『Catholic Saints & Feasts』のカバーアート

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

著者： Fr. Michael Black
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 "Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.

These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.Copyright Fr. Michael Black キリスト教 スピリチュアリティ 聖職・福音主義
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  • December 14: Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor

    December 14: Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor
    2024/12/14
    December 14: Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor
    1542–1591
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of contemplatives, mystics, and Spanish poets

    A priest’s love of God is purified by the blue flames of contemplation and mistreatment

    The Protestant Reformation sparked a purifying fire in the Catholic Church. Like a prairie fire scorches the thick grasses, thistle, and weeds, so the heat of the Counter-Reformation moved over the land, scorching the thicket of devotions, pious customs, and theological miscellania that had snagged and obscured the Church’s purest growth. Besides the universal reforms of the Council of Trent, men and women such as Saint John of the Cross were integral regional players in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. This movement stripped even mighty dioceses and religious orders of all padding, of all unnecessary raiment, and then built up a lean and muscular Body of Christ that moved with purpose and vigor for the next four centuries. But for many purifiers, including Saint John of the Cross, the price of such reform was steep and personal. Needed changes to his beloved Carmelites would mean the disruption of comfortable patterns of life. John’s ideas had enemies, and for his efforts he suffered exile, hunger, public lashings, imprisonment, and defamation from the hands of his own fellow Carmelites!

    Saint John was born into poverty and so was no stranger to need. He was raised by his mother and the Church after his father died at a young age. These two mothers imparted to his mind a solid formation in Catholic doctrine and to his soul an ardent love for the Lord Jesus. John was ordained a priest for the Carmelites in 1567. He loved solitude and contemplation and so considered entering the strictest of Orders, the Carthusians. But holy people cross paths, and a chance meeting with Saint Teresa of Ávila redirected John’s vocation. Teresa’s combination of charm, intelligence, and drive were difficult to resist, and John fared no better than most. He quickly joined her project to recapture the original purity of the Carmelite Order. Many customs had attached themselves to the Order over time like barnacles on a ship. Now was the moment to scrape off the barnacles. John set out to found new, reformed Carmelite houses and to reinvigorate existing ones.

    The reforms John and Teresa implemented were practical. The monks and nuns were to spend more hours chanting the breviary in common, to do more spiritual reading, to spend more hours in silence, to practice contemplative prayer, to abstain completely from meat and to endure longer, more radical fasts. The reformed Carmelites eventually became known after their most noticeable change. They strictly adhered to the Carmelite Rule’s original prohibition against wearing shoes. So by the time they were canonically established as their own Order, distinct from the historic Carmelites, they were called the Discalced, or Shoeless, Carmelites.

    Saint John spent his life traveling throughout Central and Southern Spain carrying out an intense priestly ministry all while living a recollected life which his own contemporaries recognized as saintly. He was a chaplain to convents, a spiritual director to university colleges, a confessor, a preacher, a founder and a superior of monasteries. And, most distinctively, he was a contemplative who wrote with elegance and artistic flourish about falling in love with God. His Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, Ascent of Mount Carmel, and Living Flame of Love are, on their surface, poetic masterpieces of the Spanish language. At a deeper level, they each describe, in surprising detail and through various biblical metaphors, the soul’s search for Christ and its joy in finding Him, or its pain in losing Him.

    For John, being authentic was not a spirituality. Being bonded to Christ was. To see through material forms into God’s inner life, to contemplate God in His very nature, was prayer. The soul seeks God like the bride seeks her bridegroom. And the Bridegroom did more than manifest an image, He manifested reality. The Church is both mother and bride, and her faithful learn of Christ, and seek Him, only inside of her life. Saint John of the Cross deepened the word “mystery” to include more than its objective meaning in the Sacraments. For John, every soul had a mysterious union with God that had to be, and only could be, cultivated in silent contemplation.

    Saint John of the Cross, your life of prayer was deepened by your life of suffering for the good of your Order. Through your writings on the mystery of God, may we come to love Him, if not understand Him, all the more.
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    6 分
  • December 13: Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

    December 13: Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr
    2024/12/13
    December 13: Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr
    c. Late third century–304
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of virgins, the blind, and Syracuse, Sicily

    A garden enclosed, no man would lock her in his embrace

    Today’s saint is one of only eight women (Mary included) commemorated in Eucharistic Prayer I: “Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the Saints…” It was Pope Saint Gregory the Great (590–604), familiar with the Christian traditions of Sicily through his family, who inserted the names of the Sicilian virgin martyrs, Agatha and Lucy, into the Roman Canon. There is no doubt that an ancient cult to a woman named Lucy is connected with the city of Syracuse, Sicily, and that this devotion spread throughout Europe in the fourth through sixth centuries. Beyond that, however, there is no near-contemporary historical record verifying any facts of Lucy’s life or death. It is the preservation of her name in the Mass, more than anything else, which has secured Lucy’s place in the Catholic tradition.

    Saint Lucy was killed during the Diocletian persecution in the early fourth century. Legends long post-dating her death state that Lucy was doomed to execution after a disgruntled pagan admirer exposed her as a Christian. A gruesome medieval addition holds that Lucy gouged out her own eyes prior to her execution to deter a suitor who delighted in their beauty. Another tradition states that Lucy could not be dragged to her execution site even by a team of oxen, so the guards piled wood all around her to devour her flesh with flames—but the kindling refused to ignite! Frustrated, one of the soldiers then thrust his sharp sword deep into her throat, bringing her brief life to a grisly end.

