Episodes

  • June 1: Saint Justin Martyr

    June 1: Saint Justin Martyr
    May 2 2024
    June 1: Saint Justin Martyr
    c. 100–c. 165
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of philosophers

    The cut and thrust of philosophical debate led him to Truth

    On one of his first missionary journeys, Saint Paul found himself in Syria. He was at a crossroads and needed to decide where he would travel to preach the Gospel. Do I head east and bring the Gospel to the gentiles of Mesopotamia, Persia, India, and China? Or do I travel west, to the Greeks, Romans, Franks, and the people on the rim of the Roman Sea (the Mediterranean)? The Acts of the Apostles relates the mystical event that happened next: “During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them” (Ac 16: 9–10). Macedonia is in Greece. So Saint Paul’s sails opened and he tacked west. The rest is history.

    In the person of Saint Paul, the Church herself turned toward Greece and her philosophical tradition. It was the plan of God that His Church would decisively encounter philosophical truth, not myth and custom, as its partner in dialogue. This intellectual engagement began the long process of melding philosophical truth with theological revelation, which transformed early, Jewish-based Christianity into something new—the powerful synthesis of theology, philosophy, spirituality, and structure known as Catholicism.

    Today’s saint was a philosopher in the Greek tradition, born around 100 A.D. in Samaria to Greek parents. Saint Justin wrapped himself in the white, toga-style cloak of a Greek philosopher even after his conversion. He is the most well-known apologist of the second century, the only true Christian thinker known between the time of Saint John the Evangelist and Origen in the first half of the third century. Justin mercilessly criticized the intellectual dead end of the ancient paganism in which he was raised, seeing it as not merely neutral but as an obstacle to discovering the truth.

    Justin loved the idea that Christ the Logos was the same in substance but different in person from the Father. Theological truth expressed in the concepts of Greek philosophy was very satisfying to him, because it was very true. Justin also provided some of the very first words on the Holy Eucharist outside of the New Testament itself: “And this food is called among us the Eucharist...we (have) been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” What a clear and remarkable testament to Christianity’s early belief in the Eucharist!

    Justin moved to Rome to teach philosophy and spent decades there writing and interacting with the higher echelons of Roman society. But even a thoughtful intellectual was not immune from persecution for being a Christian. Sometime between 162 and 168 A.D., Justin and six companions were called to answer for their beliefs before the Prefect of Rome. The record of the trial has been preserved and shows the Prefect demanding that Justin sacrifice to the gods of Rome. Justin and his friends refuse and are threatened with torture and death. They respond: “Do as you wish; for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols.” What bravado! They sternly refused to be idolaters. They were duly led away, scourged, and beheaded.

    Justin chose, as the Church chose, the God of the philosophers over the false gods of paganism. This was a choice for truth over illusion. As Tertullian would later write: “Christ has said that he is truth, not custom" (De Virgin. Vel. 1, 1). The Christian God is both Father and the Prime Mover; the God of Jesus Christ and the Uncaused Causer; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and thought thinking itself. He is Father and He is Almighty. He is everywhere, because He is nowhere. He is paternal and close at hand but forever mysterious and inaccessible. He gives a name, “I am Who am,” which is a riddle. We take this complex understanding of God for granted today. But the labor of early Christians like Saint Justin Martyr dug the deep intellectual foundations into which were later driven the piers of sound doctrine. It takes very smart people to make simple points.

