouring over into the plains. There the low banks allow the gentle current to run low and straight. A river without banks is a lake. And a mind without borders is a puddle—no forward movement and too shallow to sustain life. Borders, limits, and guardrails have expansive effects, paradoxically. A frame makes a painting burst to life; orderly lanes push traffic forward; and the edge of a canvas focuses the artist’s skill. Big thoughts start with boundaries. That’s why big thoughts happen in small spaces. Many thousands of monks’ minds were molded by the limits of the four, cold walls of their cells. And these scholar monks and saint monks gave birth to what we now call Europe.

    Today’s saint was a model monk who lived his whole life in an English monastery, although he occasionally traveled to neighboring communities to teach young scholars. Venerable Bede’s cell and monastery were nothing like those impressive stone structures with soaring arches and large courtyards, which still stand as icons of medieval Europe. Bede lived long, long before that golden age of monasticism. He died less than two hundred years after Saint Benedict, the founder of monasticism. The monasteries of Bede’s era were more like farms, where the monks lived in a dormitory above a large chapter room or perhaps even in crude huts huddled around a squat stone church. These first simple efforts to plant religious life into English soil matured, over centuries, into a network of enormous English monasteries. And these monasteries, in their fullest flower, grew into the universities, towns, schools, hospitals, lodges, cathedrals, and trade centers of England itself, a rich garden of Catholicism known in medieval times as Mary’s Dowry. Venerable Bede and his monastic brothers planted. Later generations harvested. And King Henry VIII then confiscated the garden and handed it over to his friends, who uprooted its most beautiful plants. Ironically and sadly, the tombs of many English saints, including Venerable Bede, lie today in Protestant churches.

    From his cell in remote England, Bede was enmeshed in the Church matters of his day. He was involved in the long simmering dispute over the date of Easter, promoted the practice of using Christ’s birth as the starting date for calendars, translated Christian works from Latin or Greek into Anglo-Saxon (to the immense good of the growth of the Church in England), and authored numerous works, the most famous of which is a history of the Church in England until his days. He was, in short, a prolific and wide-ranging scholar. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII honored that reputation by naming him a Doctor of the Church, the only native of England to be so honored.

    Thomas à Kempis, in his classic The Imitation of Christ, writes that every time a monk leaves his cell he comes back less a man. In his cell the monk learns everything he needs to know about himself, the world, and God. It is inside of our vocations that we find God’s will and our own fulfillment. A deep and abiding commitment to a specific person, religion, home, job, school, parish, spouse, and family is the stuff of life. Wandering is fun for a while. Commitment, though, is more exciting in the long run. The banks of the river must be built up. The edges and borders stacked high. The rails set in place. Then, and only then, life starts to be lived. To go deeper, not wider. To run those roots down deep into the moist soil. When we leave the four corners of our commitments and vocation, it may be liberating for a while, but time rectifies the deception. Our vocation is our home, and in that home we find happiness, make others happy, and satisfy the divine plan of the God who made us.

    Bede the Venerable, we see in your life a model of commitment to one place, one idea, one love, and one Church. We ask your intercession to aid all scholars, all monks, and all who waver, to stay at their desk, their kneeler, or their work bench to fulfill the task at hand.
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    6 分

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