Saint Ephrem the Syrian

Doctor of the Church
(306- 378)

Feast- June 18

Many wonderful lessons can be derived from the life of this Saint, known in particular for his unfailing and remarkable humility. Born around the year 306 in the city of Nisibis (now Nusaybin in Turkey), in the contested border region between Sassanid Assyria and Roman Mesopotamia, then-recently acquired by Rome. His forebears were poor folk, and he as a child tended the herds in the fields.

One day, while still an adolescent, he pursued the only cow of a neighbor, throwing stones at the poor beast to see it run, until it fell exhausted and died. To add to his fault, he denied having seen the animal when its owner came to look for it. All his life he wept over this double prevarication, and later he related to the religious who were his followers how he was punished for it: About a month later, he was with a shepherd who drank too much one evening, and through neglect lost the sheep of the owner’s flock when wolves entered into the fold. Ephrem was taken to prison with the shepherd and confined there. From the stories his companions there narrated, he realized that they too were detained for crimes not committed, but that they had committed others which had remained unpunished. Recognizing in these facts the effects of Divine Justice, he was warned to do penance by a severe Angel who appeared to him several times, also helping him accept his chastisement. He was released after two months, but never forgot the lessons in humility he had received.

Jacob, the second bishop of Nisibis, was appointed in 308, and Ephrem grew up under his leadership of the community (Jacob of Nisibis is recorded as a signatory at the First Council of Nicea in 325). Ephrem was baptized as a youth and almost certainly became a son of the covenant, an unusual form of syriac proto-monasticism.

The members of the covenant were an important part of early Syriac Christianity. Before the advent of monasticism proper (which developed in the desert of Egypt), most Syriac churches would consist of a community focused around the members of the covenant (men and women who had committed themselves to sexual abstinence and the service of the church. Living with the goal of godliness at the end of one’s path encourages a steady transformation into the image of Christ. This however, is not enough. To keep from becoming irrelevant and ultimately extinct in the community, each Christian must hold with equal regard those at different stages of the journey, and remain committed to them by giving other believers chances to grow).

Jacob appointed Ephrem as a teacher (Syriac malp̄ānâ, a title that still carries great respect for Syriac Christians). He began to compose hymns and write biblical commentaries as part of his educational office. In his hymns, he sometimes refers to himself as a “herdsman”, to his bishop as the “shepherd”.

In 337, Emperor Constantine I, who had legalized and promoted the practice of Christianity in the Roman Empire, died. Seizing on this opportunity, Shapur II of Persia began a series of attacks into Roman North Mesopotamia. Nisibis was besieged in 338, 346 and 350. During the first siege, Ephrem credits Bishop Jacob as defending the city with his prayers. In the third siege, of 350, Shapur rerouted the River Mygdonius to undermine the walls of Nisibis. The Nisibenes quickly repaired the walls while the Persian elephant cavalry became bogged down in the wet ground. Ephrem celebrated what he saw as the miraculous salvation of the city in a hymn that portrayed Nisibis as being like Noah’s Ark, floating to safety on the flood.

In that 359, Shapur attacked again. The cities around Nisibis were destroyed one by one, and their citizens killed or deported. Constantius II was unable to respond; the campaign of Julian in 363 ended with his death in battle. His army elected Jovian as the new emperor. When Shapur defeated the Roman emperor Jovian, he demanded the city as part of the treaty. Jovian not only gave him the city but agreed to force the Christians to leave Nisibis. Probably in his fifties or sixties at that time, Ephrem was one of the refugees who fled the city in 363.

Ephrem, with the others, went first to Amida. The death of Saint James of Nisibe and of another Saint who had lived in a cell near his own solitary dwelling, convinced him to make a pilgrimage to Edessa, a very Christian city, to honor the relics of the Apostle Saint Thomas, venerated there. While in Edessa he was ordained a deacon and attached permanently to the church of Edessa, then obliged under obedience to preach. The ministry of preaching is not usually that of deacons, but his virtue and capacities were recognized at once. He had not studied and knew only his own language, but he had absorbed Holy Scripture and profited from his intelligence of it. It is he who wrote: “You do not understand all that you read there? If you were traveling and, being thirsty, came upon a spring of fresh water, would you be incensed because you could not drink all of it? No, you would be happy that, on another journey, the spring would still be there to quench your thirst.”

