SAINT LUDGER

SAINT LUDGER
First Bishop of Munster
(†809)

Saint Ludger was born in Friesland (the Netherlands) about the year 743. His father, a nobleman of the first rank, at the child’s own request, committed him very young to the care of Saint Gregory, Bishop of Utrecht, a disciple of Saint Boniface and his successor in the government of the see of Utrecht. Saint Gregory educated him in his monastery of Utrecht, and gave him the clerical tonsure.

Ludger, desirous of further religious studies, passed over into England, and spent four and a half years under Alcuin, Rector of a famous school at York. In 773 he returned home, and when Saint Gregory died in 776, his successor, Alberic, compelled Saint Ludger to receive the priesthood.

The new bishop employed him for several years in preaching the Word of God in Friesland, where he converted great numbers, founded several monasteries, and built many churches. The pagan Saxons then entered and ravaged the country, and drove out the missionaries. Saint Ludger traveled to Rome to consult Pope Adrian II as to what course he should take, and what he thought God required of him. He then retired for three and a half years to Monte Cassino to study Saint Benedict’s Rule; there he wore the habit of the Order and conformed to its practices during his stay, but made no religious vows.

In 787, Charlemagne overcame the Saxons, conquering Friesland and the coast of the Germanic Ocean as far as Denmark. Saint Ludger was sent by the Emperor, who had heard of him, to evangelize the pagans of five districts; thus he returned into East Friesland, where he brought the Saxons to the Faith, with the province of Westphalia. He founded the monastery of Werden, twenty-nine miles from Cologne. In 802, Hildebald, Archbishop of Cologne, in spite of his strenuous resistance, ordained him Bishop of Munster. He joined to his diocese five cantons of Friesland which he had converted, and founded the monastery of Helmstad in the duchy of Brunswick.

Being accused to the Emperor Charlemagne of wasting his income and neglecting the embellishment of churches, that prince ordered him to appear at court. The Saint, when he was summoned before the Emperor, was at prayer, and told the messenger he would follow him as soon as he had finished his devotions. He was sent for three times before he was ready, and his delay was represented to the Emperor by the courtiers as contempt for his Majesty. The Emperor, with some emotion, asked Saint Ludger why he had made him wait so long, though he had sent for him often. The bishop answered that although he had the most profound respect for his Majesty, yet God was infinitely above him; that while we are occupied with Him, it is our duty to forget everything else. This answer made such an impression on Charlemagne that he dismissed him with honor and disgraced his accusers.

Saint Ludger was favored with the gifts of miracles and prophecy, but desired that these not be published. His last sickness did not hinder him from continuing his functions up to and including the last day of his life, which was Passion Sunday. On that day he preached very early in the morning, said Mass towards nine, and preached again before nightfall, in another town. He told those with him that he would die during the night, and indicated a place in his monastery of Werden where he wished to be interred. He died as he foretold, on March 26, 809.

Reflection. Prayer is an action so sublime and supernatural that the Church in her Canonical Hours teaches us to begin it by a fervent petition of grace to perform it well. We ought never to appear before God, to offer Him our homages or supplications, without trembling and without being deaf to all creatures, and closing off our senses to any object apt to distract our minds from God.

ANNUNCIATION of the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

ANNUNCIATION of the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

This great festival takes its name from the happy tidings brought by the Archangel Gabriel to the Blessed Virgin, announcing the Incarnation of the Son of God. It commemorates the most important embassy that was ever known, an embassy sent by the King of kings, and performed by one of the chief princes of His heavenly court, and directed, not to the great ones of this earth, but to a poor, unknown virgin who, being endowed with angelic purity of soul and body, and perfect humility and submission to God, was greater in His eyes than the mightiest monarch in the world.

