10/19 John de Brebeuf

 John De Brebeuf

John de Brebeuf is one of the saints we remember today.

He was a Jesuit missionary to the Huron starting in about 1630. I guess he is most well known for having named the game of lacrosse. John thought the stick used for handling the ball looked like a bishops crozier, la crosse, and thus it has been ever since.

John had a hard time at first, especially when it came to learning the Huron language. “The Huron language will be your Aristla crosse," he wrote to friends back in France. But, the harsh climate of the Canadian frointieer agreed with him and had the effect of toughening him up a little bit.

John was such a big man that some of the Huron were reluctant to get into a canoe with him for fear that he’d sink it. Apparently, though, they respected his strength because he gained the nick-name Echon which meant load bearer.

He was martyred in 1649 in Sault Ste. Marie near Georgian Bay when the Iroquois, long-time emenies of the Huron, captured him and his companions, tortured them and then killed them. 

Before he died he composed this list of instructions to Jesuit missionaries. Good advice for working with any group of people, foreign or not.

1.    You must love these Hurons, ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, as brothers.

2.    You must never keep the Indians waiting at the time of embarking.

3.    Carry a tinder-box or a piece of burning-glass, or both, to make fire for them during the day for smoking, and in the evening when it is necessary to camp; these little services win their hearts.

4.    Try to eat the little food they offer you, and eat all you can, for you may not eat again for hours.

5.    Eat as soon as day breaks, for Indians when on the road, eat only at the rising and the setting of the sun.

6.    Be prompt in embarking and disembarking and do not carry any water or sand into the canoe.

7.    Be the least troublesome to the Indians.

8.    Do not ask many questions; silence is golden.

9.    Bear with their imperfections, and you must try always to appear cheerful.

10.    Carry with you a half-gross of awls, two or three dozen little folding knives, and some plain and fancy beads with which to buy fish or other commodities from the nations you meet, in order to feast your Indian companions, and be sure to tell them from the outset that here is something with which to buy fish.

11.    Always carry something during the portages.

12.    Do not be ceremonious with the Indians.

13.    Do not begin to paddle unless you intend always to paddle.

14.    The Indians will keep later that opinion of you which they have formed during the trip.

15.    Always show any other Indians you meet on the way a cheerful face and show that you readily accept the fatigues of the journey.

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 4/5 Many Martyrs

There are a lot of saints we can remember today. Most do not have much of a hagiography. There were abbots, bishops, lay people, a teacher, one step-mother. And one man who wound up being the patron saint of motherhood and childbirth. Weird. 

Most of the saints don't even have names, particularly the martyrs. There were the five Martyrs of Lesbos, "a large group of Christians" martyred in North-West Africa, and the 120 Martyrs of Seleucia. Absolutely no names. Yet, traditions tells us to remember them. They are important to who we are today. That's why we remember.

Of the few saints on for today only a few have much of a story to tell. One was cured of terrible headaches, one was ousted as abbot for his austerity, and one was probably crazy. One predicted their own death, but I can predict mine too. I will die. There, it's been predicted. Write it in my hagiography. 

This lack of stories set me to wondering though, not about the pious saints of old but about you and me. If you were to somehow make it to sainthood, what would your hagiography say? Go ahead and use the language of hagiography, use symbols, stories, color. Think about the message of your life and tell it in fantastical terms. How would you be remembered a thousand years on? What will those future saints think when they read your story? How will they be inspired? 

4/4  Saint Bernard The Black

Fourth Day of Easter 2024

There is a saying, “God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called.” Nowhere could this be more evident than the life of St. Benedict the Black. A layman, son of slaves, poor, and illiterate he rose to positions of leadership in two monastic communities. 

He was born in the early 1500’s to Cristoforo and Diana Manasseri, slaves in the small town of San Fratello in Italy. Their real names unknown, Cristoforo and Diana Manasseri were the Italian names given to them when they entered slavery. They later became Christians. Christoforo and Diana were such loyal servants that when Benedict was born, the child was granted his freedom. Freedom is not much, but it’s a start. And, as Saint Janice Joplin once said, it’s another word for nothing left to lose. 

With his freedom, Benedict became a shepherd and though he was poor himself, he was eager to give what he made to the poor. Benedict surely knew that not only is it better to give than to receive, but that giving cultivates within the giver a generous spirit. 