    Saint Justin, you surrendered your life rather than worship an idol. Your refusal to abjure your faith gives an example to all Christian intellectuals and teachers that the deepest truths are not found only on a page but must be lived, and sacrificed for, even unto death.
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    6 mins
  • May 31: Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    May 31: Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    May 29 2024
    May 31: Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Feast; Liturgical Color: White

    Two young mothers and their treasures meet

    Only in the Catholic Church would a Feast Day first celebrated in the thirteenth century be considered “new.” But that is when the Visitation first appeared in some liturgical calendars. Our oldest liturgical feasts date from the apostolic period. That is, they were likely celebrated by the Apostles themselves in the years immediately following the earthly life of Christ. The original historical events of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday transformed into liturgical events so rapidly and so naturally that the earliest Christian writings are of a liturgical nature. Other Feast Days, such as Christmas, Mary the Mother of God, and the Birth of John the Baptist had to wait their turn. They are ancient but cede pride of place to the foundational events of Holy Week, just as America’s Presidents’ Day must cede to the more essential Independence Day. Without a country, there would no presidents, and without a death and resurrection, there would be no Christianity or Christian calendar in the first place.

    The Visitation falls, liturgically, when it happened historically. Mary conceived Jesus Christ in late March. Saint John the Baptist was born in late June. And it was between these two bookends that pregnant Mary visited her pregnant cousin Elizabeth. Perhaps it was in late May. We may be surprised in heaven to discover that many of our biblically based feast days are commemorated on the exact historical dates they occurred. Would God deceive us otherwise? After all, no good father would tell the family to celebrate his son’s birthday on a date other than when he was born.

    It is the Gospel of Saint Luke that recounts for us so many details of Mary’s life that otherwise remain untold. Saint John writes at the end of his Gospel that Jesus did and said many other things which are not written down. Perhaps the same could be said of Mary. Many words were spoken, gestures made, and events transpired, yet so much remains a mystery. Yet if we knew all there was to know about God and the things of God, then heaven would be a bore and not be heaven at all.

    The Visitation is the first time that Mary publicly exercises her role as Mediator of the Son of God. God chose not only to become a man but to become such in the same way that all men do, through gestation and birth, with His virginal conception the sole miracle. Catholicism is a religion that believes in secondary causality. God directly intervenes in creation only rarely, instead inviting His creatures to perfect His raw creation by using their God-given talents. God did not cure the cancer. The skilled surgeon removed the tumor. He used the gifts God gave him. It was not a direct intervention. It was not a miracle. It was the doctor’s mind and hands being put to their highest use. Mary generously mediated the Incarnation, placing her body at God’s disposition. She, the Mother of the Church, carries the entire Church in her womb. She, the Ark of the Covenant, houses a treasure more precious than Moses’ stone tablets of old. And she, the Morning Star, shines in the blackness before the blazing sun rises in the east, dawning a new day.

    Christ’s presence in Mary’s womb radiates outward with x-ray power and reverberates in the words of faith which arise from Elizabeth and her child, John. Jesus’ cousin leaps for joy inside his mother. And Elizabeth reacts by speaking those graceful words, which countless voices will go on to pray, in countless languages, many billions of times in the centuries since and in the ages to come: “Blessed are you among women, and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” The Visitation is one of the sources of the Hail Mary.

    Elizabeth is a prophet. We are her hearers. For a prophecy to be a prophecy, it has to become true. Elizabeth’s words were true and are true. Mary is indeed blessed among women, and her fruit has indeed changed the world. Mary’s humility instinctively deflects. She praises the source of all goodness, God, rather than the goodness of her own generosity. All things, save evil, can be traced back to God. Mary is at the head of the trail in clearing the tangled path overgrown since the sin of Eve. With mankind close behind, Mary leads us back to discover anew the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty.

    Mary and Elizabeth, your generosity in cooperating with God’s will initiated the events of the New Testament. May we be equally generous in cooperating with God’s plans for our lives, knowing the beginning but not the end, lighting a fire that warms the lives of unknown others.
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    6 mins
  • May 29: Saint Paul VI, Pope