When the Son of God became man, He could have taken our nature without the cooperation of any creature; but He was pleased to be born of a woman, the One announced in the third chapter of Genesis. In choosing Her whom He raised to this most sublime of all dignities, He was turning to the one maiden who, by the riches of His grace and virtues, was of all others the most holy and the most perfect. The purpose of this embassy of the Archangel was to give a Saviour to the world, a victim of propitiation to the sinner, a model to the just, a son to this Virgin who would remain a virgin, and a new nature to the Son of God — the nature of man, capable of suffering pain and anguish in order to satisfy God’s justice for our transgressions.

When the Angel appeared to Mary and addressed Her, the Blessed Virgin was troubled; not at his coming, says Saint Ambrose, for heavenly visions and conversation with the blessed spirits had been familiar to Her, but what alarmed Her, he says, was the Angel’s appearing in human form, in the shape of a young man. What added to her alarm on this occasion was his words of praise. Mary, guarded by her modesty, was in confusion before expressions of this sort, and dreaded even the shadow of deluding flattery. Such high commendations made her cautious, until in silence She had more fully considered the matter: “She deliberated in her mind,” says Saint Luke, “what manner of salutation this could be.”

The Angel, to calm her, said: “Fear not, Mary, for Thou hast found favor before God.” He then informed Her that She was to conceive a Son whose name would be Jesus, who would be great and the Son of the Most High, and possessed of the throne of David, Her illustrious ancestor. Mary, out of a just concern to know how she may comply with the will of God without prejudice to Her vow of virginity, inquired, “How shall this be?” Nor did She give Her consent until the heavenly messenger informed Her that it was to be a work of the Holy Spirit, who, in making Her fruitful, would not alter in the slightest Her virginal purity. In submission to God’s will, without any further inquiries, She expressed Her assent in these humble but powerful words: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto Me according to thy word.” What faith and confidence Her answer expressed! What profound humility and perfect obedience!

Reflection. Humility is the foundation of a spiritual life. By it Mary was prepared for the extraordinary graces and virtues which would ever enrich Her, and for the eminent dignity of Mother of God.

SAINT GABRIEL ARCHANGEL

SAINT GABRIEL ARCHANGEL

The day before the great feast of the Annunciation, the Church celebrates the feast of the Archangel who brought to earth the glad tidings that Mary was chosen to be the Mother of the Incarnate God.

This angelic Messenger appears several times in the history of God’s chosen people. He came to Daniel the prophet after he had a vision of the future Persian and Greek empires, to explain the vision to him, as Daniel narrates in the eighth chapter of his book. So great was the Archangel’s majesty that the prophet fell on his face trembling.

The Angel of the Incarnation again appeared to the prophet to answer his prayer at the end of the exile, and advise him of the exact date of the future Redemption by the long-awaited Messiah.

When the fullness of time had come, Gabriel was sent several times as the harbinger of the Incarnation of the Most High God. First, to the Temple of Jerusalem, while Zachary stood at the altar of incense, to tell him that his wife Elizabeth would bring forth a son to be called John, who would prepare the way of the Lord. (Luke 1:17) Six months later the great Archangel again appeared, bearing the greatest message God ever sent to earth. Standing before the Blessed Virgin Mary, this great Archangel of God trembled with reverence as he offered Her the ineffable honor of becoming Mother of the Eternal Word. Upon Her consent, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” It was he, we can readily believe, who also fortified Saint Joseph for his mission as virginal father of the Saviour.

Gabriel rightly bears the beautiful name, the strength of God, manifesting in every apparition the power and glory of the Eternal. According to some of the Fathers of the Church, it was Saint Gabriel, Angel of the Incarnation, who invited the shepherds of Bethlehem to come to the Crib to adore the newborn God. He was with Jesus in His Agony, no less ready to be the strength of God in the Garden than at Nazareth and Bethlehem. Throughout Christian tradition he is the Angel of the Incarnation, the Angel of consolation, the Angel of mercy.