Benedict’s good-natured patience at being taunted for the color of his skin came to the attention of some local Franciscan hermits who invited him to join their independent community, and Benedict quickly accepted. He sold his few possessions, gave the money to the poor, and became the cook for the community. His intuitive grasp of theology, and obvious advancement in spiritual matters brought him to the notice of the community and he was made its leader a few years later. 

In 1564, when Pope Pius IV disbanded independent hermitages, Benedict became part of the Friars Minor and was assigned to the Franciscan Friary of St. Mary of Jesus at Palermo. Again, he started as a cook, but his spirituality was quickly recognized, and he was appointed novice master and, later, guardian of the community. Many came to him for counseling and healing. He helped the community practice a stricter form of the Rule of Saint Francis. 

Benedict never learned to read or write, he was never formally educated, and he was poor all his life. He was a most unlikely saint, or even monk. But here we have an example of one utterly unprepared being equipped by the one who called him. 

 

What are you called to do with your life today? If you aren’t sure, just look around. God tends to put your calling right in front of you, you don’t have to go looking for it. You certainly do not need a committee to “discern” it. Just do what is in front of you.  God will equip you. 

Benedict The Black
Also known as: 

Benedict the Moor
Benedict il Moro

Benedict of San Philadelphio

Benedict of Palermo

Benedict of San Fratello

Benedict the African

 

Born:   1526

Died:   4 April 1589 (natural causes)

It is said that he predicted the time and date of his death. 
When his body was exhumed it was said to have been uncorrupted.

 

Patron Saint of:

African Americans

Black People

Negros

African Missions

Palermo, Sicily, Italy

 

Many churches have been named after Benedict. In the USA:  Washington DC; Bull Bay, Jamaica; at least two in New York City; Dayton, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Savannah, Georgia; Grambling and Bertrandville in Louisiana; and Chicago, Illinois. 

 

He is especially popular in Venezuela and other Latin American countries. 

 

Beatified by Pope Benedict XIV in 1743 

Canonized by Pope Pius VII in 1807

 

When I Googled images of St. Bernard The Black, I got a lot of pictures of black Saint Bernards. Somehow, I don’t think the real Bernard The Black would mind. Enjoy. 

 

While the question today was about what you will do, even if not especially equipped for it; a secondary theme is freedom. It’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Benedict didn’t have much to lose. For much of his life he didn’t have anything at all, referring to possessions as “ours.” What might you do if you didn’t have anything to lose? And, while you think about it, enjoy this from a more recent and uncanonized saint, Janice Joplin:   

You know, any excuse to have some rock and roll. 

General Saints Post

 

Saints

June 17, 2015 

by Linda McMillan

On Sunday evenings I like to stop outside the JingAn Kerry Center in Shanghai to watch the dogs and the people. Affluent Shanghainese from all over the neighborhood bring their pure-bred dogs out for a romp and a little socializing.  There’s showing off, and posturing… and I don’t mean by the dogs.  The dogs are all about playing and they ignore the sometimes more amusing behavior of their guardians.

Last Sunday I observed a particularly entertaining encounter. It was between a very young Shanghainese girl, I’d guess she was about four years old, and a beagle.  The Beagle shook his head, in that way that dogs do; and, observing this, the little girl shook her head. The dog, in turn shook his head, and the girl, again, shook hers. This played out a few more times before the dog tired of the game and walked away.

That’s called mirroring, and human beings (and apparently dogs) do it all the time.  It’s just the subtle way we mimic the facial expressions or body language of the people around us. Observing the dog and the little girl set me to thinking about the people around me, and the importance of keeping  good company. That’s why I want to write about the saints today.  They are part of the company we keep.  We may even find something we can imitate; at a minimum they will influence us more positively than negatively.

The following is from CatholicSaints.Info. 

There are 313 saints on the calendar of saints for today, that includes the 262 Martyrs of Rome who were martyred by Diocletian and buried on the old Via Salaria in Rome. There are a lot of other martyrs too.  If you click on the link, you’ll see that there are 12 monks. Five of whom were hermits. There are two nuns, four bishops, a soldier, and even a princess. Three of the saints have a sibling who is also a saint. Two of them, Ranieri Scacceri and Peter Ganbocorta had a misspent youth before they got it together and attained their saintly status.  Two more were known as miracle workers. One was blind. So, there’s plenty of variety and they are all among us as part of the communion of saints. They are part of the company we keep.