Never did Saint Ephrem think himself anything other than a great sinner; we can read in his various writings his self-accusations and his confessions. He had the gift of tears and for years he wept, literally without ceasing, according to the testimony of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, who wrote: At times he was weeping over the sins of men, and again over his own. His sighs succeeded his tears, and then brought them forth again. It was also said that the tears he shed so profusely, instead of disfiguring his face, seemed to augment its serenity and grace; all who had seen or heard Saint Ephrem were inspired to venerate his holiness.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa remarked of the preaching of Saint Ephrem: “Although his tongue was prompt and the words flowed from his mouth like a torrent, these were too slow to express his thoughts. For this reason he prayed God: ‘Hold back, Lord, the waves of Your grace!’ The sea of understanding which was seeking an outlet through his tongue bore heavily upon him, because the organs of speech did not suffice for what his mind presented to him, for the benefit of others.” In the Syrian Liturgy, Saint Ephrem still is called the Harp of the Holy Spirit.

Heresy and danger followed him to Edessa. The Arian Emperor Valens camped outside of Edessa threatening to kill all the Christian inhabitants if they did not submit. But Valens was the one forced to give up in the face of the courage and steadfastness of the Edessans (fortified by Ephrem’s hymns):

“The doors of her homes Edessa left open when she went forth with the pastor to the grave, to die, and not depart from her faith. Let the city and fort and building and houses be yielded to the king; our goods and our gold let us leave; so we part not from our faith!”

Tradition tells us that during the famine that hit Edessa in 372, Ephrem was horrified to learn that some citizens were hoarding food. When he confronted them, he received the age-old excuse that they couldn’t find a fair way or honest person to distribute the food. Ephrem immediately volunteered himself and it is a sign of how respected he was that no one was able to argue with this choice. He and his helpers worked diligently to get food to the needy in the city and the surrounding area.

The church historian Sozomen credits Ephrem with having written over three million lines. Ephrem combines in his writing a threefold heritage: he draws on the models and methods of early Rabbinic Judaism, he engages skillfully with Greek science and philosophy, and he delights in the Mesopotamian/Persian tradition of mystery symbolism.

Over four hundred hymns composed by Ephrem still exist. Particularly influential were his “Hymns Against Heresies.” Ephrem used these to warn his flock of the heresies that threatened to divide the early church.

After many years of good works, preaching and writing, for he also had great gifts of poetry and written discourse, he died a holy death in the year 378. This occurred one month after the death of Saint Basil, whom he had visited in Caesarea, wanting to profit from the renowned bishop’s conversation and sermons. They had found great consolation in one another’s company. Saint Ephrem was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XV in October of 1920.

[1] “Saint Ephrem – Lives of the Saints,” Magnificat, 24 February 2016. [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_ephrem.html. [Accessed 29 May 2017].
[2] “St. Ephrem,” Catholic Online, [Online]. Available: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=3. [Accessed 29 May 2017].
[3] “Ephrem the Syrian,” Wikipedia, [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephrem_the_Syrian. [Accessed 29 May 2017].

Saint Bede the Venerable

Doctor of the Church
(673-735)

Feast – May 27
Saint Bede, the illustrious ornament of the Anglo-Saxon Church and its first English historian, was consecrated to God in 680 at the age of seven, and entrusted to the care of Saint Benedict Biscop at Weremouth. Bede says nothing of his origins, but his connections with men of noble ancestry suggest that his own family was well-to-do. Bede’s first abbot names “Biscop” and “Beda” both appear in a king list of the kings of Lindsey from around 800, further suggesting that Bede came from a noble family.

It was fairly common in Ireland at this time for young boys, particularly those of noble birth, to be fostered out; the practice was also likely to have been common among the Germanic peoples in England.

He became a monk in the sister-house of Jarrow. Except for a few visits to other monasteries, his life was spent in prayer, observance of the monastic discipline and study of the Sacred Scriptures. There he trained no fewer than six hundred scholars, whom his piety, learning, and sweet disposition had gathered around him. He was considered the most learned man of his time, and wrote excellent biblical and historical books. His most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People gained him the title “The Father of English History.”

