Today's saint: the fiery Catherine of Siena

(From the Shrine of St. Ignatius at Loyola, Spain. Photo by Ron McGuire)

In January and April of 2018, I posted St. Catherine of Siena pictures on this blog. Did you know that you can "search" this blog for items that interest you?

St. Catherine of Siena, whose feast is April 30, is the dynamic saint who famously said, "Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire."

I always think of her as the saint who told the pope what to do! A simple Third Order Dominican nun, not a queen of a country or a noblewoman but rather the youngest of many children of an Italian dyer, she was called by God to admonish the pope to return to Rome from exile in Avignon. God used her choleric temperament to make a difference in the world of her time.

Today, our words of encouragement were spoken by Our Lord to St. Catherine in a vision. They offer us hope that the Savior wants to forgive us, and is offended when we despair like Judas. Our sins can never be greater than His Infinite Mercy.

"To St. Catherine of Siena, God once said, 'Those sinners who despair of My Mercy in the hour of death, offend Me far more by that one sin, than by all the iniquities they have every committed. For he who despairs, openly despises My Mercy, and in his perversity imagines that his sins outweigh My Goodness and Mercy...Were he to grieve in all sincerity for having offended and condemned Me, and faithfully hope in My Mercy, he would, most certainly find it; since My Mercy is infinitely greater than all the sins that have ever been committed or can be committed by any creature.'"

~ Consoling Revelations collected by the Ven. Benedictine Abbot Blosius

Turn to your Mother of Good Counsel

 

(St. Declan Monastery, Ardmore, Co. Waterford, Ireland)

The remains of this Irish church remind me of praying hands, pointing Heavenward. The Irish have for centuries, since the days of Patrick, shown a fiery example of devotion to prayer, through hardship and persecution.

In a 1950 Catholic Truth Society of Ireland booklet called Our Mother of Good Counsel, the Augustinian Fr. Colman O'Driscoll talks about devotion to the Blessed Virgin under this title, which is celebrated every April 26th.

"In these days of chaos, when evil counsel so universally prevails, let us find hope once again in turning to our Good Mother. But, when invoking Mary, let us remember that her bounty depends on the loving goodness of Her Divine Son. It is to Him she must turn to obtain the graces which we need. Of course, He never refuses a favor for which His Mother asks. but will she ask favors for those who invoke her while at the same time they despise the Law of Her Son? Did she not in Cana of Galilee lay it down as a condition for receiving her Son's favors that all things whatsoever He would command should be done? It is only by fulfilling this condition, by carrying out this first and best good counsel given by Mary, that we can have the interior peace and holiness which most of all she wishes us to possess."

Every devotion offered to Mary is because of her Son, and to lead us to her Son. When we say she is wonderful, she immediately responds, "HE is wonderful". When we say we admire her, she says, "Together we admire HIM!" When we say, "Blessed art thou," she says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord!" She brings us to Her Son.

The Light of Easter

 

(Ruins of the Hermitage of St. Declan, Ardmore, Co. Waterford, Ireland)

We are in the Forty Days of Eastertide, during which we celebrate Christ's Risen Glory and the time He spent visiting with the Apostles and disciples in His Glorified Body. It is a time of consolation and uplifting our hearts in joy and exuberance.

Fr. Robert Eaton, in his 1926 book, The Forty Days: Chapters on the Risen Life of Our Lord, encourages us to look at our lives in the illumination of Easter:

"Look at your work and position in life in His Easter light, for He has made them new -- a very gift from God, a vocation, a field in which much good may be done, from which you may lay up treasure, where no moth corrupts, where no thieves break in and steal.

"Look on your home in His Easter light, for He has made it new; a place of peace and charity, of forbearance and gentleness, where you may find rest, and give glory to God, and promote peace to men of goodwill on earth.

"Look on your sorrows in His Easter light, for He has made them new, no longer a mark of God's displeasure, but a very blessing, to wean you from love of the world, to fix your eyes on Him Whom you have pierced, to raise your heart to the City, where God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes."

Happy Eastertide!

A Mother of Many: Saint Ita

 

We just had the grace of a trip to Ireland last week! One of our stops was this Shrine of Saint Ita (pronounced "Ida" with a long "i" sound). Her name means "thirst for God". She founded a convent on this site in the early sixth century.

She decided that she wanted to become a nun and consecrate her life to God, but her father didn't want to give his permission. She fasted and prayed, and her father was vouchsafed a dream in which he learned that she would become "the mother of many." He agreed to her vocation.

At the age of 16, around the year 496, she left home and went in search of her mission. Saint Declan received her as a religious, and more women joined her in her new convent, including her sister Fiona. Another bishop, Saint Erc, brought her a one-year-old boy and asked her to care for him. The little boy grew to love her so much that as an adult he would come back and ask her advice. That boy was Saint Brendan the Navigator.

