A Community of Love, Unity and Service

St. Bede the Venerable

Saint Bede, the illustrious ornament of the Anglo-Saxon Church and its first Englishhistorian, was consecrated to God in 680 at the age of seven, and entrusted to the care ofSaint Benedict Biscop at Weremouth. He became a monk in the sister-house of Jarrow,which he would never leave, and there he trained no fewer than six hundred scholars,whom his piety, learning, and sweet disposition had gathered around him.

He was ordained a priest in 702. To the toils of teaching and the exact observance of hisRule he added long hours of private prayer, with the study of every branch of science andliterature then known. He was familiar with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In a treatisewhich he compiled for his scholars, still extant, he assembled all that the world had thenconserved of history, chronology, physics, music, philosophy, poetry, arithmetic, andmedicine. In his Ecclesiastical History he has left us beautiful lives of Anglo-SaxonSaints and holy Fathers, while his commentaries on the Sacred Scriptures are still in useby the Church.

It was to the study of the Divine Word that he devoted the whole energy of his soul, andat times his compunction was so overpowering that his voice would break with weeping,while the tears of his scholars mingled with his own. Once he was accused of heresy bycertain jealous ones, but this scholar who had always made a great effort not to departfrom tradition, wrote a letter which vindicated him and stopped the bad reports. He hadlittle aid from others, and during his later years suffered from constant illness; yet heworked and prayed up to his last hour. It has been said of him that it is easier to admirehim in thought than to do him justice in expression.

The Saint was employed in translating the Gospel of Saint John from the Greek, even tothe hour of his death, which took place on the eve of the Ascension in the year 735. “Hespent that day joyfully,” writes one of his scholars. In the middle of the afternoon hesaid: “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 bodyand to join Jesus Christ. Yes, my soul longs to see Jesus Christ its king, in the splendorof His glory.” In the evening a scribe attending him said, “Dear master, there is yet onechapter unwritten; would you be disturbed if we asked you additional questions?” Heanswered, “No; take your pen, and write quickly,” which the disciple did. He prayedthen until his last breath.

St. Augustine of Canterbury

Saint Augustine was prior of the monastery of Saint Andrew on Mount Coelius in Rome,when he was appointed by Saint Gregory the Great as Superior of the forty missionarieshe was sending to England. The Christian faith of England, more than that of any othernation of Europe, was the fruit of the labors and spiritual conquests of the ministry ofmonks. Its deepest Christian roots are more ancient than Saint Augustine and hiscompanions, and date from the era of the Apostles. England, in the first century,furnished its contingent of martyrs during the persecution of Diocletian. England sent itsbishops to the first Councils held after the religion of Christ became that of the Empire in313. But in the time of Saint Augustine, the Anglo-Saxon conquest had cut down almostall the branches of the tree.

When Saint Augustine arrived, ruined churches, scarcely a Christian to be found tonarrate a tradition, attested to the sacrilegious and incendiary hand of paganism, despitethe labors of Saint Palladius and Saint Germain d’Auxerre in the fifth century. The lastChristian Britons had taken refuge in the mountains of Wales. And England, the land ofthe Angles, had become a land of infamous slave-traders for the continent, includingRome; its merchants did not spare their own people when profit was at stake. In this waydid Saint Gregory the Great come to purchase the English boys he saw marketed at theRoman Forum, and raise them in his house, which he had transformed into a monastery. Thus the definitive conversion of England began, in his compassionate heart, when in thesixth year of his pontificate he chose the prior of his own monastery for the mission toEngland.

Saint Augustine and his companions during their journey heard many reports of thebarbarism and ferocity of the pagan English. They were alarmed and wished to turnback. But Saint Gregory sent word to them saying, “Go on, in God’s name! The greateryour hardships, the greater your crown. May the grace of Almighty God protect you, andpermit me to see the fruit of your labor in the heavenly country! If I cannot share yourtoil, I shall yet share the harvest, for God knows that it is not good-will which iswanting.” The band of missionaries went on in obedience, after halting briefly to deliverletters of Saint Gregory at the Abbey of Lerins, and to the bishops of Aix, Tours,Marseille, Vienna, Autun, and Arles, as well as to obtain translators for the mission of themonks.