Around 692, in Bede’s nineteenth year, Bede was ordained a deacon by his diocesan bishop, John, who was bishop of Hexham. The canonical age for the ordination of a deacon was 25. Ten years later in 702 he was ordained a priest. To the toils of teaching and the exact observance of his Rule he added long hours of private prayer, with the study of every branch of science and literature then known. He was familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In a treatise which he compiled for his scholars, still extant, he assembled all that the world had then conserved of history, chronology, physics, music, philosophy, poetry, arithmetic, and medicine. In his Ecclesiastical History he has left us beautiful lives of Anglo-Saxon Saints and holy Fathers, while his commentaries on the Sacred Scriptures are still in use by the Church.

It was to the study of the Divine Word that he devoted the whole energy of his soul, and at times his compunction was so overpowering that his voice would break with weeping, while the tears of his scholars mingled with his own. Bede synthesized and transmitted the learning from his predecessors, as well as made careful, judicious innovation in knowledge (such as recalculating the age of the earth—for which he was censured before surviving the heresy accusations and eventually having his views championed by Archbishop Ussher in the sixteenth century—see below) that had theological implications.

He had little aid from others, and during his later years suffered from constant illness; yet he worked and prayed up to his last hour. It has been said of him that it is easier to admire him in thought than to do him justice in expression.

The Saint was employed in translating the Gospel of Saint John from the Greek, even to the hour of his death, which took place on the eve of the Ascension in the year 735. He spent that day joyfully, writes one of his scholars. In the middle of the afternoon he said: It is time that I return to the One who gave me being, creating me out of nothing… The moment of my liberty is approaching; I desire to be freed from the bonds of the body and to join Jesus Christ. Yes, my soul longs to see Jesus Christ its king, in the splendor of His glory. In the evening a scribe attending him said, Dear master, there is yet one chapter unwritten; would you be disturbed if we asked you additional questions? He answered, No; take your pen, and write quickly, which the disciple did. He prayed then until his last breath.

Bede died on the Feast of the Ascension, Thursday, 26 May 735, on the floor of his cell, singing “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

Bede became known as Venerable Bede (Lat.: Beda Venerabilis) by the 9th century because of his holiness, but this was not linked to consideration for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. According to a legend the epithet was miraculously supplied by angels, thus completing his unfinished epitaph. It is first utilised in connection with Bede in the 9th century, where Bede was grouped with others who were called “venerable” at two ecclesiastical councils held at Aachen in 816 and 836. Paul the Deacon then referred to him as venerable consistently. By the 11th and 12th century, it had become commonplace. However, there are no descriptions of Bede by that term right after his death.

In 1899, Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation; Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy. Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work made the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons, which contributed significantly to English Christianity. Bede’s monastery had access to an impressive library which included works by Eusebius, Orosius, and many others.

[1] “Saint Bede the Venerable – Lives of the Saints,” Magnificat, 24 February 2016. [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_bede_the_venerable.html. [Accessed 11 May 2017].
[2] Wikipedia, “Bede,” [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede. [Accessed 11 May 2017].

Saint John the Almsgiver

Patriarch of Alexandria (556-619)

Feast April 9

John the Almsgiver was born at Amathus. He was the son of Epiphanius, governor of Cyprus, and was of noble descent. In his youth John had had a vision of a beautiful maiden with a garland of olives on her head, who said that she was Compassion, the eldest daughter of the Great King. This had evidently made a deep impression on John’s mind, and, now that he had the opportunity of exercising benevolence on a large scale, he soon became widely known all over the East for his liberality towards the poor.

Saint John was married, but when his wife and two children died he considered it a call from God to lead a perfect life. He gave away all he possessed in alms, and became known throughout the East as the Almsgiver.

On the death of the Patriarch Theodore, the Alexandrians besought Emperor Phocas to appoint John his successor, which was accordingly done. One of the first steps he took was to make a list of several thousand needy persons, whom he took under his especial care. He always referred to the poor as his “lords and masters”, because of their mighty influence at the Court of the Most High. He assisted people of every class who were in need.

Saint John never spoke an idle word. He put out of the church those whom he saw talking, and forbade all detractors to enter his house.

