BLESSED HENRY SUZO and SAINT SIMPLICIUS

BLESSED HENRY SUZO
Confessor
(1300-1366)

Blessed Henry Suzo was born in 1300 at Constance in Germany. There he entered the Dominican convent at the age of thirteen, and made his preparatory studies in the sacred disciplines. In 1327 he became a teacher of theology, and in 1334 began preaching. In 1343 he was elected prior of a convent at Diessenhofen. Blessed Henry is known especially as a mystic who regarded himself as the servant of Eternal Wisdom become Man. He practiced severe austerities and experienced, along with his visions and ecstasies, bitter persecutions and grievous calumnies.

He assisted in the restoration of strict religious observance in the cloisters, especially in the Dominican convents for women at Katherinentahl and Töss. One of the Superiors in these convents preserved most of his letters and obtained the history of his life, which he himself later edited and published. As a preacher he was highly esteemed in many Swiss and Dutch cities. It is said that for 150 years there was no book of meditation more widely read in the German language than his “Little Book of Eternal Wisdom”. Blessed Henry translated this work into Latin as well, and added at that time to its contents.

He died in 1366; 250 years later, in 1613, workers in the old convent at Ulm found his body perfectly conserved and emitting a pleasant fragrance. Unfortunately the non-Catholic authorities of the city had the tomb closed; and the Bollandists, famous hagiographists of 19^th century France, wrote in 1882 that no trace was any longer known of it. He was declared Blessed in 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI.

Sources: The Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by C. G. Herbermann with numerous collaborators (Appleton Company: New York, 1908); Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 3.

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SAINT SIMPLICIUS
Pope
(†483)

Saint Simplicius was the ornament of the Roman clergy under Popes Saint Leo and Saint Hilarius, and succeeded the latter as Supreme Pontiff in 468. He was raised up by God to comfort and support his Church amid the greatest tribulations, occasioned by the fall of Rome in the eighth year of his reign.

All the provinces of the Western Empire outside Italy had come into the hands of barbarians. The emperors for many years were rather shadows of power than sovereigns, and, in 476 Rome, capital of the Empire, disappeared when the son of the last one having the title of emperor was deposed. All Italy, through the oppression and the ravages of the barbarians and the assassination of three emperors, was left almost a desert without inhabitants; and the Roman armies consisted chiefly of barbarians hired under the name of auxiliaries. The northern barbarians were demanding a third of the lands of Italy, and being refused, chose for their leader the intrepid Odoacre, an Arian like all the barbarian kings reigning in the provinces, and he was proclaimed king in Rome by his followers. He put to death the regent of the empire, named to govern during the minority of Augustulus, whom the senate had advanced to the imperial throne. He spared at least the life of the young sovereign, appointed him a salary of six thousand pounds of gold, and permitted him to live at liberty near Naples. This was indeed the end of the Western Empire.

Pope Simplicius was occupied with comforting and relieving the afflicted, as well as sowing the seeds of the Catholic faith among the barbarians. Like the experienced pilot he was, he guided the Church through the troubled waters of a stormy sea.

The East gave the zeal of Saint Simplicius no less employment and concern. Peter Cnapheus, a violent Eutychian heretic, was proclaimed by his followers Patriarch of Antioch, and the profligate Peter Mongus became Patriarch of Alexandria. The Patriarch of Constantinople, named Acacius, supported Mongus against the Pope and the Catholic Church. Acacius was a notorious hypocrite who often made religion serve his private interests. Saint Simplicius eventually discovered his artifices, and redoubled his zeal to maintain the holy faith, which he saw betrayed on every side. The Emperor Zenon, listening to the Pope for a time, drove out several Eutychians from their sees; but the intrigues of the heretics continued to create serious difficulties for the Father of Christianity, since the patriarchal sees of Alexandria and Antioch were occupied by men of ruse, and there was not one Catholic king in the entire world.

Saint Simplicius, after dedicating four major churches of Rome and establishing many useful regulations for the Roman Church during his reign of nearly sixteen years, went to receive the reward of his labors in 483. He was buried in Saint Peter’s on the 2^nd of March.

