Abbey-Roads2

A little story…

I was very little when I asked St. Francis to be my patron.  Growing up, my older brother resented me.  I was the “baby” from my mom’s second marriage.  He was the older brother from her first marriage.  It became obvious to me - later in life - he harbored some resentment towards me because,  (being 3 years younger than him), he always had to take care of me when we went out to play.  Since I wasn’t good at sports, he made me sit on the sidelines while he and his friends played.  He often ridiculed me, calling me  “a sissy”.  Then one day at Mass, I may have been in 1st grade, the priest spoke about St. Francis of “A Sissy” - and I almost started to cry.  I could not believe there was a patron saint just for sissies, and so I became attached to Our Holy Father St. Francis ever since.  (My brother later informed me I had the sissy part wrong - it was Assisi - the name of the saint’s town.  I didn’t care.)

Humility, simplicity, poverty of spirit, and trust in God.

These were the virtues Therese taught her novices as regards the “little way”.  From Sr. Genevieve of St. Teresa (Celine):

“The essence of her instructions was to teach us not to be upset when we saw ourselves as the personification of weakness, and to tell us to be diligent in loving, because ‘love covers a multitude of sins’.  As she once said: ‘It is easy to please Jesus, to enrapture his Heart; you have only to love him, without looking at yourselves, without spending too much time examining your own faults.’” - St. Therese by Those who Knew Her

Happy feast day everyone.  Angie - I hope she showered you with roses!

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!

“Stay sober and alert.  Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  Resist him, solid in your faith!” - 1 Peter 5:8-9

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.  May God rebuke him we humbly pray and do thou O Prince of the Heavenly Host cast into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl the world, seeking the ruin of souls.  Amen.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

And the sweetest one of them died 30 years ago today.

Remembering John Paul I.

(Thanks to Fr. Z  for the  reminder.)

Today is the feast of one of the most beloved saints in the Russian Church, St. Sergius of Radonezh, founder of the famous Trinity Monastery, pictured above.   Though canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1452, his cult was approved by Pius XII for the Roman Catholic Greek-rite Church.

I call him the “teddy bear” of Russian ascetics, because of his fondness for wild nature; it is said bears would eat from his hand.  He also had frequent visions of the Blessed Virgin and was reknowned for his mysticism.  He is one of the principal patrons of Holy Russia. 

“You know the way that leads where I go.” - Jn. 14:4

I’ve always tried to unite my suffering to the sufferings Jesus endured in his passion, although I haven’t always been successful.  Nevertheless, I have come to understand certain difficulties I’ve encountered in life as the device necessary to conform me to the suffering Jesus - through whose wounds I find healing.  I recognize I am naked of merit, “yet it was my infirmities He bore.” - Isaiah 52

Spurned and avoided by men.

I often think of Jesus naked, scourged, and bound by heavy ropes and chains, shivering in the prison; it is then I understand that my bonds of chastity, celibacy, and exile in my prison of misunderstanding, have ’straightened’ my faith as it were, and perhaps explains why I remain so attached to Jesus in his abjection and powerlessness.  I understand that many of my experiences; failures and illnesses, even childhood poverty and abuse (though in my case, well deserved in view of my sins), have been graces offered to conform me to the pattern of His suffering and death.

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings…” - Col. 1: 2

Today, it seems to me, saints who bore the visible wounds of the suffering Christ, such as Padre Pio, help us to put into perspective the sufferings each of us are graced to share in following Jesus.  With St. Pio, St. Francis, and St. Paul, we can say:  “From now on, let no one trouble me, for I bear the marks of Jesus upon my body.” - Galatians 6:17 

(After I posted this, I discovered that Elena of Tea At Trianon also posted another aspect of the point I was trying to make - read, “An Inconvenient Faith“ - it sort of ‘completes’  my post here - or says it better.)

September 21.