He was a reformer who attacked simony and employed Sophronius (later Patriarch of Jerusalem) and John Moschus in his battle against the followers of Severus of Antioch. In order to fight heresy Saint John made improvements in religious education.

He also reorganized the system of weights and measures for the sake of the poor, and put a stop to corruption among the officials. He visited the hospitals three times every week, and freed a great many slaves.

On Wednesdays and Fridays of every week he sat on a bench before the church, to hear the complaints of the needy and aggrieved; he would not permit his servants to taste food until the wrongs were redressed. A man whom he had helped thanked him for his assistance one day, but he interrupted him, saying: My brother, I have not yet shed my blood for you, as Jesus Christ, my Saviour and my God, commands. On another occasion, after he gave his habit to a poor man who passed by, a person he did not know appeared immediately afterwards and gave him a sack containing a hundred gold pieces. After that, when he gave an alms, he always said, I am going to see whether Jesus Christ will fulfill His promise of giving me a hundredfold. The accomplished promise occurred so many times that he ceased to say these words, which were, in any case, for the benefit of those surrounding him.

The ministry of Vitalis of Gaza, a monk who worked among the prostitutes of the city, was a noteworthy episode of John’s reign. The patriarch was considered to have behaved with wisdom for not punishing this monk who was notorious for visiting the seedy part of town, and his judgment was vindicated only after the death of Vitalis when the story of the monk’s mission of mercy became known.

A merchant received from Saint John five pounds in gold to buy merchandise. Having suffered shipwreck and lost all, he had again recourse to the Almsgiver, who said, Some of your merchandise was ill-gotten; and he gave him ten pounds more. But at the next voyage the man lost his ship as well as its cargo. John then said, The ship was wrongfully acquired. Take fifteen pounds of gold, buy grain with it, and put it on one of my ships. This time the merchant was carried by the winds to England, where there was a famine. He sold the grain for its weight in tin, and on his return to Egypt he found the tin changed to fine silver.

A rich man presented him with a magnificent bed covering; he accepted it for one night, but then sold it, and disposed of the money in alms. The rich man “bought in” the article, and again presented it to John, with the same result. This was repeated several times; but John drily remarked: “We will see who tires first.”

Another instance of his piety was that he caused his own grave to be dug, but only partly so, and appointed a servant to come before him on all state occasions and say “My Lord, your tomb is unfinished; pray give orders for its completion, for you know not the hour when death may seize you.” When the Sassanids sacked Jerusalem in 614, John sent large supplies of food, wine, and money to the fleeing Christians. But eventually the Persians occupied Alexandria, and John himself in his old age was forced to flee to his native country, where he died. He had increased the number of churches in Alexandria from seven to seventy.

Saint John was solicited to come to Constantinople to give his blessing to the emperor Heraclius, about to go to war against pagan neighbors; but the great bishop was called to his reward during the voyage, and died while praying on his knees, in Cyprus around year 619, and his body was moved to Constantinople, then in 1249 to Venice. Another relic of him was sent by Sultan Bayezid II in 1489 to King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. It was placed in the private Royal Chapel in Buda Castle which was dedicated to him. Now his body lies in the St. John the Merciful Chapel in the St. Martin’s Cathedral in Bratislava, Slovakia.

[1]”John the Merciful,” Wikipedia, [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Merciful. [Accessed 7 April 2017].
[2] “Saint John the Almsgiver – Lives of the Saints,” Magnificat, 24 February 2016. [Online]. Available:http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_john_the_almsgiver.html. [Accessed 7 April 2017].
[3]”St. John the Almsgiver,” New Advent, 2012. [Online]. Available: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08486a.htm. [Accessed 7 April 2017].

Saint Gregory the Great

Pope, Doctor of the Church
(540-604)

Feast March 12

The exact date of Gregory’s birth is uncertain, but is usually estimated to be around the year 540, in the city of Rome, born into a wealthy patrician family with close connections to the church. His parents named him Gregorius, a Greek Name, which signifies in the Latin Tongue, Vigilantius, that is in English, Watchful….” The medieval writer who provided this etymology did not hesitate to apply it to the life of Gregory. Aelfric states, “He was very diligent in God’s Commandments.”