    May 29: Saint Paul VI, Pope
    May 27 2024
    May 29: Saint Paul VI, Pope 1897–1978 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White An erudite introvert helms the Church in stormy waters Over the two millennia of its storied existence, the papacy has piled prestige upon power upon privilege like so many bricks in a high, impregnable, theological fortress. The Bishop of Rome is without doubt the world’s greatest institutional defender of tradition. There is simply no other office which telescopes into one man all that is meant by the compressed phrase “Western Civilization.” Giovanni Baptista Montini, today’s saint’s baptismal name, was as perfectly prepared by education and experience as any man before him to carry the torch of tradition handed to him by his predecessor Pope John XXIII. Yet for all of his erudition and decades of practice walking along the high ridges of church life, the mid-1960s suddenly demanded of the Pope a mix of lace-like delicacy and raw political power alien to his sensitive character. The unity of the Church after the Council was quickly unwinding under potent centrifugal forces. In order to keep the core intact, it was no longer enough for the Pope to be just the bearer of the great tradition. Paul VI had to be Peter, a man of office and authority, yes, but also a tireless missionary like Saint Paul, and a silently courageous disciple and sign of contradiction like Saint Mary. The future Pope Paul VI was born in the last years of the nineteenth century in Northern Italy to an educated and dignified family that was deeply committed to the Church. Giovanni was ordained a priest at the tender age of twenty-two and entered the service of the Vatican a few years later. He spent approximately thirty years serving in the central administration of the Holy See in roles placing him in close contact with three popes. He was appointed Archbishop of Milan in 1954 and a Cardinal in 1958. “Habemus Papam” could have been announced before the Cardinals ever mustered in the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave of 1963, as few doubted whose experience best prepared him to be pope or who Pope Saint John XXIII wanted to succeed him. Cardinal Baptista took the name Paul, the first Pope of that name in over three hundred years. The new Pope very consciously united the stability and authority represented by Saint Peter with the zealous evangelical outreach represented by Saint Paul.  Paul VI became the first pope ever to travel to other continents, going on apostolic pilgrimages to the Holy Land, India, Colombia, the United States, Portugal, and Uganda. Paul also continued the Second Vatican Council and shepherded it to its conclusion in 1965. After the Council, Paul VI promulgated a new liturgical calendar, missal, breviary, and simplified rites for all the sacraments, thus impacting the lives of Catholics the world over in a personal way that few popes had ever done before. Paul VI was also deeply immersed in the theological and moral deliberations over the Church’s response to new technologies making artificial means of contraception accessible and affordable to the masses. Paul’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, heroically restated the Church’s perennial teaching on the immorality of using artificial means of contraception. Although Humana Vitae was not as compelling and humanistic a presentation of the Church’s rich teachings on married love as would later be advanced by Pope Saint John Paul II, it was replete with prophecies. Paul VI’s predictions about the far-reaching and negative repercussions of the widespread use of contraceptives have all come true! No other individual or institution at the time foresaw, or anticipated in any way, even one of the ticking time bombs whose cultural shrapnel Paul inventoried with such accuracy. The intense storms that blew over Humanae Vitae in Northern Europe and North America lashed the aging Pope, and he never issued another encyclical. At times in the late 1960s and 1970s, it seemed as if chunks of Catholicism, Christianity’s mighty rock of Gibraltar, might fall away and drop into the sea. But Paul VI’s steady, if undynamic, hand avoided fissures in the Church’s facade. Though no schisms surfaced during his pontificate, the Pope did publicly warn about the smoke of satan entering the temple of God.  Our saint was in many ways a tragic figure, tasked with leading a huge, complex Church in a confusing time. Paul’s confessor, a holy and faithful Jesuit, said, after the Pope’s death, that "if Paul VI was not a saint when he was elected Pope, he became one during his pontificate." The Church was Paul VI’s perennial love and undying concern. He died on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, and was buried, per his request, in a simple casket placed directly in the earth in the grottoes under St. Peter’s Basilica, near so many of his predecessors who sat on the same Chair of Peter.  Pope Saint Paul VI, you resisted a swell of voices to uphold the Church’s ...
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    7 mins
  • May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop

    May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop
    May 27 2024
    May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop
    Early Sixth Century–604
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of England

    The Church’s Augustus conquered by example

    Gaius Octavius Thurinus was a noble Roman. Julius Caesar became his stepfather when he adopted Octavius, posthumously, in his will. Octavius then added his dead stepfather’s name to his own, becoming Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. He defeated his political enemies in 31 B.C. and thus became the first Emperor of Rome. To recognize his status, the Roman Senate added another link to his long chain of names—Augustus. And it is as Augustus that he is known to history. This very Augustus called for the census forcing Mary and Joseph to transfer to Bethlehem: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Lk 2:1). Augustus reigned well and lived long, until 14 A.D. He is considered the iconic Emperor of the “Pax Romana,” a tranquil, vast, expanding, organized, rich, united, and unconquerable realm, an enormous map of which Augustus pondered from his throne in Rome. The eighth month was renamed to honor Augustus during his own lifetime.

    But greatness is not limited to the Roman Emperor or his Empire. The best of Rome was absorbed, filtered, purified, and reborn in the Catholic Church. As Rome declined, popes and bishops did not pickpocket the corpse of Rome or rifle through the drawers of its abandoned dressers. The transformation from Empire to Church was organic, slow, and unrelenting, like all true cultural change. It happened imperceptibly, year by year, person by person, family by family, town by town, until one day everything was different. The arc of cultural change doesn’t have a right angle. It is fitting and poetic, then, that the Church has her own great Augustus, indirectly evoking the laurel-crowned Emperor. In fact, the Church has two Augustines: Saint Augustine of Hippo, in North Africa, a Doctor of the Church; and Saint Augustine of Canterbury, today’s saint. But their marble statues are not in museums. They are in churches. Saint Augustine of Canterbury was born in an unknown year about a century after his Christian namesake’s death in 430 A.D. in North Africa. He also conquered a king, like his secular namesake, but not for his own glory.

    Saint Augustine of Canterbury is called the Apostle to the English (not to the British.) The history is complex. Christianity was deeply rooted in Roman Britain. British bishops attended Church Councils in France in the fourth century, and two famous Roman British Catholics well known to history lived centuries before Saint Augustine—Pelagius and Saint Patrick. But after the Romans abandoned Britain around 410 A.D., invasions of the pagan Saxons from Northern Europe mixed with native tribes to alter the cultural and religious landscape. Old Roman Britain faded as Anglo-Saxon England dawned. Christianity was relegated to the margins of the British Isles, surviving in remote regions and in an extensive network of monasteries, not parishes or dioceses, under the wise tutelage of Irish monks.

    This two-hundred-year British-Irish hibernation of Catholicism was aroused from its sleep when, in 595 A.D., Pope Saint Gregory the Great had a plan. The goal? Convert King Ethelbert. Why? Because he was an Anglo-Saxon pagan. The hope? His wife was Catholic. The means? A large missionary train. The man for the job? Saint Augustine. Our saint, an educated Benedictine monk from Rome, headed a large team that struggled through France on horseback, crossed the English Channel in simple boats, and finally walked to Ethelbert’s seat of power in Canterbury. The King of all Kent heard the missionaries and…converted to Catholicism! And then all his subjects converted as well. The plan worked. Mission accomplished!

    More missionaries followed. Schools were established. Monasteries were founded. Bishops were appointed. Priests were ordained. Parishes were opened. Rough Anglo-Saxon England put on the yoke of Christ and the lovely, rolling, deep green countryside of England became Mary’s dowry. Nothing is known of the life of Saint Augustine before 595 A.D. He is famous because he was a missionary monk and later bishop. His life and his mission are indistinguishable. He accepted a dare from the Pope and did the impossible. He was himself the foundation stone upon which a Catholic nation built its house of faith for almost a millennium.