If you read through all of today’s saints, you’d meet Herve.  I think I’d like to be friends with him. He was blind from birth and his father died when he was just an infant. His mother went to a convent and Herve was raised by his uncles and a holy man. He became a teacher, musician, and miracle worker! There aren’t a lot of blind, singing, miracle workers around these days. The most interesting thing about  Herve, though, is his dog. Well, actually, it was a domesticated wolf. The story is that Herve’s wolf ate his ox so that Herve couldn’t plow his field anymore. Herve preached a rousing sermon to the wolf who was so overcome with remorse that it returned to Herve’s hermitage and plowed the fields in the absence of the ox.

Another saint I like is Peter Da, from Vietnam. He was executed by Tu Duc in 1862. It looks like he had a fairly simple life as a layman, a carpenter, and sacristan at his church.  In all my time in Asia, I’ve never been to Vietnam and I would like to talk to Tu Duc about his country and what it was like to be a Christian there.

I think I’d like to have a dinner party with Manuel, Sabel and Ismael, the Martyrs of Calcedon. They were from Persia and King Baltan sent them to negotiate a peace treaty with Julian the Apostate.  Julian was not a good guy, though.  Julian threw them in prison and tried to make them sacrifice to pagan gods. The three men refused and were killed. I would sure like to know what kinds of conversations went on in their jail cells, though. What must have been going through their minds?

There is almost no information on some of the saints. Maria of the Forest, for example, doesn’t even have a link. Both she and Madonna of the Graces got very nice saint names, though.

Some of the stories about the saints seem outlandish, their names cartoonish sometimes. These are not biographical, or historical accounts, though. These stories are hagiographical. That is a different kind of writing, and it requires a different kind of reading. There are symbols and ideas which are true, though they may be conveyed by fantastic stories.

All of today’s saints — those 262 who were murdered at Rome,  the farmer who had a domesticated wolf, the princess, the blind miracle worker, all of them – are in what we call the communion of saints.  I often wonder how many were parents, students, artists, poets? Were they in love, what did they hope for in their lives, were they scared at the end? And I wonder what they might say to me as I try to live faithfully in my own circumstances.

Each one of us who is in Christ share something in common with one another and with all of these saints: None of us is perfect, we are all forgiven and loved, and we are never alone.

Look around at the company you are in. What can you mirror? What inspires you? With whom can you identify? One thing is certain, in a crowd like this you’re bound to find a friend.

 _____

All saint information is from CatholicSaints.Info 

_____

First published at The Episcopal Cafe

4/19 Athanasia of Aegina

Athanasia of Aegina

Eighth  Day of Easter

Year A

I want to tell you about this saint named Athanasia of Aegina.

Athanasia was a very busy woman both before she died and afterwards too!

Before she died, she was born to the nobility and she was a pious girl, as saints often are. There is a story about her enlightenment that when it happened a star suddenly appeared and settled over her heart and, bam, just like that, she was enlightened.

Despite this early evidence of spiritual talent her parents asked her to get married and so she married an army officer who was killed in battle 16 days later. After that she wanted to enter religious life but there was an imperial edict stating that all single women had to get married to soldiers. See, this business of men controlling women’s bodies is really not anything new. Anyway, Athanasia got married again but this guy wanted to be a monk and Anathanasia, thanking her lucky stars, gave away all her stuff and became a nun.

As Athanasia was approaching death she gave orders that the poor be fed in her memory for forty days. The thing is that the other nuns didn’t do it. They only fed the poor for nine days. That is when Athanasia got busy. She came down from heaven and appeared to them. She said:

“It was wrong that you did not fulfill my testament, the forty-day commemoration in church of those who have fallen asleep and the feeding of the poor greatly helps sinful souls, while heavenly mercy is sent down from righteous souls to those who carry out the commemoration.”

Then, she jabbed her staff into the ground, and became invisible. But, the next day the staff had sprouted and become a living sapling.

Forty days after her actual death, Athanasia appeared to two of the other nuns during mass and they saw that Athanasia was at the gates of heaven and two radiant men placed a crown on her head and they gave her a brilliant staff and led her through the gates to the altar. I guess that was to replace the staff that had turned into a sapling. Apparently one needs a staff in heaven.

Also, some people were healed when they went to her grave. One time some people brought a woman who was possessed to her grave and for some reason they thought that it would be helpful to dig up some of the dirt, you know, to get closer to the actual corpse. (Makes you wonder, I know.) So, as they dug they smelled perfume coming from the grave and what they did is they just dug the whole thing up. When they opened her coffin, they found Anathasia had not decomposed and perfume was coming out of her.