St. Brendan once asked St. Ita what the three attachments were that God hated the most. She answered, "A scowling face, obstinacy in wrong-doing, and too great a confidence in the power of money."

Soon, more parents brought their young boys to St. Ita's convent to be fostered. This led to her eventually being called "the foster mother of the saints of Ireland" because of how many of those boys grew to be missionaries, bishops, scholars and yes, saints. According to her biographers, she taught the boys "faith in God with purity of heart, simplicity of life with religion, and generosity with love."

When asked the secret of her gifts, she said it was conversing in her heart with the Holy Trinity. This fifth and sixth century saint offers us inspiration even down to the present!

St. Ita, pray for us!

The Holy Eucharist

Inchydoney Beach, southern Ireland

The Holy Eucharist is the Savior's greatest gift. 

He gave us Himself. 

We have the opportunity to receive Him every day - do we take advantage of this grace?

"He who comes to Communion loses himself in God, as a drop of water in the ocean."

~ St. John Vianney

A Little Bit of Heaven

The Cliffs of Moher, west coast of Ireland

Is there somewhere you've been that felt like a little bit of Heaven? For me, that is Ireland. And Annecy in France. Obviously, we know earth isn't Heaven. But some places give us a little taste of beauty, loveliness, peacefulness and joy.

Think of every good experience you've had, every time you've felt loved, every beautiful sight, sound and fragrance you've ever sensed, roll them all into one. Heaven is millions of times better. These little joys give us a tiny spark of what He has prepared for those who love Him.

"I have been made for Heaven, and Heaven for me." ~ St. Joseph Cafasso

Suffering and Rejoicing Go Hand in Hand

Photo by Amy Gilmor - St. Mary Magdalene Church in Drogheda, Ireland

We certainly rejoice during this beautiful week of Eastertide, and rightly so. We also journey through periods of darkness in this life and must hold on until we see the light again. We persevere through suffering and find our joy. 

Someday, we will see the Light eternally, never to be extinguished.

"Like St. Mary Magdalene, we must first find Our Lord on Calvary, there 'to know Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' We must learn to pray in the darkness of difficulty and discouragement, with never a word of reply, with failure meeting us at every turn... Such is our work and privilege, as it was for St. Mary Magdalene, the glory of Easter ever helping us to persevere in work for God that must needs be carried out beneath the shadow of the Cross." 

~ Fr. Robert Eaton, "The Forty Days: Chapters on the Risen Life of Our Lord" imprimatur 1926.

St. Mary Magdalene at Easter

St. Mary Magdalene adoring the Risen Lord, St. Conleth's Church, Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland

 

My great-great-grandparents were married before this carving on May 30, 1869. I wonder if it inspired them as much as it does me. Ten months later, their first child was baptized Mary Anne. Then they emigrated to the United States, and had six more children - including my great-grandfather Stephen.

This beautiful act of Our Lord -- appearing to the repentant sinner and giving her a message to His disciples -- never fails to move my heart. She turned her passionate heart from a love of sin to love of Jesus. We can too!

E. Seton, in her "Sundays in the Garden of Easter", wrote:

"...she turned away from the Tomb, her tears falling fast. Jesus stood nigh, but His loving Heart must hear once more from her own lips the voice of that mighty love mourning for Him and not to be comforted. He had so few to love Him as she did. And He had so great a reward for every tear, for every word laid up for her!"

"'Mary!' He said. There is a volume in the word. Tenderness, the special vocation to a very high and intimate following of Him, loving predestination of that loving soul, Easter revelation of Himself. And Mary's instantaneous response, now that the veil upon her eyes was lifted, 'Good Master!'... O the joy that inundated her great soul, the sudden illumination of grace, the comprehension of all the Passion and Paschal Mystery, the realization of the Prophecies!"

Easter Thoughts

(Photo by Ron McGuire - Lourdes, France)

Blessed Easter, everyone! When I was a child, Christmas was always way more important to me than Easter, because of, er, well, the presents. As I get older and hopefully mature, I appreciate the beauty of this day. St. Paul tells us that if it were not for His Resurrection, our Faith would be in vain.

Twenty years ago this month, three friends and I visited John Bevan's Bookshop on the border between England and Wales. What a discovery! I wandered up and down the aisles, gasping at each new discovery. Sadly, I couldn't fit all the books in a box to take home, but one of my treasured finds from that day was a little 1921 prayerbook called, "Sundays in the Garden of Easter" by E. Seton. I offer you an excerpt from it on this special day, a reflection on the disciples who met the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus:

"'And they constrained Him, saying, Stay with us, because...the day is now far spent.' Our Lord can never resist the constraints of love. He is an easily taken Captive, that omnipotent God. 