SAINT VICTORIAN and COMPANIONS

SAINT VICTORIAN and COMPANIONS
Martyrs
(†484)

Huneric, the Arian king of the Vandals in Africa, succeeded his father Genseric in 477. He acted at first with moderation towards the Catholics of Carthage, but in 480 began a grievous persecution of the clergy and holy virgins, which in 484 became general. Vast numbers of Catholics were put to death.

Saint Victorian, at that time one of the principal lords of the kingdom, had been made governor of Carthage with the Roman title of Proconsul. He was the wealthiest subject of Huneric, who placed great confidence in him, and Victorian always behaved with inviolable fidelity. Now, however, when the king, after publishing his cruel edicts, sent him a message in which he promised, if Victorian would conform to his religion, to heap on him the greatest wealth and the highest honors which it was in the power of a prince to bestow, Victorian could not grant that request.

The Saint, who amid the glittering pomps of the world perfectly understood its emptiness, made this generous answer to the messenger: “Tell the king that I trust in Christ. His Majesty may condemn me to any torments, but I shall never consent to renounce the Catholic Church, in which I have been baptized. Even if there were no life after this, I would never be ungrateful and perfidious to God, who has granted me the happiness of knowing Him, and bestowed on me His most precious graces.” The tyrant became furious at this answer, and the tortures which he caused the Saint to endure cannot be imagined. Saint Victorian suffered them with joy, and amid them completed his glorious martyrdom.

The Roman Martyrology for this day joins with him four others who were crowned in the same persecution. Two of those who were apprehended for the faith were brothers who had promised each other to die together, if possible; and they begged of God, as a favor, that they might both suffer the same torments. The persecutors suspended them in the air with great weights at their feet. One of them, under the excess of pain, begged to be taken down for a little ease. His brother, fearing that this might move him to deny his faith, cried out from the rack, “God forbid, dear brother, that you should ask such a thing. Is this what we promised to Jesus Christ?” The other was so wonderfully encouraged that he cried out, “No, no; I ask not to be released; increase my tortures, exert all your cruelties till they are exhausted upon me.” They were then burned with red-hot iron plates, and tormented so long that the executioners finally left them, saying, “Everyone follows their example; no one embraces our religion now.” This they said seeing that although these two had been so long and so grievously tormented, there were no scars or bruises visible upon them.

Among many glorious confessors at that time, one Liberatus, an eminent physician, was sent into banishment with his wife. He only grieved to see his infant children torn from him. His wife checked his tears by these words: “Think no more of them; Jesus Christ Himself will take care of them and protect their souls.” In prison she was told that her husband had conformed, and when she met him at the bar before the judge, she reproached him in the court for having abandoned God. She learned from his answer, however, that a base lie had attempted to separate her from her holy faith and from eternal life.

Two merchants of Carthage, who both bore the name of Frumentius, suffered martyrdom about the same time. Twelve young children were dragged away by the persecutors, and cruelly scourged every day for many days; yet by God’s grace every one of them persevered to the end of the persecution, firm in the faith.

SAINT CATHERINE of SWEDEN

SAINT CATHERINE of SWEDEN
Queen
(1322-1381)

Saint Catherine was the daughter of Saint Bridget of Sweden and of Ulpho, Prince of Nericia, a region of the same land. The love of God seemed to hasten in her the use of her reason, and at seven years of age she was placed in the convent of Risburgh, to be educated in piety under the care of the holy abbess of that house. Being very beautiful, she was promised by her father in marriage to a young nobleman of great virtue; but the virgin persuaded her suitor to join with her in making a mutual vow of perpetual chastity. Listening to her discourses, the young man became desirous only for heavenly graces, and, to draw them down upon his soul in greater abundance, he readily acquiesced to the proposal. The happy couple, having but one heart and one desire, by a holy emulation encouraged each other to prayer, mortification, and works of charity.