    It is likely that since Lucy was born to Christian parents, she went on pilgrimage as a child to the shrine of Saint Agatha, a fellow Sicilian, in nearby Catania. Perhaps the witness of the virgin martyr Agatha, who perished about fifty years prior to Lucy’s time, inspired little Lucy to be similarly heroic when her own hour came. One legend states that Agatha appeared to Lucy in a dream, telling her that one day she, Lucy, would be the glory of Syracuse. For over a millennium, Lucy's Feast Day of December 13 fell very close to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. But the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582 corrected a ten-day drift between the calendar and scientific reality, leaving December 13 now eight days before the Solstice. Lucy’s symbolic resonance as a source of light in a dark season persists, despite the calendar correction distancing her feast day from winter’s blackest hour. Somewhat curiously, Sweden’s long-dormant Catholic heritage reasserts itself on December 13, a long winter night when Swedes gladly celebrate a saint whose Latin name evokes light and purity.

    As the age of martyrdom waned with Christianity’s legalization, the untouched body of the virgin, not a bloody death, became the most potent expression of Christian sacrifice. The virgin’s body was the untouched desert. It bore the wax seal of the soul’s original, untarnished perfection and was a precious gift blessed by Christ. The intact flesh of all celibates, virgins, and continent men and women stood out as oases of freedom in a world otherwise enslaved by carnal desire. Virgins such as Lucy were the pride of the early Church, the unplucked harps whose self-control was a cause of

    wonder to the broader pagan society. The virgin’s uncorrupted body was like a human votive candle, its pure flame burning through the long night of the world until Christ slowly dawned over the horizon at His Second Coming. That such a refined blue flame was so abruptly blown out by the executioner’s breath was shocking and memorable. We remember it still today.

    Saint Lucy, you died young and innocent, unfamiliar with the world save for its savagery. May your double martyrdom, to the flesh and to life itself, inspire all youth to see Christ and His promises as worth sacrificing to attain.
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    6 分
  • December 12: Our Lady of Guadalupe (U.S.A.)

    December 12: Our Lady of Guadalupe (U.S.A.)
    2024/12/12
    December 12: Our Lady of Guadalupe (U.S.A.)
    1531
    Feast; Liturgical Color: White
    Patroness of the Americas

    A miracle hangs, frozen in time, in Mexico City

    The humble Indian Juan Diego and his wife, Maria Lucia, had accepted baptism from the Franciscan missionaries laboring in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), the greatest city of Spain’s most impressive colony, the future Mexico. After his wife died in 1529, Juan moved to the home of his Christian uncle, Juan Bernardino, on the outskirts of Mexico City. On Saturday, December 9, 1531, Juan Diego arose very early to walk to Mass. It was a quiet, peaceful morning. As he walked by the base of a hill called Tepeyac, Juan heard the gentle singing of many birds. He looked up. On the top of the hill was a radiant white cloud encircling a beautiful young woman. Juan was confused. Was this a dream? Then the gentle, bird-like singing ceased, and the mysterious young woman spoke directly to him: “Juanito, Juan Dieguito!...I am the perfect and always Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God.” Mary went on to say many beautiful things to Juan, concluding with her desire that a church be built in her honor on that very hill of Tepeyac.

    The Virgin Mary, a faithful Catholic, placed herself under obedience to the local bishop. She would not build the shrine herself or work directly with the nearby faithful. She required the bishop’s cooperation and support, and so told Juan, “...go now to the bishop in Mexico City and tell him that I am sending you to make known to him the great desire that I have to see a church dedicated to me built here.” There followed meetings with the good but incredulous Bishop Zumárraga, more brief apparitions, and more drama until matters culminated on Tuesday, December 12, 1531. Juan was waiting patiently in the Bishop’s parlour for hours. The Bishop’s aids wished he would just go away. But Juan carried a secret gift for the Bishop in his coarse poncho. It was stuffed full of fragrant Castilian roses. Juan had gathered them from Tepeyac despite the cold December weather. Mary had told Juan to present the roses to the Bishop as a sign.

    After a long wait, Juan was finally brought into the presence of His Excellency. He recounted his conversations with Mary and then proudly unfurled his poncho. The fresh and dewy roses fell gracefully to the floor. Juan was content. But there was a gift within the gift. There was more than gorgeous roses. Everyone in the room fell to their knees in wonder. Juan was the last to see it. A gentle image of the Virgin Mary was impressed on Juan’s poncho. Could it be? Who could have possibly… It was a miracle! The Bishop immediately took possession of the poncho and placed it in his private chapel. Events now moved quickly. The miraculous image was put in the Cathedral. It was then brought in holy procession to a quickly built shrine on Tepeyac. Then there were more and more miracles. Then there were more and more pilgrims.

    Mary is the woman who, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, spoke with Juan on the Hill of Tepeyac. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the woman whose image is impressed upon Juan’s poncho. And it is that very same poncho which hangs to this day in the shrine built for and at the request of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The miracle first unfurled in the Bishop’s office in 1531 has been frozen in time. It is perpetually 1531 in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Everyone who gazes on the image stands in the shoes of Bishop Zumárraga. The image teems with mysterious symbols and meanings. The wholesale conversion of the tribes of old Mexico, a missionary effort that until 1531 had been a struggle, was directly attributable to Mary’s miraculous intercession. It was the greatest and most rapid conversion of a people in the history of the Church. It is Mary to whom we turn on this feast. She made herself a humble, indigenous, local, expectant mother to bring a good but pagan people into the embrace of her Son and His Holy Church. She models the precious gift of life and the costs required to protect it from harm.

    Our Lady of Guadalupe, your miraculous image was made possible because of the humble cooperation of Saint Juan Diego. May our work in the mission fields of everyday life be as fruitful as your own. May we cooperate with you just as Juan did.
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    6 分
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