His father, Gordianus, who served as a senator and for a time was the Prefect of the City of Rome, also held the position of Regionarius in the church, though nothing further is known about that position. Gregory’s mother was well-born in Sicily. His mother and two paternal aunts are honored by Catholic and Orthodox churches as saints; Saint Silva and Saints Tarsilla and Emiliana.

Gregory’s great-great-grandfather had been Pope Felix III. Gregory’s election to the throne of St Peter made his family the most distinguished clerical dynasty of the period.

Gregory was born into a period of upheaval in Italy. From 542 the so-called “Plague of Justinian” swept through the provinces of the empire, including Italy. The plague caused famine, panic, and sometimes rioting. In some parts of the country, over 1/3 of the population was wiped out or destroyed, with heavy spiritual and emotional effects on the people of the Empire. Politically, although the Western Roman Empire had long since vanished in favor of the Gothic kings of Italy, during the 540s Italy was gradually retaken from the Goths by Justinian I, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire ruling from Constantinople.

Like most young men of his position in Roman society, Saint Gregory was well educated, learning grammar, rhetoric, the sciences, literature, and law, and excelling in all. Gregory of Tours reported that “in grammar, dialectic and rhetoric … he was second to none….” He wrote correct Latin but did not read or write Greek. He knew Latin authors, natural science, history, mathematics and music and had such a “fluency with imperial law” that he may have trained in it “as a preparation for a career in public life.” Indeed, he became a government official, advancing quickly in rank to become, like his father, Prefect of Rome, the highest civil office in the city, when only thirty-three years old.

On his father’s death in 574 he gave his great wealth to the poor, turned his house on the Caelian Hill into the monastery which now bears his name, and for several years lived as a perfect monk. His famous exposition of the Book of Job dates from his monastic years.

The Pope drew him from his seclusion in 578 to make him one of the seven deacons of Rome; and for seven years he rendered great service to the Church as what we now call Papal Nuncio to the imperial court at Constantinople. He had been sent there to obtain assistance against the Lombard invasions, but returned with a conviction which was a foundation of his later activity, that no help could any longer be obtained from that court. When he was recalled to Rome he became Abbot of his Monastery, which was named after Saint Andrew at the time.

While still a monk the Saint was struck by the sight of some fair-complexioned boys who were exposed for sale in Rome, and heard with sorrow that they were pagans.” And of what race are they?” he asked. “They are Angles. Worthy indeed to be Angels of God”, said he. He at once obtained permission from the Pope to set out to evangelize the English. With several companion monks he had already made a three-day’ journey when the Pope, ceding to the regrets of the Roman people, sent out messengers to overtake and recall them.

589 was one of widespread disaster throughout all the empire. In Italy there was an unprecedented inundation. Farms and houses were carried away by the floods. The Tiber overflowed its banks, destroying numerous buildings, among them the granaries of the Church with all the store of corn. Pestilence followed on the floods, and Rome became a very city of the dead. Business was at a standstill, and the streets were deserted save for the wagons which bore forth countless corpses for burial in common pits beyond the city walls.

Then, in February, 590, as if to fill the cup of misery to the brim, Pelagius II died. The choice of a successor lay with the clergy and people of Rome, and without any hesitation they elected Gregory, Abbot of St. Andrew’s. In spite of their unanimity Gregory shrank from the dignity thus offered him. He knew, no doubt, that its acceptance meant a final good-bye to the cloister life he loved, and so he not only refused to accede to the prayers of his fellow citizens but also wrote personally to the Emperor Maurice, begging him with all earnestness not to confirm the election.

In the interval while awaiting the emperor’s reply the business of the vacant see was transacted by Gregory, in commission with two or three other high officials. As the plague still continued unabated, Gregory called upon the people to join in a vast sevenfold procession which was to start from each of the seven regions of the city and meet at the Basilica of the Blessed Virgin, all praying the while for pardon and the withdrawal of the pestilence. This was accordingly done, and the memory of the event is still preserved by the name “Sant’ Angelo” given to the mausoleum of Hadrian from the legend that the Archangel St. Michael was seen upon its summit in the act of sheathing his sword as a sign that the plague was over.

