SAINT MARCELLUS, BLESSED STEPHANIE QUINZANI, and SAINT HONORATUS

SAINT MARCELLUS
Pope and martyr
(†310)

During the third century paganism and Christianity vied for supremacy in the Roman Empire. Hoping to stifle the Church completely, the emperor Diocletian in 303 began the last and fiercest of the persecutions. In time, Christian charity conquered pagan brutality, and as the Church attracted more and more members, the Roman government would be compelled to recognize its existence, but it was only after almost three hundred years, during which persecutions had forced Christian worship underground, that the Church would finally come out into the open after the Edict of Nantes in 313. It was still young and disorganized, vulnerable to heresy and apostasy, and needed a strong leader to settle questions of doctrine and discipline.

Such a leader came to the Chair of Peter in 304, when Saint Marcellus was elected pope. Saint Marcellinus, his predecessor, while being taken to torture, had exhorted him not to cede to the decrees of Diocletian, and it became evident that Marcellus did not intend to temporize. He established new catacombs and saw to it that the divine mysteries were continually celebrated there. Then three years of relative peace were given the church when Maxentius became emperor in 307, for he was too occupied with other difficulties to persecute the Christians.

After assessing the problems facing the Church, Saint Marcellus planned a strong program of reorganization. Rome then as now was the seat of Catholicism, and his program was initiated there. He divided the territorial administration of the Church into twenty-five districts or parishes, placing a priest over each one, thus restoring an earlier division which the turmoil of the persecutions had disrupted. This arrangement permitted more efficient care in instructing the faithful, in preparing candidates for baptism and penitents for reconciliation. With these measures in force, Church government took on a definite form.

Marcellus’ biggest problem was dealing with the Christians who had apostatized during the persecution. Many of these were determined to be reconciled to the Church without performing the necessary penances. The Christians who had remained faithful demanded that the customary penitential discipline be maintained and enforced. Marcellus approached this problem with uncompromising justice; the apostates were in the wrong, and regardless of the consequences, were obliged to do penance. It was not long before the discord between the faithful and the apostates led to violence in the very streets of Rome.

An account of Marcellus’ death, dating from the fifth century, relates that Maxentius, judging the pope responsible for the trouble between the Christian factions, condemned him to work as a slave on the public highway. After nine months of this hard labor, he was rescued by the clergy and taken to the home of a widow named Lucina; this woman welcomed him with every sign of respect and offered him her home for a church. When the emperor learned that Christian rites were being celebrated there, he profaned the church by turning it into a stable and forced the Holy Father to care for the animals quartered there. In these sad surroundings, Marcellus died on January 16, 310. He was buried in the catacombs of Priscilla, but later his remains were placed beneath the altar of the church in Rome which still bears his name.

Source: Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 1.

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BLESSED STEPHANIE QUINZANI
Virgin
(1457-1530)

Blessed Stephanie was born near Brescia, Italy, in 1457, of fervent Christian parents. She was brought up in the village of Soncino, where there was a Dominican monastery well known for its preachers, eminent in doctrine, eloquence and sanctity. One of them knew her family and taught their little daughter the Ave Maria and other prayers. He told her that when he died he would make her his heir. A few years later, when Blessed Matthew Carreri died, she felt her heart painfully wounded, and suddenly saw the deceased man, who told her this was the heritage he had promised her. Suffering was to be her lot, and her existence was one of those of which people say: “It is more admirable than imitable.”

Our Lord appeared to Stephanie when she was seven years old, accompanied by His holy Mother, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Catherine of Siena, and told her He wanted her to be a Dominican like those great Saints. She promised she would enter a monastery, or at least be a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. Later in her life it was this latter path that she adopted, and she was given the habit of the Third Order. When she was about eleven years old, on the feast of Saint Andrew she saw that Apostle with a large cross, and he said to her: “My daughter, this is the road to heaven. Love God, fear God, honor God, embrace the cross, and flee the world.” She began then to practice great austerities; even while working in the fields with her parents she wore a hair shirt and a rope cincture full of knots. She fasted perpetually. At the age of fifteen, on Good Friday, Our Lord told her she would endure in each of her members part of what He Himself had suffered. Her head afterwards bore traces of a crowning with thorns, and many persons saw her, every week on Fridays, suffering a kind of agony.

