All Carmelite Saints

In Carmel today we celebrate the feast of all our Carmelite Saints.  Another day of celebration - time for eating partridge, if we can catch it, otherwise it will be chicken or beef, if we're lucky.  With no housekeeper it may well be a rushed beans on toast!

More importantly it is a day to be nourished by the example of our Saints - a feast of holiness. Among those we celebrate are hermits and friars, nuns and sisters, priests and brothers of the two Orders and the various affiliated congregations, and of course lay men and women, the seculars and associates, and of course Diocesan priests who in life were also members of the Order and now are numbered among the Carmelites in God's kingdom.  Under the mantle of our Holy Mother, Our Lady of Mount Carmel we rejoice in God's triumph in the souls of these faithful Carmelites.  May they pray for all of us.

 Happy feast day.

It's The Most Wonderful Day Of Year, Sort Of..

 

Yep, for all you who love Saints today is bumper day: All Saints.  A very happy feast day to you all.  In our parish we are adopting Patron Saints for the year.  Each parishioner is invited to dip into a lottery to pull out a Saint's name.  The exercise proved very popular last year, and many received Saints which resonated with them and their lives.  It's a good way of getting to know the Saints and forming a bond with our brothers and sisters in heaven.

 

If you would like to join us in this spiritual exercise, you can go to this website and receive a patron. 

 

In case you are wondering why I am doing this on the 1st November rather than the 1st January, I think it fits in better with All Saints.  Enjoy.

The Humblest Of Her Children

After yesterday's fiesta, today we celebrate the feast of one who was described by Our Lady herself as one of her humblest children: St Juan Diego.  His feast is on the General Calender thanks to Blessed John Paul II, who canonised him.  We all know him as the visionary of Guadalupe, the story of the apparitions is well known, and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is coming up next week.

St Juan suffered the same attack from scholarship as did St Catherine of Alexandria, St Philomena and St Simon Stock.  As his Cause was progressing it was said by some that he never existed - that there was not one shred of evidence to support a claim that he ever lived. Now we all know how rigorously the Congregation of the Causes of Saints carries out its work - nothing gets past them.  If there is even an inkling of a doubt the shutters come down: that is as true of the search for heroic virtue as it is for a miracle.  So I cannot see the Congregation ticking all the boxes for what is said to be a figment of Blessed John Paul II's imagination.  Ultimately, I think, this was just another opportunity self-styled progressives took to try and undermine John Paul's papacy, and in particular, his teaching on morality.

There was a joke that was circulating among such progressives during John Paul II's pontificate. "Did you hear about the saints JP II canonised: the saint who was never born, the saint who never died, and the saint who had no virtue?   And who are these? Juan Diego - no evidence he ever lived; Edith Stein - no evidence she ever died; Josemaria Escriva - no evidence of any virtue."  We were all supposed to laugh then.  According to the critics, it is said Curial officials in Rome were living in dread of an old woman turning up during the St Edith's canonisation ceremony claiming to be her.   The inclusion of St Josemaria is obviously a jibe at Opus Dei - progressives tend not to be appreciative of the great work Opus Dei does and the holiness which is fruit of the way of life St Josemaria inspired.

And why do I mention all of that?  Well I suppose to remind us that we need the humility of St Juan Diego to keep us from the cynicism and lack of faith demonstrated by the above example.  He teaches us that there is no shame in being the littlest children of the Holy Mother.  He was very much a man after Our Lady's heart: he was docile to the will of God, overcoming his fears to do what she asked him to do.  Though some may dismiss it, there is a heroism in the way he carried out his task.  Some may say it was simple: just ask the bishop to build a church: while that may be easy for some, it is not easy for all, and not for those who seem, by nature to be timid.  The great movement of holiness in the visionary of Guadalupe was that which transformed human timidity and weakness into the meekness which Jesus praises in the Beatitudes.  St Juan, then, brings us back to that Little Way which St Therese teaches us: he is a perfect exponent: I wonder if Therese knew about him?  Without a doubt, she would have loved him.

As we celebrate this feast of a visionary, we might also remember in our prayers the soul of another visionary who died during the week.  Mariette Beco, the visionary of Banneux, who died in Belgium at the age of 90 (Story here).  She received eight apparitions of Our Lady between the 15th January and the 2nd March 1933.  The visions were judged authentic by the Church in 1949.   

The Visionary of Banneux, Mariette Beco

Like St Juan Diego, Mariette lived a simple, hidden life.  When asked about the apparitions she said that she was simply the "postman", the messenger.   In the apparitions Our Lady called herself the Virgin of the Poor.  With the apparitions of Beauraing (in which Our Lady called herself the Virgin of the Golden Heart) which occurred immediately before those of Banneux, Our Lady seems to have been preparing the world for the onslaught of the Second World War: a recognition that her requests in Fatima were not heeded, and so a greater war that the First World War was about to break out.  I note these apparitions occur around the time of Hitler's rise to power to Germany. 

