Every week in the bulletin, we include a calendar of the liturgical feasts and feast days of the saints for the upcoming week. Most of you are not able to attend mass on the weekdays, or maybe you never thought that you should. But those feast days and saints are listed in the bulletin so that you can remain connected to the liturgical calendar. For example, so that on the feast day of St. Clare, this last week, you could call to mind that great saint, maybe reflect a little on her life, so that your life might be filled with some of the wisdom and virtue that filled her life.
Devotion to the saints should be a consistent part of our life as Catholics. We celebrate the feast of All Saints every year as a holy day of obligation on November 1, reminding us of that great cloud of witnesses, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, who urge us on in the Christian life.
The great cloud of witnesses are those who have taken up the Cross of Christ, who have walked by faith with Jesus Christ as their Lord, who now intercede for us from their place in heavenly glory. We are connected, part of a communion of saints, not only with our contemporaries who are alive on earth, but also with the dead, who are alive in heaven.
This doctrine is important, it helps us to know and to seek the assistance of our brothers and sisters. For, the members of the Church on earth are like athletes in a stadium, competing for the gold medal of eternal life, and the saints of heaven are the past gold medal winners who are cheering us on, bringing us a drink of water when we are thirsty through their intercession, and also giving us coaching tips through their example.
This month of August we have already celebrated some real heavy-hitters—powerful saints: August 1, the great Alphonsus Ligouri, moral theologian who taught the Church so much about striving for virtue—the need to strengthen your faith like strengthening your muscles. August 2 celebrated St. Eusebius of Vercelli, a faithful bishop who stood up for the faith when many of his fellow bishops were siding with the heretical Roman emperor.
August 4 was celebration of the patron saint of parish priests, my patron, St. John Vianney, who labored tirelessly for his parishioners in the small French town of Ars, often hearing 12 hours of confessions a day—so many confessions that a train track was laid to travel from Paris to his small French village parish. Please pray to him for me.
August 8, this week was the feast of St. Dominic who traveled throughout Europe preaching the Gospel in the face of a heresy called Albigensianism, and teaching people how to pray the rosary, which the Blessed Virgin Mary personally gave to him.
August 9 was the feast of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, a jewish philosophy student whose search for truth led her to the Catholic faith, who after joining the Carmelites, was arrested and sent to the gas chamber at Aushwitz.
August 11, my mother’s birthday, was also the feast of St. Clare, who was raised as an Italian noble, but gave up her wealth and her social prospects, and heard the call of St. Francis to a life of total devotion to God, and consecrated herself to a life of adoration of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament
August 14 is the feast of St. Maximillian Kolbe, a priest who was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, who traded his life for a jewish prisioner condemned to death.
And that’s just the first half of August. Such a great cloud of witnesses, who teach us to strive after holiness. The Lord in the Gospel says "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” Well, the earth is set on fire through saints. The fire of holiness blazes in the hearts of the saints and they spread that fire as the serve the Lord. And God wants that fire to be set ablaze in our hearts.
The saints I mentioned themselves looked to the great cloud of witnesses who went before the. No doubt, St. Alphonsus looked to the witness of great theologians before him like Augustine and Aquinas. No doubt, St. Eusebius looked to the example of faithful bishops who refused to bow to earthly pressure like Athanasius. No doubt Saint Clare looked to the example of the holy women who gave up earthly riches to follow Christ more deeply like St. Agatha, St. Cecilia, St. Catherine of Alexandria, a philosopher saint who also no doubt inspired St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross.
If you want to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, as Hebrews tells us, the saints will help you. I love to preach on the saints throughout the week, and I hope some of you take up the invitation to attend mass on the feasts of the saints, to honor these holy ones—to hear of their example, so they can inspire you and help you.
Now in the Gospel the Lord also speaks of how he has come to cause division—the consequences, even in families, that come from being his follower, the sufferings that we must endure from the hands of sinners, as Hebrews puts it.
And the saints also know what it’s like to experience the consequences of being a Christian. For opposing the heretical bishops and the heretical emperor, St. Eusebius was arrested, dragged through the streets, and imprisoned. The Albigensians, who were poisoning the minds and souls of good Christians throughout Europe, no doubt drove St. Dominic out of some of their strongholds. St. Clare, experienced, probably not just a little bit of hostility from her own family, when she told them she was going to renounce her wealth and follow a homeless preacher. We certainly know the resistance that St. Theresa Benedicta and St. Maximilian Kolbe suffered, arrested and murdered by Nazis.
St. John Vianney faced great hostility from the devil himself. The devil set John Vianney’s bed on fire and hurled furniture at him to discourage him. But John Vianney knew, that when the devil started acting up, when those hostilities were the greatest, it was always a sign, that God was about to do something amazing, usually in the form of bringing a soul who had been away from confession for a number of years back to the sacraments.
God is glorified in his saints and in the sufferings of the saints, and God wants to shine his glory, make his glory known to the world, through us. But we must cooperate with grace. We must strive to develop those virtues, those unused, undeveloped, neglected muscles. We must make time for prayer and study and service. We must confess our sins, seeking to be rid of every sin that clings to us, as Hebrews puts it, and adore the Eucharist, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.
But when we do imitate the saints, the Lord begins to shine so brilliantly in our lives, not to mention giving us the strength to endure our hardships and crosses, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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