The birthday of St. Matthew, apostle and evangelist, who suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia while engaged in preaching.  The Gospel written by him in Hebrew was found by his own revelation during the time of Emperor Zeno, together with the relics of the blessed apostle Barnabas. - Martyrology

I had never heard that before - that the Gospel he originally wrote was found through a revelation.  Niether did I know where he suffered martyrdom.  Although the executioner shown above in Carravagio’s work doesn’t appear to be Ethiopian.

From The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day (pp. 418-419 Easter Sunday, April 14 1968):

“At the farm. Up at 5:00 and reading The Power and the Wisdom. Chapter on the death of Jesus, the saving act of Jesus. It is tremendous. I thank God for sending me men with such insight as Fr. [John McKenzie]. Always when I awaken in the morning it is to a half-dead condition, a groaning in every bone, lifelessness, a foretaste of death, a sense of “quiet terror,” which hangs over us all. A sense of the futility of life and the worthlessness of all our efforts. It is, as one of our retreat masters said, as though we rowed a fragile bark at head of Niagara Falls and all our efforts are to keep from going over into the chasm below.

I turn desperately to prayer. “O God, make haste to help me. Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” - Duty of Delight

A holy kind of levity.

Today is the original feast day of one of my favorite saints, Joseph of Cupertino, Franciscan priest and mystic.

When I lived in Assisi I was permitted to make an 8 day retreat in the solitude of his newly renovated apartments at the Sacred Convent. It was in these apartments that St. Joseph had been ‘imprisoned’ because of the extraordinary mystical phenomena that surrounded him. He was kept in solitude to keep him away from the curious who flocked to him because of the gift of levitation, for which he is best known. I had a friar who acted as my ‘Martha” in the solitude of my retreat, bringing me food and drink and celebrating Mass for me in the saint’s oratory. It was a memorable experience for my life. Immediately afterwards, on the feast of the Stigmata, I was professed in the third order of St. Francis at the tomb of our Holy Father in the crypt of the Basilica.

Presented is a brief biography of St. Joseph:

“St. Joseph of Cupertino in prayer, he was called “the Flying Friar” because of his frequent levitations St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1668) was an Italian mystic whose life is a wonderful combination of a complete lack of natural capacity and an extraordinary supernatural efficiency.

He lacked every natural gift. He was incapable of passing a test, maintaining a conversation, taking care of a house, or even touching a dish without breaking it. He was called Brother Ass by his companions in the monastery.

He was born on June 17, 1603 into a family of poor artisans. Because of his father?s debts, he was born in a shed behind the house, which was in the hands of bailiffs. He was sickly and often at death?s door during his childhood, and at age seven he developed a gangrenous ulcer which was later cured by a religious man. He was always despised by his companions who called him a fool. Even his mother wearied of him and repudiated him for his lack of any human value. Later, when he entered the religious life, he faced worse difficulties. The Capuchins received him as a lay brother but his ineptitude and abstraction made him unbearable for the other religious. Often he was taken in ecstasy and, oblivious of what he was doing, he would drop the food or break the dishes and trays. As a penance, bits of broken plates were fastened to his habit as a humiliation and reminder not to do the same again. But he could not change. He could not even be trusted with serving the bread because he would forget the difference between the white and brown breads. Finally, considering that he was good for nothing, the religious took his habit and expelled him from the monastery.

Later, he declared that having the habit taken from him was the greatest suffering of his life and that it was as if his skin had been torn from his body. When he left the monastery he had lost part of his lay clothes. He was without a hat, boots, or stockings, and his coat was moth-eaten and worn. He presented such a sorry sight that when he passed a stable down the lane, dogs rushed out on him and tore his apparel to worse tatters. He escaped and continued along the road, but soon came upon some shepherds, who thought he was a miscreant and were about to give him a beating, when one of their number had pity on him and persuaded them to let him go free.” [snip] Read the conclusion here.

St. Joseph of Cupertino pray for me for the grace of conversion; and pray for all of us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.