For forty years, she also endured the worst moral sufferings. She was in darkness, aridity, abandonment. This martyrdom of the soul was a worse torment for her than that of the body. An Angel said to her: “There are several means which cause a reasonable creature to rise to perfect love of God, but one of the principal ones is the life of suffering, a life steeped in sorrow and bitterness which must be accompanied and followed by thanksgiving and resignation to the divine Will. Affliction is the road to perfect love and perfect transformation.” She was given Saint Paul to be her guide and instruct her in the secrets of mystical theology, that is, of the interior life under the immediate direction of God.

Blessed Stephanie could read in souls, and one day prevented a woman from poisoning fourteen persons, as she had resolved to do. She warned her not to accomplish that crime; otherwise, she herself would accuse her. She applied herself to the works of mercy and cared for the sick and the poor. She had to earn her bread by manual work; she begged in addition for alms for the needy. She became known to the nobility of Italy, who wanted to give her residences and keep her in their own regions; she remained nonetheless in Soncino, in a very poor dwelling. She was helped by the wealthy when she established a monastery in Soncino. This monastery, where about thirty young Sisters labored to attain religious perfection, and which she directed, was exempted from all taxes. She fell ill towards the end of the year 1529 and died on January 2, 1530, at the age of seventy-three years, saying, “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” Many miracles at her tomb made known her sanctity. She was beatified in 1740 by Pope Benedict XIV.

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SAINT HONORATUS
Archbishop of Arles
(†429)

Saint Honoratus was of a consular Roman family that had settled in Gaul. In his youth he renounced the worship of idols and gained his elder brother, Venantius, to Christ. The two brothers, convinced of the hollowness of the things of this world, desired to renounce it with all its pleasures, but a fond pagan father put continual obstacles in their way. At length, taking with them for their director Saint Caprais, a holy hermit, they sailed from Marseilles to Greece, intending to live there unknown in a desert. Venantius soon died happily at Methone, and Honoratus, who was ill, was obliged to return to Gaul with his guide.

He first led the life of a hermit in the mountains near Frejus. Two small islands lie in the sea near that coast; on the smaller, now known as Saint HonorÉ, the Saint settled, and when others came to him there, he founded the famous monastery of Lerins, about the year 400. Some of his followers he appointed to live in community; others, who seemed more perfect, in separated cells as anchorites. His rule was borrowed in large part from that of Saint Pachomius.

Nothing can be more amiable than the description Saint Hilary has given of the excellent virtues of this company of saints, especially of the charity, concord, humility, compunction, and devotion which reigned among them under the conduct of their holy Abbot. Saint Honoratus was, by compulsion, consecrated Archbishop of Arles in 426, and died, exhausted with austerities and apostolical labors, in 429.

Reflection. The soul cannot truly serve God while it is involved in the distractions and pleasures of the world. Saint Honoratus knew this, and chose to be a servant of Christ his Lord. Resolve, in whatever state you are, to live absolutely detached from the world in spirit, and to separate yourself corporeally as much as possible from it.

SAINT HILARY of POITIERS

SAINT HILARY of POITIERS
Doctor of the Church
(301-368)

Saint Hilary was a native of Poitiers in Aquitaine. Born and educated a pagan, it was not until near middle age that he embraced Christianity, moved to that step primarily by the idea of God presented to him in the Holy Scriptures. He soon converted his wife and daughter, and separated himself rigidly from all non-Catholic company, fearing the influence of error, rampant in a number of false philosophies and heresies, for himself and his family.

He entered Holy Orders with the consent of his very virtuous wife, and separated from his family as was required of the clergy. He later wrote a very famous letter to his dearly-loved daughter, encouraging her to adopt a consecrated life. She followed this counsel and died, still young, a holy death.

In 353 Saint Hilary was chosen bishop of his native city. Arianism, under the protection of the Emperor Constantius, was then at the heights of its exaltation, and Saint Hilary found himself called upon to support the orthodox cause in several Gallic councils, in which Arian bishops formed an overwhelming majority. He was in consequence accused to the emperor, who banished him to Phrygia. He spent his more than three years of exile in composing his great works on the Trinity.

In 359 he attended the Council of Seleucia, in which Arians, semi-Arians, and Catholics contended for the mastery. He never ceased his combat against the errors of the enemies of the Divinity of Christ. With the deputies of the council he went to Constantinople, and there so dismayed the heads of the Arian party that they prevailed upon the emperor to let him return to Gaul. He traversed Gaul, Italy and Illyria, preaching wherever he went, disconcerting the heretics and procuring the triumph of orthodoxy. He wrote a famous treatise on the Synods. After some eight years of missionary travel he returned to Poitiers, where he died in peace in 368.