Landing at Ebbsfleet, they sent ahead of them their translator-emissaries, to say to theking of those lands that they had come from Rome, to announce to him not merely goodnews, but the Good News of all ages, with its promises of heavenly joy and an eternalreign in the company of the living and true God. They met with the Saxon King Ethelbertwho had been reigning for thirty-six years, and with his barons under a great oak tree atMinster in the present county of Kent, and announced to him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was predisposed to listen to the missionaries; his Christian wife, Bertha, was a great-granddaughter of Saint Clothilda and Clovis. He wished to deliberate for a few daysnonetheless, and when they returned in procession, chanting and preceded by the Cross,he promised only to give them liberty to practice their faith unmolested. He gave them aresidence in Canterbury and provided for their needs. Their good example brought manyto them for instruction and then Baptism, and at Pentecost 597, the Anglo-Saxon king,too, entered into the unity of the Church of Christ. His example was followed by thegreater number of his nobles and people.

By degrees the Faith spread far and wide, and Augustine, as papal legate, set out on avisitation of Britain. He failed in his attempt to enlist the Christian Britons of the west inthe work of his apostolate, but his success was otherwise triumphant from south to north. He died after eight years of evangelical labors, but his monks continued them andperpetuated them. The Anglo-Saxon Church which Saint Augustine founded is stillfamous for its learning, zeal, and devotion to the Holy See, while its calendarcommemorates no fewer than 300 Saints, half of whom were of royal birth.

St. Germanus of Paris

Saint Germanus, the glory of the Church of France in the sixth century, was born in theterritory of Autun, a city in south central France, about the year 496. In his youth he wasconspicuous for his fervor. After being ordained priest, he was made abbot of SaintSymphorian’s monastery, built near the walls of the city; he was favored at that time withthe gifts of miracles and prophecy. It was his custom to pray for the greater part of thenight in the church, while his monks slept. He bestowed on the poor of the region all thathe could of the monastery’s resources in provisions, and provoked at times theindignation of the religious, who at one time had him arrested and imprisoned by meansof their defamation. He had scarcely been placed in a cell, when the doors opened ofthemselves, and the bishop, being informed of it, recognized his sanctity and treated himwith great respect.

One night, in a dream, he thought a venerable old man presented him with the keys of thecity of Paris, and said to him that God committed to his care the inhabitants of that city,that he might save them from perishing. Four years after this divine admonition, in 554,happening to be at Paris when that see became vacant by the death of the bishopEusebius, he was raised to the episcopal chair, though he endeavored by many tears todecline the charge.

His promotion made no alteration in his mode of life. The same simplicity and frugalityappeared in his dress, table, and furniture. His house was perpetually crowded with thepoor and the afflicted, and he always had many beggars at his own table. He hadedifying books read during the meals, that their souls and his own might be nourished. God gave to his sermons a wonderful influence over the minds of all ranks of people; sothat the face of the whole city was in a very short time entirely changed.

King Childebert of the Francs, who until then had been an ambitious, worldly prince, wasconverted by the sweetness and the powerful discourses of the Saint. He founded manyreligious institutions and sent large sums of money to the good bishop, to be distributedamong the indigent. When Saint Germanus learned that some poor folk, inhabitants of avillage he was passing through one day, had been imprisoned by their lord for non-payment of debts, he went to pray and shed tears, face to the ground, at the gate of thesubterranean jail where the unfortunate victims were lamenting. The overlord refused toopen its doors, but an Angel came down and did so, and the entire crowd, scarcelybelieving in their good fortune, came as one person, to kneel in gratitude before theirbenefactor. At that point the overlord gave them full amnesty and canceled their debts. Demons fled from the bishop’s presence, as they had before Our Lord, his Master, askingto be allowed to remain in the forest on the mountains.