When a famine struck Rome in the 590s, Pope Gregory ordered the Church to use its assets to feed the poor. Instead of selling the product of the land, he ordered it shipped to Rome and given away for free. In this way, he saved thousands of people from certain death. Pope Gregory himself refused to eat until his monks returned from their work of handing out food. He also made certain to dine with a dozen poor people at each meal. Because of his great respect for the poor, it was Pope Gregory and the Church that became the most respected –and obeyed force in Rome and across Italy.

He healed schisms, revived discipline, and saved Italy by converting the wild Arian Lombards who were laying it waste; he aided in the conversion of the Spanish and French Goths, who also were Arians. He set in order the Church’s prayers and chant. (The mainstream form of Western plainchant, standardized in the late 9th century, was attributed to Pope Gregory I and so took the name of Gregorian chant.)

He is credited with re-energizing the Church’s missionary work among the non-Christian peoples of northern Europe. He is most famous for sending a mission, often called the Gregorian mission, under Augustine of Canterbury, prior of Saint Andrew’s, where he had perhaps succeeded Gregory, to evangelize the pagan Anglo-Saxons of England. It seems that the pope had never forgotten the English slaves whom he had once seen in the Roman Forum. The mission was successful, and it was from England that missionaries later set out for the Netherlands and Germany. The preaching of non-heretical Christian faith and the elimination of all deviations from it was a key element in Gregory’s worldview, and it constituted one of the major continuing policies of his pontificate.

Henry Hart Milman states: “Saint Gregory was not a man of profound learning, not a philosopher, not a conversationalist, hardly even a theologian in the constructive sense of the term. He was a trained Roman lawyer and administrator, a monk, a missionary, a preacher, above all a physician of souls and a leader of men. His great claim to remembrance lies in the fact that he is the real father of the medieval papacy.”

With regard to things spiritual, he impressed upon the minds of men the fact that the See of Peter was the one supreme, decisive authority in the Catholic Church. Since then the varied populations of Italy looked to the pope for guidance, and Rome as the papal capital continued to be the center of the Christian world.

Fourteen years his pontificate was a perfect model of ecclesiastical rule. Guiding and consoling pastors with innumerable letters, and preaching incessantly, most effectively by his own example. Many of his sermons are still extant and are famous for their constant use of Holy Scripture. His writings are numerous and include fourteen books of his letters.

Saint Gregory I died in 604, worn out by austerities and toils. The Church includes him among her four great Latin doctors, and reveres him as Saint Gregory the Great.
[1]Magnificat, Editions. “Lives of the Saints.” Saint Gregory the Great, Pope, Doctor of the Church. Sanctoral, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2017. <http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_gregory_the_great.html>

[2]”Pope Gregory I.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Mar. 2017. Web. 11 Mar. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I>.

[3]Online, Catholic. “Pope Saint Gregory the Great – Saints & Angels.” Catholic Online. Catholic Online, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2017. <http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=54#fun-facts>.

[4]”Pope St. Gregory I (“the Great”).” CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Gregory the Great. New Advent, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2017. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06780a.htm>.

Saint Romuald

Feast day February 7

Founder and Abbot (906-1027)

In the tenth century Sergius, a nobleman of Ravenna, quarreled with a relative over an estate and, in a duel to which his son Romuald was witness, slew him. The young man of twenty years was horrified at his father’s crime, and entered a Benedictine monastery at Classe to do a forty days’ penance for him. After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there. San Apollinare had recently been reformed by St. Maieul of Cluny Abbey, but still was not strict enough in its observance to satisfy Romuald. His injudicious correction of the less zealous aroused such enmity against him that he applied for, and was readily granted, permission to retire to Venice, where he placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Marinus and lived a life of extraordinary severity.

The holy man had him recite the Psalter from memory every day. When he stumbled, the hermit struck his left ear with a rod. Romuald suffered with patience, but one day, noting that he was losing his hearing in that ear, asked the old man to strike him on his right ear. This episode supposes great progress in virtue. The two religious were joined by Peter Urseolus Duke of Venice. About 978, Urseolus (Pietro Orseolo I ) obtained his office by acquiescence in the murder of his predecessor, began to suffer remorse for his crime. On the advice of Guarinus, Abbot of San Miguel-de-Cuxa, in Catalonia, and of Marinus and Romuald, he abandoned his office and relations, and fled to Cuxa, where he took the habit of St. Benedict.