So, after that, the other nuns wanted to put her in a better coffin and put some fine silk clothes on her because she had been buried in a hair shirt. This seems to me like another good reason to be cremated:  Some jackass might bury you in a hair shirt. Anyway, as a sign of their poverty and to promote a life of penance a lot of people wore hair shirts in those days and apparently Athanasia liked hers because when the nuns tried to put the new silk clothes on her she developed severe rigor. That is, she went all stiff. But one of the nuns commanded her to obey them and be clothed with the new clothes and she did.

See, I told you she was very busy.

It’s all just stories, of course. That’s what hagiography is, stories that help us reflect on the life of someone who tried to live a life close to God. Here’s what I am thinking, though. I don’t want to be that busy after I die. Once I am gone, ya’ll just carry on without me. I hope to be somewhere else, maybe not in a place at all, maybe just everywhere, or nowhere, or not at all. So, I think I need to start relinquishing control of this life now so that when it’s time, I’m free to move on. So, I am trying to think of some little areas of control I could give up.

Happy Easter Day to those who observe according to the Orthodox calendar. I hope one day we can all celebrate on the same day. I am always happy to change! It’s the others that are the problem. Christos Anesti!

Out and out plagiarism came from here:

“Saint Athanasia of Aegina“. CatholicSaints.Info. 18 April 2017. Web. 19 April 2020. <https://catholicsaints.info/saint-athanasia-of-aegina/>

4/14 Lydwina of Schiedam

April 14

Third Day of Easter 2020

Year A

This is the third day of Easter. Whoo-Hoo. 

We have a crazy saint today. So crazy, in fact, that priests were brought in to see if she was possessed. She wasn’t. Her name is Lydwina of Schiedam. Actually, that’s SAINT Lydwina of Schiedam to you and me. (Schiedam is in The Netherlands). At age 16 Lydwina was in a terrible accident that left her paralysed and she suffered a lot over it. She spent her time praying, meditating, and offering her pain to God because that’s about all you could do in the early 15th century. She developed a special devotion to the Eucharist and the hagiography is that the Eucharist is all she ate for the last 19 years of her life. And I was thinking I could probably survive on nothing but bread and wine too, if it came with cheese and sausages. Anyway, Lydwina saw visions in which she was visited by saints. In her final vision she saw Christ giving her last rites. 

She must have been in terrible pain and that can cause people to have visions. And God can cause them to have visions too, I guess. I admire Lydwina because she persevered. Instead of turning in to her pain she looked to God, who must have seemed far off. I hope that was some comfort to her. And I hope that when I find myself in pain I can remember that it’s not all about me, there might be something else going on too.

4/15 The Mercediarians of Africa

15 April 2020

Fourth Day of Easter

Year A

Yesterday we remembered Mercedarian Martyrs of Africa. The Mercediarians were, and are, an interesting lot. It started in sunny Spain. We all want to go to Spain, don’t we? Everybody I know wants to go to Spain because it’s sunny and they have those beaches and the food. Spain is great. But in medieval times Spain was a mess! The Christians and Muslims were duking it out for control of Europe, and there are no winners when Christians and Muslims fight. Anyway, what was happening is that the Muslims would capture Christinas and ship them off to Northern Africa to be slaves. One day a merchant named Peter Nolasco noticed this and it broke his heart. If the Christian slaves converted to Islam they had a pretty good chance of getting off the chain gang and maybe even into polite society and Peter was concerned that they were losing their faith to the allure of freedom. Peter was not a rich man, but he got his money together and started buying the slaves back. Others joined him and with support from the king and the bishop he founded the Mercedarian Order. 

The fourth vow of the order, besides poverty, chastity, and obedience, is to give up your own life to save someone in danger of losing their faith. Peter sent the friars out in small groups to buy back slaves. They were generally mistreated, beaten, stoned, and often killed. But, it is estimated that by 1300 they had freed over 11,000 Christians. 

On April 15 we remember a mission to Africa in which many friars were killed for their efforts. 

Today the Mercedarian order seeks to ransom those who are in all kinds of slavery: Addiction, poverty, sin, and ignorance. They have communities all over the world. 

So, I was wondering what I could do to help people out of their slavery. And from the confines of my little room I think the best I can do today is to be truly free myself. Even though confined, my mind and my heart soar with the thought that I too have been bought and repatriated into the kingdom of light.