In his old age Saint Germanus lost nothing of the zeal and activity with which he hadfilled the great duties of his station in the vigor of his age. Nor did the weakness to whichhis corporal austerities had reduced him make him alter anything in the mortifications ofhis penitential life, which redoubled in celestial ardor as he approached more closely theend of his course. By his zeal, the remains of idolatry were extirpated in France. TheSaint continued his labors for the conversion of sinners, the deliverance of prisoners, andthe relief of the poor, until he was called to receive his reward at the age of eighty, on the28^th of May, 576.

St. Cyril, martyr

Saint Cyril, while still a boy at Caesarea in Cappadocia, suffered during the persecutionsof the third century. He had been secretly instructed in Christianity and would repeat thename of Christ at all times, confessing that the mere utterance of this Name wasbeneficial. For this, his pagan father, plunged in the superstitions of paganism, made himsuffer all kinds of bad treatment. But he bore all with joy, increasing in the strength ofChrist who dwelt within him, and drawing many children of his own age to the imitationof his angelic life. When his father in fury put him out of the house, he said he wouldreceive a great recompense in exchange.

The city’s governor, when informed of what had occurred, asked that the young Cyril bebrought to him. When he heard him confess the name of Jesus Christ, he was filled withwrath, but dissimulated it and tried to gain the youth by fine promises. He assured himhe would pardon his fault, reconcile him with his father and guarantee his futureinheritance. The boy replied that he would be poor on earth, in order to possess eternalriches in another world, and said he did not fear death. He was taken away as though tobe tortured, but the governor told the executioners merely to frighten him.

He was taken to a blazing fire as if for execution, and then brought back and interrogatedagain; but he only protested against the cruel delay. He manifested the same heavenlydesires to the end. Led out to die, he asked the executioners to make haste, gazedunmoved at the flames, this time truly kindled for him, and in which he expired, aftersaying to onlookers that they should be joyful, and that they were weeping only becausethey did not know his hope or the kingdom which he was about to enter.

St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi

Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi was the only daughter of the illustrious Camille de Pazzi,related to the Medicis of Florence. She was born in the year 1566, and was baptized withthe name of Catherine. As a child she loved to go into solitary places to enter into prayerwith God, who revealed Himself to her from her tender years without the aid of teachers,as her Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. She made a crown of thorns one day, and woreit for an entire night, enduring great pain. She received her First Communion at ten yearsof age; at twelve years, she made a vow of virginity and took great pleasure in teachingChristian doctrine to poor children.

Her father, not knowing of her vow, wished to give her in marriage, but she persuadedhim to allow her to become a religious, and chose the Carmelites, because there the nunsreceived Communion frequently. She entered in the year of the death of Saint Teresa ofAvila, 1582, at the age of sixteen. It had been more difficult to obtain her mother’sconsent; while she was a novice, her mother sent a portrait artist to the convent, withinstructions that her daughter be portrayed in lay clothing. The Sisters complied with herrequest, and the portrait can still be seen in the Convent. She became professed ateighteen years of age in the Carmelite monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence,May 17, 1584, Feast of the Holy Trinity. She changed her name of Catherine to that ofMary Magdalene on becoming a nun, and took as her motto, “Either suffer or die.”

Her life thereafter was one of penance for sins not her own, and of love for Our Lord,who tried her in ways fearful and strange. She was obedient, observant of the Rule,humble and mortified, and had great reverence for the religious life. One day, when sheseemed to be at the last hour of her life, she rose from her sickbed and hastenedeverywhere throughout the convent, saying during her ecstasy, “O Love! O Love! No oneknows You, no one knows You, no one loves You!” For five years she was tormented bydemons with fearful temptations of pride, sensuality, gluttony, despair, blasphemy; theybecame so violent that she said, “I do not know whether I am a reasonable creature or onewithout reason; I see nothing in myself but a little good will never to offend the divineMajesty.”

God raised her to elevated states of prayer and gave her rare gifts, enabling her to read thethoughts of her novices, and filling her with wisdom to direct them. She was twicechosen mistress of novices, and then made Superior. On her deathbed she asked herSisters to love only Our Lord Jesus Christ, to place all hope in Him, and be perpetuallyardent with desire to suffer for love of Him. God took her to Himself on May 15, 1607. Her body remains incorrupt.

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