Mark 10:45

Tag: Saints

  • More Powerful than a Thunderstorm – St. Scholastica, Virgin

    Mark 7:9

    Very little is known about St. Scholastica. Most of our information comes in the form of a single story, related most probably by Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century.

    According to St. Gregory, St. Benedict had a sister, perhaps a twin, named Scholastica. Consecrated to the Lord as a child, she would visit her brother once a year at a place close to his monastery. On what would be their last visit in this life, brother and sister spent the whole day praising God and talking together. After they had dinner and it grew late, Scholastica asked him if he would remain and talk some more, to which Benedict replied, “What are you talking about, my sister? Under no circumstances can I stay outside my cell.” This may be because his own Benedictine rules required a monk traveling locally to return to the monastery the same day he left under pain of excommunication.

    Here we get a little insight into Scholastica’s personality and into the passage from Mark’s Gospel as well. After hearing his answer, she folded her hands on the table, leaned her head down on her hands, and prayed. As she raised her head, a thunderstorm broke clouds-3933106_640out with rain so intense that Benedict was forced to remain where he was. Seeing this, he became irritated and said, “May God have mercy on you, my sister. Why have you done this?” With tears in her eyes, she replied, “I asked you, and you would not listen to me. So I asked my Lord, and he has listened to me. Now then, go, if you can. Leave me, and go back to the monastery.” Of course, St. Benedict stayed and they talked through the night.

    Pope St. Gregory concluded, “It is no wonder that the woman who had desired to see her brother that day proved at the same time that she was more powerful than he was. For as John says: God is love, and according to that most just precept, she proved more powerful because she loved more.”

    From this we learn two things. First, even a saint as great as Benedict had to be reminded, as Christ reminds all of us in the Gospel, not to disregard the commandment of God by clinging to traditions of our own making. What is the commandment of God? To love Him above all things and our neighbor for love of Him. The rule of St. Benedict was and remains a masterpiece of spiritual discipline and tradition in the Benedictine community. Nevertheless, St. Scholastica’s great love demonstrated that it is not proper to cling to any tradition at the expense of the commandment to love as God loves.

    Second we learn that, although we may not live by the rule of St. Benedict, our personal rules and habits can get in the way of advancement in the spiritual life. Being human, we are subject to forming habits; however, a routine prayer life invites dryness. Even worse, interruptions in our routine become obstacles that cause us to lose perspective. I know it’s probably never happened to you, but we all know people who have gotten upset upon walking into Mass only to find someone sitting in “their” pew! Allowing such things to be a distraction is a sure sign that our prayer habits might have become more important than the One they are intended to honor.

    Let us allow St. Scholastica’s thunderstorm to remind us that whatever hinders our spiritual growth – whether dryness in prayer or irritation when our routines are interrupted – is waiting, with a little effort on our part, to be washed away in the love, grace, and mercy of God that constantly rain all around us.

    St. Scholastica, pray for us.

     

  • Seeds on the Divine Wind – St. Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs

    1 Kings 3:4-13; Mark 6:30-34

    For many people, the word “kamikaze” conjures up images of Japanese pilots crashing their airplanes into Allied ships in a suicidal attempt to stop or slow the defeat of the emperor and invasion of Japan. However, few people know that in Japanese, kamikaze means “divine wind,” and dates back to the 13th century, when two Chinese invasion attempts were repelled by powerful storms, “divine winds,” believed by the Japanese to have been sent by the Shinto gods to protect them.

    A few centuries later, a different wind quietly blew onto Japanese shores. The great Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier swept through the island preaching Christ and baptizing thousands. About twenty years later, one of the seeds he sowed took root in a distinguished Samurai from Kyoto; in 1568, he was baptized along with his wife and their four year-old son, who we know as Paul Miki.

    As Miki grew, Christians were free to practice their faith despite the emperor’s reservations. He distrusted Christianity because the missionaries were Western, but he ignored it when converts were few. However, like the Jews in the reading from Mark, the Japanese people began coming to Christ in great numbers. By 1596, the emperor’s fear finally got the better of him; he banished foreign missionaries and commanded the native Japanese to renounce Christ or die.

    By then, Paul Miki was 33 years old. He had been a Jesuit brother for 11 years and was not far from ordination to the priesthood. Like Solomon in 1 Kings 3, the Spirit had been poured abundantly upon him; Miki was an eloquent teacher, a gifted homilist, and was graced with a large and forgiving heart.

    These gifts were soon on display. Convicted of practicing Christianity and sentenced to be crucified, Paul Miki and about two dozen others were forced to march about 400 miles, from Kyoto to Nagasaki. The journey took a month and contained its share of jeering from hostile Japanese who saw Miki as a disgrace. He saw these taunts as opportunities for conversion; he wanted everyone to share in his Master’s joy.

    As with Jesus and his Apostles in the reading from Mark, vast crowds awaited their arrival. Nagasaki was largely Christian; her people were genuinely moved at the sight of the prisoners. Looking at them, Paul Miki saw this as an opportunity not to be consoled but to console; to urge them to deeper faith and assure them that he was praying for them.

    The prisoners were strapped to their crosses, with iron rings holding them at the neck. Hoisted on this pulpit, Paul Miki saw the crowd perhaps as Jesus did in the gospel; like sheep without a shepherd. He, too, was moved with pity, and took these final moments to show how one lives for Christ and how one dies for him.

    He forgave the emperor and his executioners, and prayed that they too would become Christian. He confessed Christ as his Lord and Savior, and himself as a soldier, a samurai, honored to die for love of him. Finally, in imitation of Jesus, he commended himself to God, saying, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” He was then executed by a thrust of the lance.

    If the emperor counted on this persecution to chase Christianity from Japan, he badly miscalculated. After the deaths of Paul Miki and his companions, conversions increased; Catholicism was in Japan to stay.

    dove-3951312_1920.jpgChristians are martyrs, not kamikazes. The word martyr means “witness,” for that’s what a martyr does; they witness the faith in whatever circumstances they find themselves. What St. Paul Miki knew, and what the emperor could not understand, is that there is only one true kamikaze, one Divine Wind. The Holy Spirit graces each martyr with the gifts they need to witness the gospel according to their inclinations; always for the building up of the kingdom.

    We must ask for the gifts to be witnesses, just as Solomon and St. Paul Miki did; not for our own sake, but for the good of all God’s people. God has shown that this prayer, and the work that goes with it, are amply rewarded. As Jesus said:

    Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you (Luke 6:38).

    St. Paul Miki and companions, pray for us.