A Community of Love, Unity and Service

St. Peter and St. Paul, Dedication of the Basilicas of

The ancient basilica of Saint Peter stood, like the present one, on the hill of Rome called in Latin Mons Vaticanus, at the northwestern extremity of the city, on the right bank of the Tiber. What we call the Vatican is a Roman palace, the ordinary dwelling of the Pope. Near the Lateran palace where the early Popes dwelt, which was itself built by Constantine the Great or Saint Liberius, Constantine built on the same hill, over the tomb of Saint Peter called the Confession, the Church of the first Vicar of Christ, where once a Roman circus had stood. This first Christian emperor placed there a plaque to honor Saint Peter, on which he had inscribed:

Because the world under your guidance has risen triumphant to the very heavens, Constantine, victorious, has built this temple to your glory.

The Divine Office for this day narrates its origins as follows:

“The Emperor Constantine the Great, on the eighth day after his baptism, after deposing the diadem and prostrating himself, shed a great many tears; then taking up apick and a shovel, he dug into the soil and drew out twelve loads of earth in honor ofthe twelve Apostles, thereby designating the site of the basilica he desired to build tohonor their Prince. This basilica was dedicated by Pope Saint Sylvester on thefourteenth day of the calendes of December, just as on the fifth of the ides ofNovember he had consecrated the Church of the Lateran, but here he did so by raising a stone altar which he anointed with sacred chrism... When the old Vatican basilica became decrepit, it was rebuilt, through the piety of several Pontiffs, on the same foundations but larger and more magnificent. And in the year 1626, on this same day, Urban VII solemnly consecrated it.”

As during the earliest centuries, still today from all corners of the world Christians go to venerate the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles.

The tomb of Saint Paul is on the Ostian Way, at the southern extremity of the city. The characters indicating the Apostle buried there, which clearly date from the epoch ofConstantine, are engraved in the marble which closes the sarcophagus: PAULO APOSTOLOET MARTYRI.

“On the same day, Saint Sylvester dedicated the Basilica of Saint Paul the Apostle which the emperor Constantine had also built with magnificence on the Ostian Way,enriching this one, too, with revenues, ornaments and valuable gifts. In the year 1823,a violent fire totally consumed this Basilica, but it was raised again, more beautiful thanbefore, by the persevering zeal of four Pontiffs, who recovered it from its ruins. PiusIX chose for the time of its consecration the blessed occasion of the definition of theImmaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which he had just proclaimed, andwhich had drawn to Rome from the farthest places of the Catholic world, a number ofBishops and Cardinals. It was on the 10^th day of December in 1854, that amid thisbeautiful crown of prelates and princes of the Church, he carried out the solemndedication, and fixed its annual commemoration for the present day.” (November 18)

Thus the city is laid out between the two pillars of the Church, the two Apostles who from Rome made the Word of God resound throughout the entire world.

St. Odon of Cluny

On Christmas Eve of the year 877, a pious but childless Christian nobleman of Aquitaine implored Our Lord, by the fecundity of His Holy Mother and His Incarnation, to grant him a son. His prayer was heard; Odon was born, and his grateful father, in a prayer offered him — still an infant in his arms — to Saint Martin of Tours (†400) to be his spiritual son. Odon was later taught by a wise priest, then was placed in the court of the Count of Anjou and that of the Duke of Aquitaine. There he was influenced by the passions which reign in courts, and neglected his prayers to think only of games, hunting, and military pursuits. But God did not abandon him, and he was haunted in his dreams by the dangers of a disordered life. He prayed to the Blessed Virgin and begged Her one Christmas Eve to lead him on the narrow path ofsanctity.

He was then sixteen years old, and the next day he fell ill with a sickness which increased andfor three years kept him on the verge of death. When his father told him he had consecratedhim to Saint Martin, Odon renewed this consecration and promised to enter into his service;suddenly then his headaches left him and he recovered from his illness.

He went to Tours to serve in the church of Saint Martin for a time. But when a hermitage was built nearby he retired there to devote himself to prayer and study, while continuing to visit the tomb of Saint Martin every night. He began to study the Scriptures and abandoned all pagan readings. Later he was inspired to enter the monastery of Baume in the diocese of Besançon, and there he received the habit from Saint Bernon, the abbot, in the year 909. He was charged with the instruction of novices and boarding students. When later he returned home on a visit to his parents, they were so touched by his words that despite their age they renounced the world and entered a monastery. When Odon returned to Baume he wasordained a priest.