After the death of her father, Saint Catherine, out of devotion to the Passion of Christ and to the relics of the martyrs, obtained her spouse’s permission to join her mother in her well-known pilgrimages and practices of devotion and penance in Rome. She went to her there and they visited the tombs of the martyrs and the churches, and together practiced mortification and works of piety, caring for the sick in the hospitals. Not long afterward, Catherine’s royal spouse died piously and then she found herself obliged to refuse numerous requests for her hand in marriage. When her mother died in 1373, she returned to Sweden, taking the mortal remains of Saint Bridget with her for burial. Catherine entered a monastery at Vatzan, where after a life of severe penance, she died on the 24^th of March in 1381. For the last twenty-five years of her life Saint Catherine had purified her soul daily by the sacramental confession of her sins.

Reflection. Whoever has to dwell in the world stands in need of great prudence; the Holy Scripture itself assures us that “the knowledge of the saints is prudence.” (Prov. 9:10)

SAINT BENEDICT

SAINT BENEDICT
Father of Western Monasticism
(480-543)

Saint Benedict, blessed by grace as his prophetic name seemed to foretell, was born of a noble Italian family in Umbria, in the year 480. As a boy he showed great inclination for virtue, and maturity in his actions. He was sent to Rome at the age of seven, to be placed in the public schools. At the age of fourteen, alarmed by the licentiousness of the Roman youth, he fled to the desert mountains of Subiaco, forty miles from Rome, and was directed by the Holy Spirit into a deep, craggy, and almost inaccessible cave, since known as the Holy Grotto. He lived there for three years, unknown to anyone save a holy monk named Romanus, who clothed him with the monastic habit and brought him food.

He was eventually discovered, when, one Easter day, God advised a priest who lived about four miles from there, to take food to His servant, who was starving. The priest searched in the hills and finally found the solitary, and they took their meal together. Some shepherds also knew of his retreat, and soon the fame of this hermit’s sanctity began to spread. The demon persecuted him, but to no avail; when a temptation of the flesh assailed him, he rolled in a clump of thorns and nettles, and came out of it covered with blood but sound in spirit.

Disciples came to him, and under his direction, numerous monasteries were founded. The rigor of the rule he drew up, however, brought upon him the hatred of some of the monks, and one of them mixed poison with the Abbot’s drink. When the Saint made the sign of the cross on the poisoned bowl, it broke and fell in pieces to the ground.

Saint Benedict resurrected a boy whose father pleaded for that miracle, saying “Give me back my son!” He replied, “Such miracles are not for us to work, but for the blessed apostles! Why will you lay upon me a burden which my weakness cannot bear?” But finally, moved by compassion, he prostrated himself upon the body of the child, and prayed: “Behold not, O Lord, my sins, but the faith of this man, and restore the soul which Thou hast taken away!” And the child rose up, and walked to the waiting arms of his father. When a monk lost the iron head of his axe in a river, the Abbot told him to throw the handle in after it, and it rose from the river bed to resume its former place.

Six days before his death, Saint Benedict ordered his grave to be prepared, then fell ill of a fever. On the sixth day he asked to be carried to the chapel, and, having received the sacred Body and Blood of Christ, with hands uplifted and leaning on one of his disciples, he calmly expired in prayer, on the 21^st of March, 543.

Reflection. The Saints never feared to undertake any work for God, however arduous, because distrusting self they relied for assistance and support wholly upon prayer.

SAINT BROTHER ANDREW

SAINT BROTHER ANDREW
Miracle-Worker, Apostle of Saint Joseph
(1845-1937)

Little Alfred Bessette, born at St. Grégoire, Quebec on August 9, 1845, had his roots in our own soil. The future Saint Brother Andrew of Mount Royal was a son of this land and of the French Canadian family. The infant was baptized conditionally the day after his birth in the village “church”, which at that time was a stone house serving as the only sacred dwelling. He was so frail that his parents had “undulated” him immediately after his birth.