    Saint Augustine, your long years of prayer, asceticism, and reading as a monk prepared you for greater things. May all who seek your intercession prepare themselves in times of quiet for future challenges. May all missionaries be as daring as you in fulfilling what is asked of them.
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    6 mins
  • May 26: Saint Philip Neri, Priest

    May 26: Saint Philip Neri, Priest
    May 26 2024
    May 26: Saint Philip Neri, Priest 1515–1595 Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of Rome, humor and joy Everyone saw the halo Saint Philip Neri often begged alms from his wealthy friends and acquaintances to redistribute to needy children. On one occasion, he approached a friend, held out his hand, and asked him, once again, for a few coins: “How about some help for the children.” The man slapped him hard across the face. Saint Philip quickly recovered from the shock, extended his cupped hand again, and said, “That was for me, now how about something for the children?” Saint Philip was born into a well-educated, Catholic, middle-class home. He carried himself all his life with the bearing of an amiable, well-read, finely dressed, shrewd individual who knew no enemies. After growing up in Florence, he moved to Rome and spent many years as a layman studying theology and helping the poor in practical ways. While still a layman, Philip founded a group to care for the many impoverished pilgrims who came to Rome. He befriended the great reformer Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who wanted Philip to become a Jesuit. But after encouragement from his confessor, Philip was ordained a secular priest in 1551. Soon afterward, he had to formalize the large following he generated that wanted to live more fully the life he preached and modeled. Saint Philip was so well loved and so well known in Rome that he is sometimes called its “Third Apostle” after Saints Peter and Paul. His personality radiated a natural warmth and cordiality. His priestly ministry could be fairly characterized as “evangelization by walking around.” He walked the streets of Rome from end to end continually throughout his long life. His life was a long conversation with a thousand characters on street corners, in shops, factories, churches, parks—wherever. He reached out to the destitute, prostitutes, poor children, and the uneducated. Saint Philip would often gather a group to visit seven churches in a row. As they went from one church to another, the group would picnic and listen to the musicians whom Saint Philip brought along for entertainment. These outings, understandably, became hugely popular. Leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and scholars were also drawn to him, in addition to common folk, and formed the impressive circle of committed Catholics who first joined his apostolic efforts. Saint Philip and his companions were given charge of a parish where they held evening sessions filled with song, readings from the lives of the martyrs, the praying of the psalms, and rich conversation. Saint Philip called these gatherings the “oratory,” in part because the participants also listened to musical pieces called “oratorios.” So when it came time to formalize his newly founded community in Church law, the name “Oratory” was chosen. The Congregation of the Oratory, which is still thriving today, was recognized by the Holy Father in 1575 and given the magnificent, new parish of Santa Maria in Varicella, known as Chiesa Nuova (The New Church), in the heart of Rome. Oratorians are mostly diocesan priests and some laymen who live together in a loose brotherhood, taking no vows, while pursuing various individual ministries. The many dozens of oratories around the world are joined in an informal confederation, whereas canonical bonds tie the many houses of a religious order together in a far tighter union. Saint Philip is one of the bright lights of the Counter-Reformation. He blazed a new path, like other reformers. But the new path he blazed was really just the old path, walked differently. Saint Philip was the silent observer, the cheerful listener, the priest always there, who spoke hard truths but always bent on the non-essentials. He mortified himself but never talked about it. He was poor but wore nice clothes. He looked like everyone else, yet…there was that intangible something: the sparkle in his eye, his polish, his lively concern, his clever wit, his courtesy, his wide education, his humor, and his constant turning of the conversation back to God. He was like everyone else, but he wasn’t, really. He radiated what twentieth-century psychologists would call the “halo effect.” Everyone saw the invisible halo casting a glow over Saint Philip, and people crowded around to stand in his mellow light. Saint Philip did not start a university, reform an institution, write a classic, or formulate a new rule. He changed the world the only way it can truly be changed—one soul at a time. This army of one was canonized in 1622. His body rests in a glass coffin in Chiesa Nuova, the sumptuous Mother Church of the Oratory, where pilgrims come in faith, kneel before him, and seek his powerful intercession. Saint Philip Neri, your good nature and charm, united with your theological orthodoxy and life of deep prayer, made you a powerful apostle for the people of Rome. May all evangelists, especially priests, see in ...
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    7 mins
  • The Most Holy Trinity