When Saint Bernon, who had governed six monasteries, died, three of those were entrusted toSaint Odon; these were Cluny, newly founded in 910, Massay, and Deols. He resided inCluny, of which he is often titled the Founder, because he organized and enlarged this newhouse. His reputation attracted a large number of vocations. His special care was for children;at that period the schools had taken refuge in the cathedrals and monasteries. He watchedwith gentleness over the habits, studies, and repose of these dear children. He personallytaught them as well as the monks. The Rule of Saint Benedict, providing for the education ofchildren as well as the formation of monks, was followed zealously. Many alms were given tothe poor, without concern for the morrow. The charity of Cluny was so abundant that in oneyear food was distributed to more than seven thousand indigent persons.

Saint Odon visited Rome three times; there he reformed a monastery, and later in France he submitted several abbeys to the discipline of Cluny. These were organized into a federation under the sole abbot of Cluny, with great unity of statutes and regime. It was said that “from Benevent to the Atlantic Ocean, the most important monasteries of Italy and Gaul rejoiced in being under his commandment.” After celebrating the feast of Saint Martin at Tours in 942, Saint Odon fell ill; and having exhorted all the religious who had come there to see him and learn how to be regular in their observance, he blessed them and gave up his soul to God. He was buried at Tours in the church of Saint Julian.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary

Elizabeth was the daughter of the just and pious Andrew II, king of Hungary, the niece of Saint Hedwig, and the sister of the virtuous Bela IV, king of Hungary, who became the father of Saint Cunegundes and of Saint Margaret of Hungary, a Dominican nun. Another of herbrothers was Coloman, King of Galicia and prince of Russia, who led an angelic life amid themultiple affairs of the world and the troubles of war.

She was betrothed in infancy to Louis, Landgrave of Thuringia, and brought up from the age of four in his father’s court. Never could she bear to adopt the ornaments of the court for her own usage, and she took pleasure only in prayer. She would remove her royal crown when she entered the church, saying she was in the presence of the Saviour who wore a crown of thorns. As she grew older, she employed the jewels offered her for the benefit of the poor. Not content with receiving numbers of them daily in her palace, and relieving all in distress,she built several hospitals, where she herself served the sick, bathing them, feeding them,dressing their wounds and ulcers. The relatives of her fiancé tried to prevent the marriage, saying she was fit only for a cloister; but the young prince said he would not accept gold in the quantity of a nearby mountain, if it were offered him to abandon his resolution to marry Elizabeth.

Once as she was carrying in the folds of her mantle some provisions for the poor, she met herhusband returning from the hunt. Astonished to see her bending under the weight of herburden, he opened the mantle and found in it nothing but beautiful red and white roses, thoughit was not the season for flowers. He told her to continue on her way, and took one of themarvelous roses, which he conserved all his life. She never ceased to edify him in all of herworks. One of her twelve excellent Christian maxims, by which she regulated all her conductwas, “Often recall that you are the work of the hands of God and act accordingly, in such away as to be eternally with Him.”

When her pious young husband died in Sicily on his way to a Crusade with the EmperorFrederick, she was cruelly driven from her palace by her brother-in-law. Those whom she hadaided showed nothing but coldness for her; God was to purify His Saint by harsh tribulations. She was forced to wander through the streets with her little children, a prey to hunger andcold. The bishop of Bamberg, her maternal uncle, finally forced the cruel prince to ask pardonfor his ill treatment of her, but she voluntarily renounced the grandeurs of the world, and wentto live in a small house she had prepared in the city of Marburgh. There she practiced thegreatest austerities. She welcomed all her sufferings, and continued to be the mother of thepoor, distributing all of the heritage eventually conceded to her, and converting many by herholy life. She died in 1231, at the age of twenty-four.

St. Felix of Valois

Saint Felix was the son of the Count of Valois. His mother carried him to Saint Bernard at hismonastery of Clairvaux, to offer him there to God, when he was three years old; she kept him,however, under her own care and took particular care of him, permitting him, still young, todistribute the alms she was pleased to give to the poor. When the exiled Pope Innocent IIsought refuge in France, the Count of Valois, father of Felix, offered his castle of Crepy to thePontiff, who often blessed the young child whom he saw being trained in virtue. One daywhen Felix gave away his own habits to a poor beggar, he found them that evening neatly laidon his bed; and he thanked God for this sign of His divine goodness, proving that one losesnothing when one gives to the poor.