"In a most beautiful and touching revelation made to St. Mechtilde, He made known to her the very great power which the faintest human sigh has over His Divine and glorified Heart -- the sigh of contrition, of sorrow and affliction, of desire for Him, all come in, loud and clear to His tender Ear, more vigilant and listening than the most devoted mother's, and they have power to draw Him to the heart of man. He yielded instantly to the solicitation of the disciples -- 'and He went in with them,' says St. Luke. 

"Our desire delights Him in some mysterious, pathetic manner; He makes it a necessary condition for many blessings that they should be asked for by us....He longs to fill us with blessing, but He cannot open His Hand unless we bring Him the vessel of Petition wherein to receive of that overflowing Fount of benediction...Prayer prepares us for blessing: it opens the door to Jesus: it is the channel wherein the tides of grace and joy may run. 

"Our Risen Lord gave more than the disciples had asked, for that is the way of His Sacred Heart. He 'went in with them,' He sat down to meat with them, He gave them their Easter Communion, He showed Himself...Risen, glorified, and unveiled as He now is in Heaven."

Greater Love Than This No Man Hath

Fra Angelico's beautiful painting in the Convent San Marco, Florence, Italy

In each cell of the Convent San Marco, Fra Angelico painted a mural on the wall. Saint Antoninus, the superior at the time, commissioned him to do it. Each monk was asked, "What is your favorite scene to meditate upon, and who is your favorite saint?" This is why we have paintings of, for example, the Crucifixion, with St. Dominic who lived in the thirteenth century.

Imagine having Fra Angelico paint you a special picture on the wall of your bedroom for your own edification and inspiration! Here are some words for us to think about on this Good Friday....

"Christ alone will reign, Christ alone will conquer, Christ alone will command... Already the splendor of the resurrection can be discerned, for the darkness of the passion has reached its greatest intensity." 

~ Fr. Miguel Pro, SJ, martyred in 1927.

Spiritual Reading

 

A sign in Annecy, France, the hometown of St. Francis de Sales

St. Francis de Sales classic book on the spiritual life for lay people is, of course, "The Introduction to the Devout Life". Have you read it? My copy is full of underlining (in pencil, of course!). I really should read it again and see if the same passages jump out at me now, in my current stage of life.

He wrote the book for a laywoman, and she was so impressed with his advice that she encouraged him to publish it and share it with others. He changed the name of the person he was addressing to "Philothea", which means "lover of God", so that he is speaking to us, his readers, in each chapter. The sign shown above hangs on the home of the woman who originally received the gift of this advice: the original "Philothea".

What better week than Holy Week to cultivate a habit of spiritual reading? If we turned off all our screens and spent a little extra time with a good book, imagine the benefits!

Bishop Jean Pierre Camus was mentored by St. Francis de Sales personally as well. They were contemporaries. He wrote:

"[St. Francis de Sales] recommended spiritual reading as a food for the soul which is attainable at all times, and need never fail...He advised us to be provided with works of piety, as so many incentives to Divine Love, and to let no day pass without using them. He would have such books read with great and respectful devotion, as so many letters sent from Heaven by the Saints, in order to lead us thither, and strengthen us by the way."

The saint particularly recommended Louis de Blois, St. Bonaventure, St. Teresa of Avila, Dom Scupoli, St. Augustine, St. Jerome and others.     

He is calling for us

(Side chapel where the skull of Lazarus rests, in the Cathedral of St. Mary Major, Marseilles, France)

I read once that Our Lord knew that by raising His friend Lazarus from the dead, at the request of Martha and Mary, that He was signing His own death warrant. He knew, in His Eternal Wisdom, that this very public undeniable miracle would push the angry, resentful Pharisees over the edge and precipitate them into directly seeking His crucifixion. Yet He did it anyway. What an act of friendship!

Martha and Mary Magdalene were mourning the loss of their sweet brother Lazarus, and Our Lord came to visit. Martha saw Him first and ran to greet Him. Then she came back and told her sister that He desired her to come too. Here are some words of encouragement for us today, reminding us that Our Lord calls for us every day, in many different ways.

"What must have been the joy of St. [Mary] Magdalen when her sister came and said secretly to her: 'The Master is here and calls you!' 

"We have nothing to envy the blessed [penitent]: at every moment messengers come to tell us, in secret, on the part of Our Lord: 'The Master is here and calls you!' Every creature of God fulfills this good office towards us; on each one He left His divine mark, not only when He created it, but also when He repaired it as God-Man, by the use He made of it and the blessing He gave it, for 'The Father hath given all things into His Hands.' He gave back to them the capacity which they had since the beginning of the world, of leading us to God."

~ Lieutenant-Colonel M. de S. "Draw Near to Jesus: Turn to His Heart" (imprimatur 1923).