In his youth St. Romuald became acquainted with three major schools of western monastic tradition. Sant’Apollinare in Classe was a traditional Benedictine monastery under the influence of the Cluniac reforms. Marinus followed a much harsher, ascetic and solitary lifestyle, which was originally of Irish eremitic origins. The abbot of Saint Miguel de Cuxa, Guarinus, had also begun reforms but mainly built upon a third Christian tradition, that of the Iberian Peninsula. Romuald was able to integrate these different traditions and establish his own monastic order. The admonition in his rule “Empty yourself completely and sit waiting,” places him in relation to the long Christian history of intellectual stillness and interior passivity in meditation also reflected in the nearly contemporary Byzantine ascetic practice known as Hesychasm.

“Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.”

“If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind. And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.”

During periods of his life, he suffered great spiritual dryness. One day as he was praying Psalm 31 (“I will give you understanding and I will instruct you”), he was given an extraordinary light and spirit which never left him.

His aim was to restore the strict rules of the Order of Saint Benedict, he succeeded in founding around a hundred monasteries in both Italy and France, and he filled the solitudes with hermitages. The principal monastery was that at Camaldoli, a wild, deserted region, where he built a church, surrounded by a number of separate cells for the solitaries who lived under his rule; his disciples were thus called Camaldolese. For five years the fervent founder was tormented by furious attacks by the demon. He repulsed him, saying; “O enemy! Driven out of heaven, you come to the desert? Depart, ugly serpent, already you have what is due you”. And the shamed adversary would leave him. Saint Romuald’s father, Sergius, was moved by the examples of his son, and entered religion near Ravenna; there he, too, was attacked by hell and thought of abandoning his design. Romuald went to visit him; he showed him the error of the devil’s ruses, and his father died in the monastery, in the odor of sanctity.

For 30 years he travelled through Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.

In 1012 he arrived at the Diocese of Arezzo. Here, according to the legend, a certain Maldolus, who had seen a vision of monks in white garments ascending into Heaven, gave him some land, afterwards known as the Campus Maldoli, or Camaldoli. St. Romuald built on this land five cells for hermits, which, with the monastery at Fontebuono, built two years later, became the famous mother-house of the Camaldolese Order.

Among his first disciples were Saints Adalbert, and Benedict of Poland, martyrs for the faith. He was an intimate friend of the Emperor Saint Henry, and was reverenced and consulted by many great men of his time. He once past seven years in solitude and total silence. He died, as he had foretold twenty years in advance, alone in his monastery of Val Castro, on the 19th of June, 1027, in an advanced and abundantly fruitful old age.

Many miracles were wrought at his tomb, over which an altar was allowed to be erected in 1032. In 1466 his body was found still incorrupt; it was translated to Fabriano in 1481. In 1595 Clement VIII fixed his feast on 7 Feb., the day of the translation of his relics, and extended its celebration to the whole Church. He is represented in art pointing to a ladder on which are monks ascending to Heaven.

[1]”Saint Romuald.” Sanctoral. N.p., n.d. Web. Feb.-Mar. 2017. <http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_romuald.html>.

[2]Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894); Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 2

[3]”Romuald.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romuald>.

[4]”St. Romuald.” CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Romuald. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13179b.htm>.

[5]Miller, OFM Fr. Don. “Saint Romuald.” Franciscan Media. N.p., 01 Nov. 2016. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. <https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-romuald/>.

Saint Peter Nolasco

Feast Day –January 28

Founder, confessor (1189-1256)

Saint Peter Nolasco was born about the year 1189 at Mas-Saintes-Puelles near Carcassonne in France.

When he was a teenager he went to Barcelona to escape the heresy then rampant in southern France. He joined an army fighting the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula, which still held much of Spain in the early thirteenth century, and in sudden raids from the sea they carried off thousands of Christians, holding them as slaves in Granada and in their citadels along the African coast. He was later appointed tutor to the young king, James I of Aragon.