    The Most Holy Trinity
    May 26 2024
    First Sunday after Pentecost: The Most Holy Trinity
    Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White

    God is more like a family than a monk

    We pray in the “name” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not in their “names.” God must logically be only one. To hold that there is a vast government of gods is to hold that two mountains are the tallest in the world, that three oceans are the deepest, and that on four days the sun shone the brightest. Another way to say “God” is to say “the best.” God is the best. And there can only be one “best,” “tallest,” “deepest,” and “brightest.” God is the ultimate superlative adjective whose nature admits of no competing god. Christian monotheism stops us from approaching different gods for different things. We believe in one God with one will, one mind, and one plan for mankind.

    The Holy Trinity, the God of Christianity, is complex. Clear language must be used and clear thinking deployed to grasp the Christian God. There are no backyard garden statues of the Holy Trinity like there are of Saint Francis of Assisi, because the Trinity is cerebral in a way that Saint Francis is not. On this solemnity, we celebrate the dogma of all dogmas because dogma matters. We sing songs to dogma, put flowers on the altar to dogma, and wear our best clothes for dogma. The Church’s thinking about God is not child’s play. Once we accept thoughts, they own us. At some point we no longer choose our thoughts, they choose us. So we must get God right so that we get everything else right—marriage, family, work, love, war, money, philosophy, humor, religion, fun, sports, etc. Bad people can be forgiven, but bad ideas less so. And bad ideas about God are dangerous. They caused skyscrapers to crumble to the ground.

    The Church believes that God is one in His nature and three in His persons. This means that if you were in a pitch-black room and sensed a presence nearby, your first question would be “What is that?” “Is it the dog or the cat, my spouse, or the wind?” If it were God in the darkness, He would answer the question of “what” by saying “I am God.” Satisfied that the presence was a person and not an animal or the wind, the next question would be “Who are you?” And to that question, God would reply in three successive voices: “I am the Father. I am the Son. I am the Holy Spirit.” A nature is the source of operations, but a person does them. A statue has eyes but it is not its nature to see. It is not man’s nature to lay eggs or to breathe under water, but it is the nature of a bird or of a fish to do so. Our nature sets the parameters for what actions are possible for us. The daughter of a lion is a lioness and does what lions do. The son of a man is a man and does what men do. And the Son of God is God and knows, loves, and acts as God does, perfectly.

    Our Trinitarian supernova is both a unity and a plurality, both one and many at the same time. This means that God does not exist alone but in a community of love. God is not narcissistic, admiring his own beauty and perfection. Instead, the love of the Father is directed toward the Son for all eternity. And the love of the Holy Spirit animates, and passes between, the Father and the Son. The Trinity’s three persons do not share portions of the divine nature, they each possess it totally. This theology means, by extension, that because man is made in the image and likeness of God, every person is created in order to model the Trinity by living with, and for, another, just as God does in His inner life. Because God is a Trinity of persons, His perfection is more fully embodied by an earthly community, such as a family, rather than by a lone monk.

    The Trinity is not just scaffolding which obscures the true face of God. Nor are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit three masks which conceal the one face of God. The one God exists as a Trinity. The Church’s belief in God and the Church’s belief in the Trinity stand and fall together. The Trinity is not just the summit of our faith, something we work toward understanding, but also our faith’s foundation. The truth of the Holy Trinity is learned early and often. Our God, distinct in His persons, one in His essence, and equal in His majesty, is solemnly invoked as the water spills on our heads at Baptism and as the oil is traced on our palms at our anointing. God, in all of His complexity and in all of His simplicity, is with us always in this world and, hopefully, in the world to come.