Reflection. Like Saint Hilary, nearly every Christian has always lived amid unbelievers and heretics. We are called to a lifelong contest, and shall succeed in the measure we combine abhorrence of error with compassion for its victims.

The BAPTISM of OUR LORD and SAINT VERONICA of MILAN

The BAPTISM of OUR LORD

In the life of Christ, His baptism in the Jordan is an event of the highest importance, because it represents a significant phase in the work of redemption. We know that the liturgy of the ecclesiastical year commemorates all the phases of Christ’s redemptive work; and recently, during the season of the Nativity, we have reflected on His coming into the world, poor and solitary in a grotto at Bethlehem, and on His circumcision. Now His baptism in the Jordan marks the divinely inaugurated beginning of Our Lord’s public life. Indeed, Saint Peter states that at His baptism, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Daniel, He was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Christ, the Messiah, which means the Anointed One: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and He went about doing good and healing all who were in the power of the devil, for God was with Him.” (Acts 10:38) An anointing has always been the symbolic, visible representation of an intimately established union, a specific, defined alliance or covenant between God and one of His servants. God the Father speaks at this moment, to make clear who this Person is. The foretold Saviour is His Divine Son, begotten from all eternity: “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

In the symbolism of His baptism, Christ, Himself immaculate, assumes the sins of the world, descends into the purifying waters, and raises mankind to divine sonship. His baptism was vicarious in nature; He stands in the Jordan in our stead. Consequently, this act must find its complement in our personal redemption. Our lives are profoundly altered through Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, on at least three such occasions: our Baptism, our attendance at Holy Mass, and our death in Christ.

At our Baptism we were immersed with Jesus, with Him we died and were buried. Then we emerged, and for the first time heaven opened to us, as the Holy Spirit made His advent into our soul, and our Father in heaven looked down upon us, now “His sons, His children.”

In each Holy Mass, Christ’s baptismal offering is again operative. Through the Holy Sacrifice we are immersed in His sacrificial death; heaven then opens and the Holy Spirit descends through Holy Communion. Through the pledge of the sacrificial Banquet the Father assures us of renewed and enriched sonship in Christ.

The baptism of Christ is accomplished within us a third time at our death, if we are united with Him, for death is indeed a sort of baptism. Death is like immersion into the dark depths, but when we receive the Last Sacraments, on emerging, it is to a different life — it is our hope and our confidence, if we have been faithful to God’s grace, that it will be the life of glory, the beatific vision. Then we will see the Blessed Trinity, no longer through the darkened sun-glass of faith, but in immediate vision, face to face.

To sum up, today’s liturgy helps us to understand more clearly the basic structure of spiritual life, the redemptive acts of Christ. Upon that foundation the edifice rises through the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, while the Lord’s return, at our death, brings completion to the work.

Source: The Holy Bible: Old and New Testaments.

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SAINT VERONICA of MILAN
(1445-1497)

Saint Veronica’s parents were peasants of a village near Milan. From her childhood she toiled hard in the house and the field, and accomplished cheerfully every menial task. Gradually the desire for perfection grew within her; she became deaf to the jokes and songs of her companions, and sometimes, when reaping and hoeing, would hide her face and weep. Untaught, she began to be anxious about her lack of instruction, and rose secretly at night to try to learn to read. Our Lady told her that other things were necessary, but not this: “My daughter, do not be anxious, it will be sufficient for you to know the three letters that I bring you from heaven. The first is purity of heart, which makes us love God above all things; you must have only one love, that of My Son. The second is not to murmur against the faults of your neighbor, but to support them with patience and pray for the one in question. The third is to meditate every day on the Passion of Jesus Christ, who accepts you for His spouse.”

After three years’ patient waiting she was received as a lay-sister in the convent of Saint Martha at Milan. The community was extremely poor, and Veronica’s duty was to beg throughout the city for their daily food. Three years after receiving the religious habit she was afflicted with constant bodily pains, yet never would consent to be relieved of any of her labors, or to omit one of her prayers. By exact obedience she became a living copy of her rule, and obeyed with a smile the slightest wish of her Superior. She sought until the last the hardest and most humble occupations, and in their performance enjoyed some of the highest favors ever granted to Saints.

By the first letter taught her by Our Lady, Saint Veronica learned to begin her daily duties for no human motive, but for God alone; by the second, to carry out what she had thus begun by attending to her own affairs, never judging her neighbor, but praying for those who manifestly lacked virtue; by the third she was enabled to forget her own pains and sorrows in those of her Lord, and to weep hourly, but silently, over the memory of the wrongs He suffered. She had constant ecstasies, and saw in successive visions the whole life of Jesus, and many other mysteries. Yet, by a special grace, neither her raptures nor her tears ever interrupted her labors, which ended only with death. She died in 1497, on the day she had foretold, after a six months’ illness, in the thirtieth year of her religious profession.