Sts Albinus and David

SAINT ALBINUS
Bishop
(470-550)

Saint Albinus was of an ancient and noble family in Brittany, and from his childhood was fervent in every exercise of piety. He ardently sighed after the happiness which a devout soul finds in being disengaged from all earthly things. Having embraced the monastic state, despite his parents’ disapproval, he shone a perfect model of virtue, taking upon himself all the humblest offices and disciplining his flesh by every kind of mortification. In brief, he lived as if in all things he were without any will of his own; and his soul seemed so perfectly governed by the spirit of Christ as to live only for Him.

In 504, at the age of thirty-five Saint Albinus was chosen Abbot of his monastery; Saint Fortunatus, his first historian, compared the monastery at that time to a garden rendered beautiful by the most exquisite, most varied, most fragrant flowers. Twenty-five years later, divine Providence gave the Abbot to the entire region as Bishop of Angers. A day did not pass without his instructing his people, for he believed that the soul needs daily nourishment just as imperatively as does the flesh.

Many Christians of his diocese had fallen into slavery through the invasions of the barbarians, and Saint Albinus used every resource available to him for their redemption. To the graces of charity from which his people benefitted, were joined those deriving from his public miracles. He resurrected a young child; and when one of his servants died during his absence, those who carried the man to his grave were unable to lower him until the bishop arrived to give the final benediction. He established and restored measures of ecclesiastical discipline, through the third Council of Orleans, convened through his influence over King Childebert, son of Clovis, who greatly respected his opinions. In brief, he was inflamed with a holy zeal for the glory of God in all aspects of life. Honored by all, he was never affected with vanity.

Saint Albinus died after making a long journey which he undertook to consult Saint Cesarius, Bishop of Arles, concerning matters of episcopal government. He had been the benediction of his diocese for twenty-one years; he died on March 1, 549. He is often represented preaching in the episcopal pulpit or curing the sick, or holding chains while commanding prison doors to be opened.

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SAINT DAVID
Archbishop of Wales
(†561)

Saint David, son of the Prince of Cardigan and Non in Wales, was born in that land in the later fifth century, and from his earliest years gave himself wholly to the service of God. He began his religious life on the island of Wight, under Saint Paulinus, a disciple of Saint Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, sent to Britain by Pope Saint Celestine to arrest the ravages of the heresy of a certain abbot named Pelagius, in the same region. When his virtue had grown strong by practice, he went to preach on the mainland; he built a chapel at Glastonbury and founded twelve monasteries, the principal one in the valley of Ross.

When heresy began to reappear in the early years of the sixth century, the bishops of the region assembled at Cardiganshire and sent for Saint David, already known to the people through his virtues and miracles, to come from his cell and preach to them. The Saint obeyed, and it is related that as he preached, the ground beneath his feet rose and became a hill, so that he was heard by a vast crowd. The heresy retreated and fell under the sword of the Spirit.

Saint David was elected Bishop of Caerleon. He could not resist the common will, but obtained that his see be transferred to a more retired location, today called Saint David, a lone and desert spot, where he would be able, with his monks, to serve God away from the tumults of the world.

When he was about eighty years of age, he recognized that his hour had come. As his agony closed, Our Lord stood before him in a vision, and the Saint cried out, “Take me up with Thee!” and so breathed forth his soul. The date was March 1, 561. Many Saints of Ireland and Great Britain, who revered him as their spiritual father, were formed in his monasteries, whose strict rule of prayer and work nourished their virtue and recommended them to both God and men.

Reflection. With whatever virtues a man may be endowed, he will discover, if he considers himself attentively, a sufficient depth of misery to afford cause for deep humility. But Jesus Christ says, “He who humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14:11)

Sts Romanus and Lupinus and St. Oswald

SAINTS ROMANUS
Founder and Abbot
(†460)
and LUPICINUS
his brother, Abbot
(†480)

Saint Romanus, born in the late fourth century, left his relatives and spent some time in the monastery of Ainay at Lyons, near a large church at the conflux of the Saône and Rhone. The faithful had built it in honor of the famous martyrs of that region, whose ashes were thrown into the Rhone. His purpose for this retreat was to study all the practices of monastic life, and he obtained from the Abbot of Ainay some recently written books on the lives of the Desert Fathers.

