Monday, May 30, 2022

Sainte Jehanne la Pucelle


"O how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory: for the memory thereof is immortal...." Wisdom 4:1

In 1431, May 30 fell upon a Wednesday, the Vigil of Corpus Christi. It was around noon when Jehanne Darc, or Jehanne la Pucelle, "the Maid," as she called herself, was led into the public square of Rouen by enemy soldiers to where the stake awaited her. Nineteen years old, her head shaven, surrounded by placards branding her a witch, idolatress, and abjured heretic, she invoked the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and St Michael the Archangel. She had been calumniated and condemned by those whose holy office it was to guide and protect her soul; she had been exposed to lewdness and impurity by those whose sacred duty it was to shelter her innocence and virginity. She was abandoned by the king whose crown her victories had won. She was in great interior darkness; the voices of her saints were silent.

Although she conversed with angels and saints, Joan the Maid was known to be practical and blunt. Very feminine, she missed her embroidery and her mother, yet she emerges on the pages of late medieval history like someone from the Acts of the Apostles. Surrounded by miracles, she was herself a Miracle; she led an army to victory at the age of 17, an illiterate peasant girl, who knew nothing of war or politics. She saved France as a nation, for it had all but ceased to exist when she came on the scene.

Such was her Faith that she confounded her judges, while exhausted, frightened and pushed to the breaking point of her mental and physical strength. Denied the Sacraments by her persecutors, she gazed upon the upheld crucifix, calling out, "Jesus! Jesus!" as the flames consumed her. When Joan's ashes were scattered in the river, her heart was found, untouched by the flames, and still bleeding.

"If I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me, O Lord Jesus." Communion Antiphon for the Feast of St Joan

St. Joan, pray for us!

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Saint Angelus


 Killed by the Cathars. From Catholicism: "Saint Angelus was born at Jerusalem and was the son of Jewish parents who had been converted to Christianity. He became a Carmelite priest and worked many miracles. He was martyred by heretics at Palermo in Sicily for defending the Catholic Faith."

From Wikipedia:

He was born in Jerusalem in 1185 to the Jewish parents Jesse and Maria.[1] His mother later converted to Roman Catholicism, and both he and his twin brother John were baptised when she converted. His parents died while he was in his childhood and the Patriarch Nicodemus oversaw their education until the twins turned eighteen. He and his brother John entered the Carmelites aged eighteen at the Saint Anne convent near the Golden Gate to commence their novitiate. The two could speak Greek as well as both Latin and Hebrew.[3][1]

In 1210, he was ordained to the priesthood in Jerusalem and he travelled in Palestine.[3] Miraculous cures were attributed to him around this time and his "acta" stated that he sought to avoid fame and withdrew to a hermitage in the desert (in imitation of Jesus Christ) when he was becoming popular for his miracles. He remained as a hermit on Mount Carmel when he was instructed in 1218[4] to leave for the Italian peninsula in order to preach against the patarini as well as the Albigensians and the Bulgars. He had likewise been instructed to go to Rome to obtain from Pope Honorius III confirmation of the new and definitive rule for the order (later granted in 1226).[3]

He set off on a Genoese ship on 1 April 1219 and stopped first in Messina before heading off to Civitavecchia before he ended up in Rome to meet with the pope. The friar preached in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran while in Rome where he met both Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Osma. It is said that he foretold that Francis would receive the stigmata while Francis foretold his premature death.[1] From there, he was a guest of the Basilians in Palermo where he was for over a month before preaching in Agrigento for over a month before settling in Licata. He had healed seven lepers and the ailing Archbishop of Palermo Bernardo de Castanea while in Palermo.[2] He settled on the Sicilian island though his fame as a wonderworker caused crowds to flock to him. He also had success in converting some Jews though most Jews in Palermo came to despise him for this since he himself was once Jewish.[2]

He wanted to convert a Cathar knight named Berenger (known also in sources as Berengarius).[2] Tradition states that Berenger was living in incest and that the friar convinced the knight's companion to leave Berenger. Berenger became enraged and had him attacked in front of the church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo in Licata on 1 May 1220, and was struck with Berenger's sword five times.[1] He died of his wounds within the week of 5 May and according to tradition asked for his assassin to be pardoned while urging the faithful not to avenge his death. He was buried at Santi Filippo e Giacomo. (Read more.)

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

By His Holy and Glorious Wounds

The Cross triumphant. To quote:
Although the Feast of the Finding (or Invention) of the Holy Cross on 3 May was removed from more recent liturgical books, it remains in the 1934 edition of the Benedictine Antiphonale that is still widely used, and continues to be celebrated in not a few Benedictine monasteries. While the Office is substantially the same as on 14 September (The Exaltation of the Holy Cross), on 3 May it is shot through and through with alleluias. It presents a vision of the Passion and Cross of the Lord in the light of the Resurrection. Theologically, mystically, and catechetically the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross on 3 May is a liturgical piece of genius.

The feast commemorates Saint Helena's finding of the Cross in Jerusalem, and the signs and wonders that accompanied it and verified its authenticity. Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, carried part of the Cross back to Rome, where it was enshrined in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, on the site of the Sessorian palace.

The entire Mass and Office of the Finding of the Holy Cross deserve to be meditated and held in the heart. The liturgical texts of the feast demonstrate and support that, far from being inappropriate during Paschaltide, the contemplation and celebration of the mysteries of the Lord's Passion and Cross emerge, in the light of these fifty days of jubilation, as an inexhaustible wellspring of healing and of hope. 
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