Reflection. When Saint Veronica was urged in sickness to accept some exemption from her labors, her answer was, “I must work while I can, while I have time.” Dare we, then, waste ours?

SAINT MARGARET BOURGEOYS

SAINT MARGARET BOURGEOYS
Foundress
(1620-1700)

Saint Margaret Bourgeoys was born in Troyes, France, on Good Friday, April 17, 1620. She was prepared by Divine Providence, over a period of many years, for her future mission. When she was twenty years old, Margaret saw the Blessed Virgin who looked at her during a procession, and smiled at her. From that time on, she abandoned all ornaments and amusements common to her age and entered into a sodality of the Children of Mary, of which she became the President. Ten years later, on the Feast of the Assumption the Child Jesus, in appearance about three years old, made Himself seen by her in the Sacred Host of the monstrance. He kindled in her heart bright flames of divine charity, and inspired in her a great contempt for all earthly goods, with an unquenchable thirst for souls.

In 1653, when she was thirty-three years old, Margaret Bourgeoys set sail for Canada. The Virgin said to her: “Go, I will not abandon you.” Four years passed before she could undertake the Christian education of children. In the meantime, her charity was lavished on all; she visited and served the sick, buried the dead, consoled the afflicted, taught catechism to the colonists. From then on, her task would be to form and direct a non-cloistered religious community dedicated to teaching. In 1658 she laid the foundations of her Congregation of Notre Dame Sisters by opening the first school of Ville-Marie (Montreal), in a stable offered by Monsieur de Maisonneuve. She soon found co-workers, whom she initiated for their work. The “little schools” of New France began to spring up on every hill and in every valley.

The social work of Mother Bourgeoys is no less admirable than her educational labors. Her dedication extended to the service of the many young households of those days. She took in, guided and directed the “Daughters of the King,” sent to be married to the colonists, inculcating in them a sense of the serious duties of a spouse and mother. She remained their counselor for long years, to whom they always turned for comfort and encouragement in the practice of virtue. The ingeniousness of Margaret became evident from her many varied projects: a workshop for young girls and married women, a vocational school for the formation of her companions in education, the “Work of the Tabernacles” which she founded with the recluse Jeanne Leber; a pious association for young girls.

After 47 years of labors blessed by heaven and the Blessed Virgin, Margaret Bourgeoys died, at the age of eighty, with the reputation of a soul eminent in sanctity. In a solemn ceremony at Saint Peter’s in Rome on November 12, 1950, Pius XII declared her Blessed. Since then she has received the honors of canonization.

SAINT THEODOSIUS

SAINT THEODOSIUS
Abbot
(423-529)

Saint Theodosius was born in Cappadocia in 423. He desired to visit the Holy Places, and on his way visited Saint Simeon Stylites to ask his counsel. Simeon perceived him amid the crowd and called him by his name: “Theodosius, servant of God, you are welcome.” His desire to follow Jesus Christ attracted him to the religious life. He placed himself under Longinus, a very holy hermit, who sent him to govern a monastery near Bethlehem. Unable to bring himself to command others, he fled to a cavern, where he lived in penance and prayer. His great charity, however, forbade him to refuse the charge of some disciples, who, few at first, became in time a vast number; and Theodosius built a large monastery and three churches for them.

The holy monk eventually was named by the Bishop of Jerusalem Superior of all the religious communities of Palestine. He and Saint Sabas, who had been appointed by Sallustus, the same bishop, to preside the Palestinian hermits, often consulted together on subjects of piety and edification and the means to procure the glory of God. Saint Theodosius accommodated himself so carefully to the characters of his subjects that his reproofs were loved rather than dreaded. But on one occasion he was obliged to put away from the communion of the others a religious guilty of a grave fault. Instead of humbly accepting his sentence, the monk was arrogant enough to allege to excommunicate Theodosius in revenge. Theodosius thought not of indignation, nor of his own position, but meekly submitted to this false and unjust excommunication. This so touched the heart of his disciple that he submitted at once and acknowledged his fault.