At the age of thirty-five, Romanus retired into the forests of Mount Jura, between France and Switzerland, and fixed his abode at a place called Condate, at the conflux of the rivers Bienne and Aliere, where he found a plot of ground fit for culture, and some trees which furnished him with wild fruit. Here he spent his time in praying, reading, and laboring for his subsistence. Lupicinus, his brother, came to him there, accompanied by several other disciples, who then were followed by still others, drawn by the fame of the virtue and miracles of these two Saints. Other monasteries became necessary. Saint Romanus, when he was 54 years old, was ordained a priest by Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers; he remained simple in his conduct and never sought any privileges among his brethren.

As their numbers increased, the brothers built several monasteries as well as a convent for their sister and other women, called La Baume; before Saint Romanus died, there were already five hundred nuns cloistered there in prayer and sacrifice. They kept strict silence, and like their brothers, sons or relatives in the nearby monastery of Lauconne, considered themselves as persons dead to the present life.

The two brothers governed the monks jointly and in great harmony, though they were of different dispositions; the gentleness of the first was balanced by the severity of the other, according to need. When a group of rebellious monks departed, Saint Romanus, by his patience and prayer, won them back, and if they departed a second or even a third time, received them with the same kindness. When Lupicinus, whose habits were very mortified, reproached him for his leniency, he replied that God alone knew the depths of hearts, and that among those who never departed, there were some whose fervor had declined, whereas some of those who returned after leaving even three times, were serving God in exemplary piety; and finally, that among the brethren who remained outside the monastery, certain ones had religiously practiced the maxims they had learned in the monastery, even becoming priests and authorities for other religious functions or offices.

Saint Romanus died about the year 460, and Saint Lupicinus survived him for twenty years.

Sources: 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); Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 3.

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SAINT OSWALD
Archbishop of York
(†992)

Oswald was of a noble Saxon family; he was endowed with a very rare and handsome appearance and with a singular piety of soul. Brought up by his uncle, Saint Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, he was chosen, while still young, as dean of the secular canons of Winchester, at that time very lax. His attempt to reform them was a failure, and he saw, with that infallible instinct which so often guides the Saints in critical times, that the true remedy for the corruption of the clergy was the restoration of monastic life.

He therefore went to France and took the habit of Saint Benedict. When he returned to England it was to receive the news of Odo’s death. He found, however, a new patron in Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, through whose influence he was nominated to the see of Worcester. To these two Saints, together with Ethelwold of Winchester, the monastic revival of the tenth century is mainly due.

Oswald’s first care was to deprive of their benefices all disorderly secular clerics, whom he replaced as far as possible by religious priests. He himself founded seven religious houses. Considering that in the hearts of the secular canons of Winchester there were yet some sparks of virtue, he would not at once dismiss them, but rather reformed them through a holy artifice. Adjoining their cathedral church he built a chapel in honor of the Mother of God, causing it to be served by a body of strict religious. He himself assisted at the divine Office there, and his example was followed by the people. The canons, finding themselves isolated and the church deserted, chose rather to embrace the religious life than continue to injure their own souls, and be also a mockery to their people, through the contrast offered by their worldliness and the regularity of their religious brethren.

Later, as Archbishop of York, Saint Oswald met a like success in his efforts. God manifested His approval of his zeal by discovering to him the relics of his great predecessor at Worcester, Saint Wilfrid, which he reverently translated to the church of that city. He died while washing the feet of the poor, as he did daily during Lent, on February 29, 992.

Reflection. A soul without discipline is like a ship without a helm: it must inevitably strike unawares upon the rocks, founder on the shoals, or float unawares into the harbor of the enemy.

SAINT GABRIEL of OUR LADY of SORROWS and SAINT LEANDER

SAINT GABRIEL of OUR LADY of SORROWS
Passionist
(1838-1862)

Saint Gabriel was born at Assisi in 1838. He was guided by Our Lady into the Passionist Order founded by Saint Paul of the Cross, and became a veritable Apostle of Her Sorrows. He was a very great and truly contemplative soul, whose only preoccupation was to unite himself to God at all times. He allowed no distractions to enter his spirit, and even though Italy, his country, was in a state of ferment when he entered religion, he wanted to know nothing of it.

The way to attain union with our Saviour and our God was, for Saint Gabriel, as for Saint Louis de Montfort, his Heavenly Mother. He wrote home to his father, from the first month of his noviciate, “Believe your son, whose heart is speaking by his lips; no, I would not exchange one single quarter of an hour spent near the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, our consolatrix, our protectress and our hope, for a year or several years spent in the diversions and spectacles of the earth.” Among his resolutions was that of visiting Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament each day, and praying for the gift of a tender and efficacious devotion to His Most Holy Mother. He wrote a beautiful Credo, worthy to be printed in letters of gold, expressing all that he believed of the Mother of God.