Since the family was poor, they went four years later to Farnham, where the father could earn his living more readily. One fatal day he went with the lumberjacks to the forest and, as Brother Andrew would say later, “the tree he was cutting became locked in the branches of another, and my unfortunate father was crushed to death.” The child was nine years old and remembered that his mother “remained as though frozen”. A widow with ten children, she scarcely recovered from the shock of the accident. She “faded away” and died three years later of tuberculosis, at the age of 43. “I rarely prayed for my mother, but I have often prayed to her,” Brother Andrew used to say.

Then the family was scattered. Alfred at the age of twelve had to face life, using his initiative. For him began, then, thirteen years of a wandering life which would take him even to the United States, looking for work. An orphan without schooling, he had to search where he should go and how to survive. Like many boys from large families, he had to leave school at thirteen or fourteen years and earn his bread. And it was also because of his uncertain health and lack of money that he could never undertake prolonged studies. His mother had given him something of her own knowledge, but it was only with great difficulty that he finally learned to sign his name and to read a little. He had only his two arms to offer an employer as guarantee, but despite his frail health, he put his whole heart into his work. He himself said later: “In spite of my weakness, I didn’t let myself be outdone by the others at work.”

After he entered the Community of the Holy Cross as a lay Brother, he spent forty years washing the floors and windows, cleaning the lamps, entering the firewood, acting as porter and commissioner. Then, for more than twenty-five years, he received visitors in his little office — during six to eight hours a day, in all kinds of weather, and this until the age of 91. One day he was asked how he had managed to live so long with so little health. With humor he explained his recipe for health: “By eating as little as possible and working as much as possible...”

An immense work was being realized; crowds which became increasingly dense were pressing to the Oratory of Saint Joseph, for which heaven had chosen him as founder. The great skeleton of the largest sanctuary in the world dedicated to Saint Joseph could already be seen rising on the hilltop. And yet Brother Andrew never talked of “my work... my project.” On the contrary: “I am nothing, only a tool in the hands of Providence, a poor instrument of Saint Joseph.” “The good Lord took me to humiliate the others. He took the most ignorant one to humiliate the people and the Community of the Holy Cross. If there had been one more ignorant than myself, God would have chosen him instead.”

What care he showed in receiving and meeting people! He spent long hours in the office where thousands came to see him. And Brother Andrew remarked one day: “It is astonishing! They often ask me for cures, but rarely for humility and the spirit of faith. Yet these are so important. If the soul is sick, we have to begin by caring for the soul. Do you have faith? Do you believe the good Lord can do something for you? Go and make your confession, go and receive Communion, then come back to see me.” Such were the words that always returned to his lips, when he was asked for favors and cures. If he suggested making a novena to Saint Joseph, to use the oil or a medal of Saint Joseph, it was because “those were as many acts of love and faith, confidence and humility.” In general, he encouraged the people to see doctors; sometimes he wept with those who were suffering. But he never ceased to say, “How good the good Lord is! God loves you. God is love.” And Brother Andrew knew how to bring forth sprouts of hope in the hearts of those he met.

In the night of January 5-6, 1937, an old Brother 91 years old was dying in a modest room of Saint Laurent Hospital, in a suburb of Montreal. The few persons present at his bedside felt, however, that from this little man came an impression of strength, humanity, and moral power such as they had never known before. The dying man moved his head a little: “The great Almighty One is coming...” Then he raised his eyes to heaven... “O Mary, my sweet Mother and Mother of my Jesus, deign to help me!” Finally, they heard a few words scarcely intelligible, which were repeated again and again: “Saint Joseph, Saint Joseph, Saint Joseph...” At 12:50 AM, Brother Andrew breathed his last. The news of his decease was quickly relayed, and the following morning, all of Quebec knew that Brother Andrew was dead.

“He spent his life talking to others about God and to God of others,” a friend said. This testimony gives a just appreciation of what his life was, filled with faith and love.