    Most Holy Trinity, we look to Your three persons as a model of true love, knowledge, and community life. Help all marriages and families strive for the high ideal of perfection You set before the world, no matter the discouragement resulting from our sins and imperfections.
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    7 mins
  • May 25: Saint Gregory VII, Pope, Religious

    May 25: Saint Gregory VII, Pope, Religious
    May 25 2024
    May 25: Saint Gregory VII, Pope, Religious
    c. 1015–1085
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

    A pope dies on the run

    The last words spoken by Pope Saint Gregory VII were “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, that is why I die in exile.” His enemies would have claimed that they loved justice equally as much but understood it differently, which is why the pope had to die on the run. No one really wins epic battles for power, though one side may prevail in the short run. Everyone loses something in a fight: some their dignity, others their property, their position, or maybe their teeth. There is no such thing as a win-win outcome. Pope Gregory VII was a scrappy fighter who boxed his powerful opponents for years. Yet he didn’t fight for his own honor, wealth, or position, but because he believed that “the blessed Peter is father of all Christians, their chief shepherd under Christ, (and) that the holy Roman Church is the mother and mistress of all the churches.” He battled for the right of the Bishop of Rome to govern the Church’s internal life free of interference from worldly powers. Pope Gregory’s victories and losses colored all of medieval history and established key precedents for the perennial tensions between Church and State which continue until today.

    Gregory VII was baptized as Hildebrand in the Tuscany region of Italy. He received an excellent education from Roman tutors, including one who later became Pope Gregory VI.  Most of his adult life was dedicated to serving various popes in important diplomatic and administrative roles. He was one of the most essential papal advisers of his era, even helping to craft the Church law limiting papal conclaves to cardinals alone. While still a deacon, Cardinal Hildebrand was chosen Pope in 1073 by popular acclamation. He refused to be seated on the papal throne as the result of such an outlaw election and went into hiding. Not until a proper vote of the cardinals took place did Hildebrand accept his election as canonically legitimate. He was shortly thereafter ordained a priest and bishop and then crowned Pope Gregory VII on the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, June 29, 1073.

    When Pope Gregory VII first sat on the throne of Saint Peter and gazed out at the universal church, he did not peer through rose-colored glasses. Long firsthand experience of the world made him no novice, so he set about with great determination to implement needed reforms. His twelve-year papacy would be one of the most consequential in history. Gregory first sought to carve out a space for the papacy to operate free from German meddling in its internal affairs. It was common at the time for princes, kings, and other powerful laymen to appoint clerics to their positions and to “invest,” or clothe, new bishops at their Ordination Masses with the symbols of office, such as their pastoral staff, miter, and ring. Gregory decreed an end to this practice, not least because of the confusion it engendered about who was the source of the bishop’s authority. But the “lay investiture” battle would continue for centuries, leading to recriminations on all sides, including Gregory’s dramatic excommunication of Emperor Henry IV and Henry’s deposition—and driving into exile—of the pope. Incredibly, as late as 1903, the Holy Roman Emperor still directly intervened in a papal conclave, exercising his ancient right of veto to block a cardinal from being elected pope.

    Pope Gregory VII pulled every lever at his disposal to make priestly celibacy compulsory, sought to heal the Schism of 1054 with the Orthodox, railed against simony (the purchasing of church offices), and encouraged the recovery of the holy sites in Jerusalem, a harbinger of the Crusades which commenced soon after his death. Gregory also memorialized in the clearest of terms the Church’s theology of the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, a statement of faith that presaged the deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament so characteristic of the High Middle Ages. Long before the popes were known as “Vicar of Christ,” they were called “Vicar of Peter.” Pope Gregory VII was a model medieval pope above personal reproach, ambitious only for the health and freedom of the Church. He represented both Christ and Saint Peter well.