At twenty-four years of age Saint Gabriel died of tuberculosis, having already attained heroic sanctity by a life of self-denial and great devotion to our Lord’s Passion and the Compassion of His Mother.

Although his life was without any miraculous event, after his death in 1862 many miracles occurred at his tomb in Isola di Gran Sasso, Italy. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, and his feast was extended to the entire church by Pope Pius XI in 1932. He is the patron of youth, and especially of young religious.

Source: Lives of the Saints for Every Day of the Year, edited by Rev. Hugo Hoever, S.O. Cist., Ph.D. (Catholic Book Publishing Co.: New York, 1951-1955)

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SAINT LEANDER
Archbishop of Seville
(†596)

Saint Leander was born of an illustrious family at Carthagena in Spain. He was the eldest of five brothers, several of whom are numbered among the Saints. He entered into a monastery of Seville very young, where he lived many years and attained to an eminent degree of virtue and sacred learning. These qualities occasioned his being promoted to the see of Seville; but his change of condition made little or no alteration in his way of life, though it brought on him a great increase of solicitude.

Spain at that time was held in possession by the Visigoths. These Goths, being infected with Arianism, established that heresy wherever they came, in such wise that at the time Saint Leander was made bishop, it had already reigned in Spain a hundred years. This was his great affliction. Nonetheless, by his prayers to God and by his most zealous and unwearied endeavors, he became the happy instrument of the conversion of that nation to the Catholic faith, as his story makes clear.

The holy archbishop had converted, among others, his own nephew Hermenegild, who was the king’s eldest son and heir apparent, and for this he was banished by King Leovigild, his own brother-in-law. The pious Catholic prince, now known as Saint Hermenegild, was put to death in prison by his unnatural father in the following year, for refusing to receive Communion from the hands of an Arian bishop. Afterwards, touched by grace and filled with remorse, the king recalled Saint Leander.

When Leovigild fell sick and found himself past hopes of recovery, he sent for Saint Leander, and recommended to him his other son Recared. This son, by listening to Saint Leander, became a Catholic, and finally brought the whole nation of the Visigoths to the faith. The new king Recared also brought the Suevi back to Catholic unity; they were a people of Spain whom his Arian father Leovigild had perverted.

Saint Leander was no less zealous in the reformation of morals than in restoring the purity of faith, and planted the seeds of the zeal and fervor which produce martyrs and Saints. He received from Saint Gregory the Great a painting of the Mother of God by the hand of Saint Luke, Evangelist, since known as Our Lady of Guadelupe (of Spain). It is he who, as a refutation of Arianism, added to the liturgy of Spain the recitation during Mass of the Nicene Creed, which practice spread to Rome and then to the entire Church. This holy doctor of Spain died about the year 596, on the 27^th of February.

SAINT MECHTILDIS OF HACKEBORN

SAINT MECHTILDIS OF HACKEBORN
Abbess
(1240-1298)

Saint Mechtildis, born in 1240 in Saxony, was the younger sister of the illustrious Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn. She was so attracted to religious life at the age of seven, after a visit to her sister in the monastery of Rodardsdoft, that she begged to be allowed to enter the monastic school there. Her gifts caused her to make great progress both in virtue and learning.

Ten years later, when her sister had transferred the monastery to an estate at Helfta offered by their brothers, Mechtildis went with her. She was already distinguished for her virtues, and while still very young became the valuable Assistant to Abbess Gertrude. One of the children who in the monastic school were committed to her care, was the child of five who later became known as Saint Gertrude the Great.

Saint Mechtildis was gifted with a beautiful voice, and was choir mistress of the nuns all her life. Divine praise, it has been said, was the keynote of her life, as also of her famous book, “The Book of Special Grace”. When she learned, at the age of fifty, that two of her nuns had written down all the favors and words of their Abbess, which she had become, she was troubled, but Our Lord in a vision assured her that “all this has been committed to writing by My will and inspiration, and therefore you have no cause to be troubled over it.” He added that the diffusion of the revelations He had given her would cause many to increase in His love. She immediately accepted the Lord’s bidding, and the book became extremely popular in Italy after her death. Its influence on the poet Dante’s Purgatorio is undeniable, for she had described the place of purification after death under the same figure of a seven-terraced mountain. The “Donna Matelda” of his “Purgatorio”, who guides him at one point in his vision, is Saint Mechtildis as she represents mystical theology. She died in 1298 at the monastery of Helfta.