Theodosius never refused assistance to any in poverty or affliction; on some days the monks laid more than a hundred tables for those in need. In times of famine Theodosius forbade their alms to be diminished, and often miraculously multiplied the provisions. He built five hospitals, in which he lovingly served the sick, while by assiduous spiritual reading he maintained himself in perfect recollection. He successfully opposed the Eutychian heresy in Jerusalem and all of Palestine, and for this was banished by the emperor Anastasius. His exile lasted but a short time, for the emperor who sustained the heretics died soon afterwards, struck by lightning.

The holy abbot suffered a long and painful illness and refused to pray to be cured, calling it a salutary penance for his former successes. He died at the age of a hundred and six.

Reflection. Saint Theodosius, for the sake of charity, sacrificed all he most prized — his home for the love of God, and his solitude for the love of his neighbor. Can ours be true charity if it costs us little or nothing?

SAINT WILLIAM

SAINT WILLIAM
Archbishop of Bourges
(†1209)

William Berruyer, of the illustrious family of the ancient Counts of Nevers, was educated by Peter the Hermit, Archdeacon of Soissons, his maternal uncle. From his early childhood Saint William learned to despise the folly and emptiness of the world, to abhor its pleasures, and to tremble at its dangers. His only delight was in exercises of piety and his studies, with which he employed his whole time in an untiring application.

Saint William was made a canon, an ecclesiastic attached to a cathedral church, first at Soissons and afterwards in Paris; but he soon resolved to abandon the world and retired into the solitude of Grandmont, where he lived with great regularity in that austere Order. Finally he joined the Cistercians, flourishing with sanctity at the time, and later was chosen to be Prior of the Abbey of Pontigny, then made Abbot of Challis.

On the death of Henri de Sully, Archbishop of Bourges, William was chosen to succeed him. The announcement of this new dignity which had fallen on him overwhelmed him with grief, and he would not have accepted the office had not the Pope and his own Cistercian General, the Abbot of Citeaux, commanded him to do so. His first care in his new position was to conform his life to the most perfect rules of sanctity. He redoubled all his austerities, saying it was incumbent on him now to do penance for others as well as for himself. He always wore a hair shirt under his religious habit, and never added to his clothing in winter or diminished it in summer; he never ate any flesh meat, though he had it at his table for guests.

When he drew near his end, he was, at his request, laid on ashes in his hair cloth, and in this posture expired on the 10^thof January, 1209. While this holy bishop was laid out for veneration, an infirm young boy who wanted to venerate him, but had to be carried to the church by his mother, was completely cured of his infirmities, and ran about proclaiming the miracle. The stone of his tomb in the Cathedral Church of Bourges cured mortal wounds and illnesses and delivered possessed persons; the deaf and dumb, the blind, the mentally ill became sound. So many miracles occurred there that the monks could not record them all, and he was canonized nine years after his death, in 1218, by Pope Honorius III.

SAINT JULIAN and SAINT BASILISSA

SAINT JULIAN
Martyr
and SAINT BASILISSA
(†313)

Saint Julian and Saint Basilissa, though married, lived by mutual consent in perpetual chastity. They sanctified themselves by the most perfect exercises of an ascetic life, and employed their revenues in relieving the poor and the sick. For this purpose they converted their house into a kind of hospital, in which they sheltered up to a thousand poor people. Basilissa attended those of her sex in separate lodgings, and Julian, who for his charity is known as the Hospitaler, cared for the men.

Egypt, where they lived, was in those days blessed with persons who, either in the cities or in the deserts, devoted themselves to the most perfect exercises of charity, penance, and mortification. Conversions were numerous, and persecutions by furious pagans followed as the numbers of Christians increased. Basilissa, after having survived seven of those, died in peace, foretelling to her husband that he would die a martyr. Julian lived afterwards for a number of years, but eventually received the crown of a glorious martyrdom in 313. His interrogation and his tortures were accompanied by astonishing prodigies and numerous conversions.

With him died thirty-one other persons, including a priest named Anthony, a new Christian named Anastasius, Celsus, the seven-year-old son of the judge who sentenced Julian, Marcianilla, the mother of Celsus, who when she came to visit her son was won over to the faith, and many other Christians. Spared by fire and wild beasts, Saint Julian finally was decapitated. His tomb became illustrious by many great miracles, including the cure of ten lepers on the same day.

Many churches and hospitals, in both the East and in the West, bear the name of one or another of these martyrs. Four churches at Rome and three in Paris are dedicated to Saint Julian.

Reflection. God often rewards men for works that are pleasing in His sight by giving them grace and opportunity to do other works higher still. Such was the case for Saint Julian, whose posthumous miracles attained prodigious numbers.