    Pope Saint Gregory VII, may your earthly example and heavenly intercession sustain and inspire the leaders of the Church to act impetuously, to fight ceaselessly, and to forgive generously when confronted by forces inimical to the well-being of the Church.
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    6 mins
  • May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin

    May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin
    May 24 2024
    May 25: Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, Virgin
    1566-1607
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of the sick
    Life’s true drama is on the inside

    Today’s Carmelite saint was the Italian counterpart to Spain’s famous Carmelite, Teresa of Ávila, although Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi is less well known than her Spanish contemporary. Teresa was a well-traveled and extroverted reformer and founder of a large and vital branch of the Carmelite Order. Mary Magdalene, on the other other hand, was not even a Mother Superior, much less a founder, and followed the ancient observance of Carmel, not its “Teresian,” or discalced, offshoot.

    Named Caterina at her baptism, today’s saint was from a wealthy, pious, and respected Florentine family who expected their only daughter to marry young and marry well. But young Caterina was well trained in the things of God from the start and destined for a higher calling. While Caterina was still a girl, her spiritual director taught her the benefit and discipline of meditating half an hour a day. At the tender age of twelve, she experienced her first ecstasy. She gazed transfixed at the gorgeous sun setting over the rolling countryside and shook at the awesome beauty of God’s creation. Her mother was there, but little Caterina was speechless, unable to describe what hidden forces caused her body to tremble so.

    When she was sixteen, she entered a Carmelite convent, over her family’s initial objections. Taking the religious name of Mary Magdalene, she experienced a number of shocking spiritual events, which were documented and witnessed by her fellow Carmelites and by priest confessors. The young nun was rapt in God for weeks and months on end. She shook violently and showed signs of the stigmata. In her ecstasies, she received a crown of thorns from Jesus to share in His sufferings and a ring to symbolize her mystical marriage to Him. She lived on only bread and water for years, in reparation for the sins of mankind. When a priest ordered her to eat the simple fare of the convent, she became ill and had to return to her more meager nourishment. After one ecstatic vision, a near-death experience, Mary Magdalene described how she had given her heart to Jesus and how He had returned it to her with the purity of the Virgin Mary’s own heart. Jesus Christ had even hidden Saint Mary Magdalene in His side, subjugating her will and desires to His own.

    These many years of intense fireworks in her soul were followed by dark years of dryness and isolation. She felt a painful separation from Jesus her Spouse. During this time, Saint Mary Magdalene struggled with prideful self-love, distaste for God, and the all too common temptations of the flesh and the devil. But she persevered and became novice mistress of the Carmel, recommending poverty, obedience, and abandonment to the will of God as the surest forms of holiness. Mary Magdalene died young, exhausted from her spiritual contests, fasts, and demanding life of prayer. Behind her spectacular displays of spirituality was the day in and day out austerity of Carmelite convent life: the longing for a nice piece of meat, going to bed on an empty stomach, knees and hips aching from scrubbing the floor for endless hours, no dessert to satisfy the sweet tooth, kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament and almost falling forward due to eyes burning with lack of sleep. Only by long practice do actions mature into habits and habits into the highest virtues.

    The proving ground of a strict convent proves a soul, and only then might spiritual flowers bloom. Only then might bright ecstasies sparkle against the dark curtain of night, to the wonder and awe of all around. For Mary Magdalene, Christ was not all rod and lash. She was a happy nun who played her part in keeping her convent running. She kept her personality, like all stigmatists and elite spiritual warriors, yet became one with Christ in a mysterious manner best described in poetic rather than theological terms. Her renown was widespread and her cult immediate. She was canonized in 1669. Her body lies in peace in her native Florence and is still incorrupt.

    Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, we ask your divine intercession before your Mystical Spouse to give all Religious the gift of perseverance, obedience, and poverty. Your spiritual ecstasies were unique—and destined for few. Grant those gifts that are common—and destined for many.
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