What wonderful stories!  We should read more about these apparitions, particularly in difficult times: they will put new heart into us and remind us that God never abandons us: that our Holy Mother is always watching over us.

All Saints

A happy feast day to all of you.  Today you must treat your favourite Saint!

Our Modern Day Saints

As we prepare to celebrate the great Solemnity of All Saints, we are reminded that every day new Saints are being added to the number of those in heaven.  Most of them are ordinary people, but today, many of them are martyrs who shed their blood for Christ and the Church.

In many places Christians are jaded and bored.  One of the problems we have in Ireland, for example, is that people like short, quick Masses - they do not want to hear homilies, they like their priest to crack a few jokes, fly through the Eucharistic Prayer, give them Communion, and send them out to their planned activities all within half an hour on a Sunday morning.  

And then I think of fellow Catholics in Pakistan, China, Iraq and many other places who cherish that hour on a Sunday when they can attend Mass, hear the Word of God, learn from the homily and then enter into the great miracle of the Eucharist which reaches a personal climax in the reception of the Body and Blood of the Lord in Holy Communion.  Today Catholics are literally dying in defence of that.  Each Sunday as they pray at Mass they are aware that this could be their last Mass and that during the days to come they may be put to death for their Catholic faith.  How I wish more people in the West could see things as our suffering brothers and sisters see them.  How I wish so many of us, myself included, did not take the faith for granted, but see it as a gift to be cherished: to see the Holy Mass for what it really is. 

That said, as we prepare for tomorrow's celebration, an article on one of Christianity's latest martyrs - a Coptic teenager beaten to death for wearing his crucifix.  From Catholic World News: 

Ayman Nabil Labib, a 17-year-old Coptic Christian student, was murdered by Muslim classmates after refusing to remove a crucifix he was wearing, the Assyrian International News Agency is reporting.

The murder, which took place on October 16 in the central Egyptian town of Mallawi, took place after a teacher asked Labib to cover up a tattooed cross on his wrist. Labib refused, instead uncovering a cross necklace.

“The teacher nearly choked my son, and some Muslim students joined in the beating,” said Labib’s father.

“They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault,” the victim’s mother added. “When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later.”

Let us also remember the forty-two Catholics martyred in their cathedral in Iraq last year.  We also remember Asia Bibi still on death row, and the Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani who faces a similar sentence for converting to Christianity from Islam.  There are many more, all of them voiceless as the governments of the world who never stop speaking about human rights and equality, wilfully ignore their plight.  

Indeed as Anne Widdecome correctly points out, these governments even support the regimes which are presecuting Christianity.  Our own government is among them: our Prime Minister gave succor to the Chinese government in their persecution of the Church through his ill-tempered rant in the Dail last July.

May these news martyrs pray for the renewal of the Church in the West, and through their intercession, may God touch the hearts of their persecutors and the governments who support them either actively or through wilful silence.

Heavens Above

Dismiss the Saints at your peril!   Following the Second Vatican Council a number of Saints were (not so quietly) dropped from the Calendar.  Two reasons were given - the Universal Calendar was so cramped full of Saints there was no room for new Saints and no room for Ordinary Time.  Some Saints were deemed not to have existed, and so they were removed under a shadow.  Among these Saints were St Philomena - the most controversial, St Christopher and St Catherine of Alexandria.  However since then there has been a lot of research and the three above have been (quietly) rehabilitated;  St Catherine of Alexandria has even been put back on the Universal Calendar. 

Debate still rages over Philomena, a debate which, I believe, is concentrated on the wrong area - the arrangement of the tiles which sealed her tomb.  As historians fight it out they seem to ignore the fact that the skeleton found within was that of a teenage girl who seems to have been martyred and was accompanied by a phial of blood - the ancient symbol of martyrdom.  They also ignore the fact that thanks to the miraculous cure of the now Venerable Pauline Jaricot, Philomena had a kind of process in the investigation carried out by Pope Gregory XVI who authorised devotion after he ruled the cure to be miraculous. Some of the debate about Philomena concerns the visions an Italian nun, Sr Maria Luisa di Gesu.  I do not know if they are authentic, but we can safely put the visions to one side if we do not accept them; without them we have enough.    There are many Saints about whom little is known.  As for St Christopher, he seems to have just slipped back in.

Another case was St Simon Stock. He was on the way out and with him the Scapular devotion.  Historians swore there was not a shred of evidence that he existed and so his cult was quietly put to one side.  Not happy with getting rid of Simon, there was a move to get ride of the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: logic - no St Simon no vision.   Horrified Carmelites went into overdrive and initiated a major historical study, and guess what?  Bingo there was more than a shred of evidence to show he existed, and so, he was quietly restored and the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel untouched.  It was all just part of the crazy Sixties and Seventies when some of the most capable people in the Church seemed to have lost their heads.  In recent times we saw an attempt to get rid of St Juan Diego, and of course the visions of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Pope John Paul was warned not to canonise him because.....yes, you guessed it: "there is not a shred of evidence to suggest he ever existed".  Thankfully John Paul did not fall for it.