When he was ten years old he obtained grace for a prisoner condemned to death, by means ofhis prayer and his pleadings with his uncle, a lord of whom the man was the subject. Felix hada presentiment that this man would become a saint; and in fact, he retired into a deep solitudewhere he undertook severe penance and died the death of the just.

The unfortunate divorce of the parents of Felix, and the excommunication of his father, whohad remarried and whose condemnation raised serious troubles on his domains, caused tomature in the young man a long-formed resolution to leave the world. Confiding his mother toher pious brother, Thibault, Count of Champagne, Felix took the Cistercian habit at Clairvaux. His rare virtues drew on him an admiration such that, with Saint Bernard’s consent, he fledfrom it to Italy, where he began to live an austere life with an aged hermit in the Alps. Forthis purpose he had departed secretly, and the servants his uncle sent believed him dead, beingunable to trace him; they published the rumor of his death. About this time the old hermitprocured the ordination of his disciple as a priest.

After his elderly counselor died in his arms, Saint Felix returned to France. He built a cell in the diocese of Meaux in an uninhabited forest; this place was later named Cerfroid. Amid savage beasts he led an angelic life of perpetual fasting. Here God inspired him with the desire of founding an Order for the redemption of Christian captives. The Lord also moved Saint John of Matha, a young nobleman of Provence, to seek out the hermit and join him. The two applied themselves to the practice of all virtues. It was John who overtly proposed to Saint Felix the project of an Order for the redemption of captives, when his preceptor was already seventy years old. The latter gladly offered himself to God for that purpose, and after prayingfor three days the two solitaries made a pilgrimage to Rome in the middle of winter. Theywere kindly received by the Pope, after he read the recommendation which the Bishop of Parishad given them. He too prayed and became convinced that the two Saints were inspired bythe Holy Spirit, and he gave his approbation to the Trinitarian Order

Within forty years the Order would have six hundred monasteries. Saint John, who was Superior General, left to Saint Felix the direction of the convents in France, exercised from the monastery which the founders had built at Cerfroid. There Saint Felix died in November of1212, at the age of eighty-five, only about six weeks before his younger co-founder. It is aconstant tradition in the Trinitarian Order that Saint Felix and Saint John were canonized byUrban IV in 1260, though no bull has ever been found. In 1219 already the feast of SaintFelix was kept in the entire diocese of Meaux. In 1666 Alexander VI declared that venerationof the servant of God was “immemorial”.

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin

Religious parents never fail by devout prayer to consecrate their children to God, His divine service and love, both before and after their birth. Some among the Jews, not content with this general consecration of their children, offered them to God in their infancy, by the hands of the priests in the Temple, to be brought up in quarters attached to the Temple, attending the priests and Levites in their sacred ministry. There were special divisions in these lodgings for the women and children dedicated to the divine service. (III Kings 6:5-9) We have examples of this special consecration of children in the person of Samuel, for example. Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple of Jerusalem. It is very probable that the holy prophet Simeon and the prophetess Anna, who witnessed the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, as we read in the second chapter of the Gospel of Saint Luke (verses 25 ff.) had known His Mother as a little girl in the Temple and observed her truly unique sanctity.

It is an ancient and very trustworthy tradition that the Blessed Virgin was thus solemnly offered in the Temple to God at the age of three by Her parents, Saint Anne and SaintJoachim. The Gospel tells us nothing of the childhood of Mary; Her title Mother of God,eclipses all the rest. Where, better than in the Temple, could Mary be prepared for Hermission? Twelve years of recollection and prayer, contemplation and sufferings, were thepreparation of the chosen one of God. The tender soul of Mary was adorned with the mostprecious graces and became an object of astonishment and praise for the holy Angels, as wellas of the highest complacency for the adorable Trinity. The Father looked upon Her as Hisbeloved Daughter, the Son as One set apart and prepared to become His Mother, and the HolyGhost as His undefiled Spouse.

Here is how Mary’s day in the Temple was apportioned, according to Saint Jerome. Fromdawn until nine in the morning, She prayed; from 9:00 until 3:00 She applied Herself to manualwork; then She turned again to prayer. She was always the first to undertake night watches,the One most applied to study, the most fervent in the chanting of Psalms, the most zealous inworks of charity, the purest among the virgins, Her companions, the most perfect in thepractice of every virtue. On this day She appears as the standard-bearer for Christian virginity: after Her will come countless legions of virgins consecrated to the Lord, both in the shadow ofthe altars or engaged in the charitable occupations of the Church in the world. Mary will betheir eternal Model, their dedicated Patroness, their sure guide on the paths of perfection.

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