SAINT NICHOLAS of FLUE
Hermit
(1417-1487)
Hermit
(1417-1487)
Saint Nicholas of Flue was born in Switzerland of pious parents. One day, when he saw an arrow launched on a neighboring mountain, he was filled with a desire for Heaven and with love for solitude. He married, to obey the formal will of his parents; he and his wife Dorothy became the parents of ten children. His merit and virtue caused him to be chosen by his fellow citizens to exercise very honorable public functions.
He was fifty years old when an interior voice said to him: “Leave everything you love, and God will take care of you.” He had to undergo a distressing combat, but decided finally to leave everything — wife, children, house, lands — to serve God. He left, barefooted, clothed in a long robe of coarse fabric, in his hand a rosary, without money or provisions, casting a final tender and prolonged gaze on his loved ones. His habitual prayer was this: “My Lord and my God, remove from me all that can prevent me from going to You. My Lord and my God, give me all that can draw me to You.”
One night God penetrated the hermit with a brilliant light, and from that time on he never again experienced hunger, thirst or cold. Having found a wild and solitary place, he dwelt there for a time in a hut of leaves, later in a cabin built with stones. The news of his presence, when it spread, brought him a great influx of visitors. Distinguished persons came to him for counsel in matters of great importance. It may seem incredible that the holy hermit lived for nineteen years only by the Holy Eucharist; the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, startled by this fact, had his cabin surveyed and verified this fact as being beyond question.
When Switzerland for a moment was divided and threatened with civil war in 1480, Saint Nicholas of Flue, venerated by all, was chosen as arbiter, to prevent the shedding of blood. He spoke so wisely that a union was reached, to the joy of all concerned, and the nation was saved. Bells were set ringing all over the country, and the concerted jubilation echoed across the lakes, mountains and valleys, from the most humble cottage to the largest cities.
At the age of 70, Saint Nicholas fell ill with a very painful sickness which tormented him for eight days and nights without overcoming his patience. He was beatified in 1669 by Pope Clement IX, canonized in 1947, by Pope Pius XII.
Source: Vie des Saints pour tous les jours de l’année, by Abbé L. Jaud (Mame: Tours, 1950).
The Persian monarch Isdegerdes, son of Sapor III, put a stop to the cruel persecutions against the Christians begun by Sapor II, and the Church had been enjoying twelve years’ peace in that kingdom. Then, in 420, it was disturbed by the indiscreet zeal of a Christian bishop who burned down the Pyraeum, or Temple of Fire, the great divinity of the Persians. King Isdegerdes thereupon demolished all the Christian churches in Persia, put to death the offending bishop, and raised a general persecution against the Church, which continued during forty years with great fury. Isdegerdes died the following year, but his son and successor carried on the persecution with greater inhumanity.
The very recital of the cruelties he exercised on the Christians strikes us with horror. Among the glorious champions of Christ was Saint Benjamin, a deacon. The tyrant caused him to be beaten and imprisoned. He had lain a year in the dungeon, when an ambassador from the emperor obtained his release on condition that he never speak to any of the courtiers about religion. The ambassador, wishing to save him, said on Benjamin’s behalf, that he would not do so; but Benjamin, who was a minister of the Gospel, declared that he would miss no opportunity of announcing Christ. The king, being informed that he still was preaching the Faith in his kingdom, ordered him to be apprehended and tortured. Reeds were thrust with violence between the nails and flesh of his hands and feet and elsewhere, and this was frequently repeated. Finally a knotty stake was entered into his bowels to rend and tear them; in that torment he expired for love of his God, in the year 424.
Prayer. We entreat you, O most holy martyrs, who cheerfully suffered most cruel torments for God our Saviour and His love, on which account you are now most intimately and familiarly united to Him, that you pray to the Lord for us, poor sinners. May He infuse into us the grace of God, to enlighten our souls to love Christ as you loved Him!
Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).
“Hail, flowers of the martyrs!” the Church sings in her Office of the Holy Innocents, who were the first to die for Christ; and in every age mere children and infants have gloriously confessed His name. The Jews of the city of Trent, assuredly possessed at that moment by the demons of hell, determined in 1472 to vent their hatred for the Crucified by slaying a Christian child at the coming Passover. One of their number was commissioned to trap a victim, and found a bright, smiling boy named Simon playing outside his home, with no one guarding him. The boy, who was not yet two years old, began to call and cry for his mother when he found himself being led from home; it was apparently these cries which led later to the discovery of the kidnappers. At midnight on Holy Thursday the work of butchery began. Having gagged his mouth, they held his arms in the form of a cross, while they pierced his tender body with sharp-pointed instruments, in blasphemous mockery of the sufferings of Jesus Christ. After an hour’s torture the little martyr lifted his eyes to heaven and gave up his innocent soul.
The murderers cast his body into a stream, after a search had begun for the child. Their crime was discovered nonetheless, when they themselves, to appear innocent, advised the police that a child’s body was floating in the water. A physician called to examine him wrote a report by order of the bishop, who afterwards transported his remains as a precious relic to the church of Saint Peter in Trent. A multitude of miracles followed, and the assassins were apprehended and punished.
William of Norwich is another child martyr. His parents were simple country folk, but his mother was instructed by a vision to expect in her son a Saint. As a boy he fasted three times a week and prayed constantly. He was only an apprentice twelve years of age, at a tanner’s in Norwich, when he won his crown. A little before Easter in the year 1137, he was enticed into the house of an enemy of Christ, and there gagged, bound, and crucified in hatred of the Saviour of all men. Five years passed before the body was found, then it was buried as a saintly relic in the cathedral churchyard. A rose tree, planted close by, flowered miraculously in mid-winter, and many sick persons were healed of their diseases at Saint William’s shrine.
Reflection. Learn from the infant martyrs that, however weak you may be, you still can suffer for Christ’s sake, and by suffering win your crown.
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