So why the post on unknown Saints?  Well two skeletons have been found under the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia and it seems they well be the relics of SS Chrysanthus and Daria, a husband and wife, who, according to legend, were martyred for the faith by being buried alive.  So this may put the cat among the pigeons for those who argue they did not exist at all.  Prudence is necessary in all these things and we must take care not to make definitive statements about Saints not existing. 

Woah!

Strange things happen - very strange sometimes.  In faith we may call them providence, or coincidence, or just weird.  Well, that happened me today, or did it?  I was surfing the net and discovered, thanks to the Anchoress, a site where you can receive a saint for the year.  Good idea, I said to myself, I can plug this on the blog and encourage devotion to the saints for the coming year. 

Well I decided to try the thing myself.  Apparently the programme automatically generates a saint for you. So I clicked the button...there now, <<CLICK>>....wait a minute...say a prayer to the Holy Spirit, who can indeed work through technology....now, prompted to clink on the link to find the saint...ok, right, now....<<CLICK>>  Oh Lord!  Who pops up???  St Genesius!!  Either this is providence, Genesius pulling another of his practical jokes or they have some cookie or something which investigates your internet background.  Not sure, I'm a little bit raw at the moment.  But that was interesting.

Anyway, here is the link, off you go, have fun, knock yourselves out and maybe let us know who popped up for you?  Was it your favourite saint? A fitting Saint?   Or have you had a providential moment like me?

Tutti Santi! Bouna Festa!

If I started talking on today's feast I'd be here forever.  This is one of my favourite feasts of the year, when we celebrate All the Saints in heaven - our brothers and sisters now living in glory with God.  And as we do so, we hope that one day, we will be numbered among them. 

Have you ever met a Saint?   I'm sure we all have, given that most Saints are unknown - and we all have Saints in our families.  Of course we can also ask, have we met a person beatified or canonised by the Church, or will be?  I was privileged to have met the Venerable Pope John Paul II.  I just missed meeting Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.  I also met Fr Benedict Groeschel, still alive, thank God, but one, I firmly believe, will be canonised one day.  I studied and lived with a priest who was murdered in Iraq and may be declared a martyr and beatified one day; and I grew up knowing a Franciscan Brother, Br Placidus, a friend of my parents, who was martyred in Africa in 1997. 

But there are two people whom I knew well and who I believe were Saints, and if I can anything to do about it, would love to see their Causes opened: both were members of our Fraternity; both had a profound holiness and both suffered a great deal in Christ-like abandonment and heroism.  I will tell you about one of them today: she was Anne McGovern.

Anne was born in Corlough, Co. Cavan on the 6th March 1938, of a farming family which was quite religious.  She was quiet and devout by nature.  Her desire was to be a teacher, and so when she finished school she went to teacher training college and qualified as a primary teacher.  Until her retirement, she taught in various schools.  Like St Therese, nothing extraordinary happened her, but her gentleness and holiness impressed all who knew her.  When she retired she joined the Legion of Mary, and there her quiet apostolic soul found plenty to satisfy her desire to reach out to others and bring them to Christ.  She was tireless in her work for Mary, whose virtues were becoming obviously manifest in her.  She was elected the President of her praesidium, of which I was the Spiritual Director, where she fulfilled her office with great charity and kindness.  She joined the Fraternity of St Genesius as a means of offering her prayers and sufferings for those in the arts.

A quiet and reserved woman, when she fell ill with breast cancer, she kept it to herself, quietly suffering great pain, yet remaining serene and joyful.  Though she was quite ill, she showed great concern for others who were ill.  She revealed her illness to me, and I was sworn to secrecy.  I tended to her, anointing her each month and helping her as much as I could.  I was amazed at her heroism in the face of illness, nothing got her down. Indeed, if anything, she was more radiant and joyful.  No one knew she was ill, but all remarked on her holiness.  It was my privilege to accompany her in the last year or so of her life, watching, as I firmly believed then as now, that I was watching a Saint being born into life.  Her heroism in the face of suffering was such that she asked to offer her pain for the Fraternity and its mission, becoming an Oblatory Member.

On the 9th May 2009, Anne did not feel well,  The next day, as she was spending her usual hours in prayer in the adoration chapel of our church, she fell ill; she struggled on to the evening Mass, but she was so sick she had to be taken into hospital.  I was alerted the next morning.  When I went in to see her, she told me that the time had come.  "I didn't think it would be so soon", she said to me.  I told her that if this was God's time, then she had to prepare herself.  She did not complain, but gave herself into God's hands.  For the next few days she lingered, suffering a great deal - it was upsetting to see her; yet I knew this was the last time she would suffer - soon she would be in heaven.  On Friday 15th May, Anne, having suffered the passion of her beloved Lord, gave up her spirit.   Her obituary relates her life and interests, but misses out on her faith, hope and love.  Today, as we celebrate this feast, and not preempting the judgement of the Church, I remember Anne and pray that she now shares in the vision of God.

Anne McGovern