After making a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Montserrat at the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery on the Montserrat Mountain in Catalonia, Spain, he began to practice various works of charity. Nolasco became concerned with the plight of Christians captured in Moorish raids, he consecrated the fortune he had inherited to the redemption of the captives taken on the seas by the Saracens. He was obsessed with the thought of their suffering, and desired to sell his own person to deliver his brethren and take their chains upon himself. God made it known to him how agreeable that desire was to Him. Because of these large sums of money he expended, Peter became penniless. He was without resources and powerless, when the Blessed Virgin appeared to him and said to him: Find for Me other men like yourself, an army of brave, generous, unselfish men, and send them into the lands where the children of the Faith are suffering. Peter went at once to Saint Raymond of Pennafort, his confessor, who had had a similar revelation and used his influence with King James I of Aragon and with Berengarius, Archbishop of Barcelona, to obtain approbation and support for the new community. On August 10, 1218, Peter and two companions were received as the first members of the congregation of men that became the Royal and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy of the Redemption of the Captives (the Mercedarians). They were approved by Pope Gregory IX in 1230, and were also known as the Order of Our Lady of Ransom, dedicated to the recovery of Christian captives. To the three traditional vows of religion, its members joined a fourth, that of delivering their own persons to the overlords, if necessary, to ransom Christians.

The Order spread rapidly. Peter and his comrades traveled throughout Christian Spain, recruiting new members and collecting funds to purchase the captives. Then they began negotiations with the slave-owners. They penetrated Andalusia, crossed the sea to Tunis and Morocco, and brought home cargo after cargo of Christians. Peter governed his Order for thirty years, within which time he opened their prison doors to thousands of captives, whom his own incessant labors, joined with those of his disciples, rescued from a miserable fate, and, in all probability, from eternal death. Although Peter, as General of the Order, was occupied with its organization and administration, he made two trips to Africa where, besides liberating captives, he converted many Moors.

St. Peter Nolasco built in Spain the church of St. Mary del Puche. For four Saturdays, seven strange lights were seen at night over a certain spot, and looked like seven stars. They were observed to drop from heaven seven times, and disappear in the earth in the same place. St. Peter Nolasco felt certain that this strange phenomenon announced something; so he commanded men to dig about the spot. They had not gone far into the earth, when they came upon a clock of prodigious size, bearing a beautiful image of the Virgin Mary. Nolasco took it up in his arms as a valuable gift from heaven, and built an altar on the spot where it was buried. This altar became very celebrated for the number of miracles performed there.

Before his death, he called his children to his bedside, and exhorted them to perseverance in their love for captives. His words to them were those of the Psalmist: “I will praise Thee, O Lord, who hast sent redemption to Thy people!”

He had long and ardently cherished the desire of visiting the tomb of his patron, the Prince of the Apostles, whose name he bore, and was saddened at not finding an opportunity to execute this project. But now this holy Apostle appeared to him and addressed him: “Not all of our pious desires can be fulfilled. God is, however, satisfied with the intention. I know your longing to visit me at Rome; but such is not the good pleasure of the Lord. Yet, because you cannot visit me, I have now come to see you, and to assure you of my assistance till your last breath.” St. Peter Nolasco obtained a similar favor from his Guardian Angel and other Saints, who visibly appeared to him, no doubt to reward his special devotion to them. But Mary, the Queen of all Saints, gave him special proofs of her love and esteem. He saw her in person several times, and was filled with such sweet joy and consolation at her promise always to befriend him, that he cried out ecstatically at his last hour: “O how sweet it is to die under the protection of Mary.” He died after a long illness on Christmas night of 1256; he was canonized by Pope Urban VIII in 1628. His Order continues its religious services, now devoted to preaching and hospital service.

References and Excerpts

[1] J. G. Shea, Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources, New York: Benziger Brothers, 1894.
[2] “Saint Peter Nolasco, Confessor,” Catholic Harbor of Faith and Morals, [Online]. Available: http://catholicharboroffaithandmorals.com/Saint%20Peter%20Nolasco.html. [Accessed 28 December 2016].
[3] “Peter Nolasco,” Wikipedia, [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Nolasco. [Accessed 28 December 2016].
[4] “Saint Peter Nolasco – Lives of the Saints,” Magnificat, 24 February 2016. [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_peter_nolasco.html. [Accessed 28 December 2016].