SAINT TARASIUS

SAINT TARASIUS
Patriarch of Constantinople
(750-806)

Tarasius was born at Constantinople in the middle of the eighth century, of a noble family. His mother, Eucratia, brought him up in the practice of the most eminent virtues. By his talents and virtue he gained the esteem of all, and was raised to the greatest honors of the empire, made first a Consul and afterwards first Secretary of State to the Emperor Constantine IV and the Empress Irene, his mother. In the midst of the court and in its highest honors, he led a life like that of a religious.

Tarasius was chosen, by the unanimous consent of the court, clergy and people to succeed to the Patriarch of Constantinople. Saint Tarasius declared that he could not in conscience accept the government of a see which had been cut off from the Catholic communion — which had occurred through the fault of his predecessor, who afterwards recognized his error in approving a group of dissidents — except on condition that a general Council be convoked to settle the dispute concerning holy images, which was dividing the Church at that time. This being agreed to, he was solemnly declared Patriarch, and consecrated soon afterwards, on Christmas Day.

The Council was opened on the 1^st of August, 786, in the Church of the Apostles at Constantinople; but, being disturbed by the violences of the Iconoclasts, it adjourned, to meet again the following year in the Church of Saint Sophia at Nicea. The Council declared the positive thought of the Church in relation to the matter under debate, which was whether or not holy pictures and images should be allowed a relative honor. Afterwards synodal letters were sent to all the churches, and in particular to the Pope, who approved the council.

The life of the holy Patriarch Tarasius was a model of perfection for his clergy and people. His table contained barely the necessaries of life; he allowed himself very little time for sleep, rising the first and retiring last in his spiritual family. Reading and prayer filled all his leisure hours.

After the Emperor repudiated his legitimate wife and, with the collaboration of a servile priest, married a servant whom he had crowned as Empress in her place, he used all his efforts to gain the Patriarch of Constantinople over to his desires. Saint Tarasius resolutely refused to countenance the iniquity, even when imprisoned by the irritated monarch. Soon afterwards, the emperor lost his empire and his life, having spurned the reproaches of Saint Tarasius. The holy man gave up his soul to God in peace after governing his church for twenty-two years in great purity of life, on the 25^th of February, 806.

Reflection. The highest praise which Scripture pronounces on the holy man Job consists in these words, “He was simple and upright.”

SAINT MATTHIAS

SAINT MATTHIAS
Apostle
(†63)

After our Blessed Lord’s Ascension His disciples came together, with Mary His mother and the eleven Apostles, in an upper room at Jerusalem. The little company numbered no more than one hundred and twenty souls. They were waiting for the promised coming of the Holy Ghost, and they persevered in prayer. Meanwhile there was a solemn act to be performed on the part of the Church, which could not be postponed. The place of the fallen Judas had to be filled, that the number of the Apostles might be complete. Saint Peter, therefore, as Vicar of Christ, arose to announce the divine decree. What the Holy Ghost had spoken by the mouth of David concerning Judas, he said, must be fulfilled. Of him it had been written, “His bishopric let another take.” A choice, therefore, was needed of one among those who had been their companions from the beginning, who could bear witness to the Resurrection of Jesus.

Two were named of equal merit, Joseph called Barsabas, and Matthias. After praying to God, who knows the hearts of all men, to show which of these He had chosen, they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, who was thereby numbered with the Apostles. It is recorded of the Saint, wonderfully elected to so high a vocation, that he was remarkable for his mortification of the flesh. It was thus that he made his election sure.

He preached in Judea where he was persecuted by both Jews and Gentiles, and died by stoning, a victim of their pursuits, in the year 63. His body was taken to Rome by Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, some 250 years later. A church there bears his name.

Reflection. Our ignorance of many points in Saint Matthias’s life serves to fix the attention all the more firmly upon these two — the occasion of his call to the apostolate, and the fact of his perseverance. We then naturally turn in thought to our own vocation and our own end: may it be like his, a holy death in reward for our fidelity.