Mark 10:45

Tag: Saints

  • The Language of Divine Love – Memorial of Sts Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop

    Genesis 6:5-8; Mark 8:14-21

    As I was just beginning my teaching career, a professor I once worked for gave me some very good advice. I asked her how I could tell if what I was trying to teach was actually sinking in. She replied, “Here’s my rule: If you see a student nodding her head up and down more than three times while you’re lecturing, she has absolutely no idea what you just said.”

    Mark does not depict the disciples nodding their heads but it’s pretty clear to their Teacher that they too had no idea at all what he had just said. After the disciples discovered that they had forgotten bread, Jesus made a spiritual point about leaven that went so far over their heads that, to paraphrase the ancient saying, he may as well have been speaking Greek.

    Greek would have posed no problem to the saints we remember today. These two brothers, Michael and Constantine, were born in northern Greece in the early 800’s and grew up bilingual, speaking Greek and Slavonic. Although both were well educated and could have attained great success in worldly terms, they were more interested in heavenly rewards. Michael left government service to profess vows, taking the name Methodius, while Constantine left academics, was ordained to the Diaconate, and became a renowned defender of the faith.

    At this time, a prince from what is now the Czech Republic asked the emperor to send missionaries who his people could understand. Constantine and Methodius were sent and they prospered. Not only did they translate the liturgy and the Bible into Slavonic, they invented a written alphabet to do it. Known as the Cyrillic alphabet, it is used in languages such as Russian to this day.

    Sadly, success in ministry sometimes breeds not praise but hostility; so it was for Constantine and Methodius. While the Slavic people took to the faith and loved their liturgy, missionaries from the West complained that they should be using Latin since that was the language of Rome. Pressured to conform, the brothers resisted and were forced to travel to Rome to explain themselves to the Holy Father, Adrian II. Impressed with their arguments and their success, the Pope granted an exemption, authorizing them to continue using Slavonic.

    While still in Rome, Constantine entered the monastery and took the name Cyril. He never returned to the East, dying in Rome just a few months later. His older brother did return, however, and trouble followed him. Without the Pope’s knowledge or consent, the local bishop continued to harass him for not using Latin. He was even horsewhipped and thrown in prison for his refusal. The pope discovered this and had him released, but the precedent had been sent; Methodius was systematically harassed for the rest of his life. His spirit undaunted but his body broken, he died April 6, 885.

    Of the many lessons that tstatue-2171097_640he lives and ministry of Cyril and Methodius teach us, perhaps the greatest is that the Holy Spirit transcends human barriers by speaking the language of Divine love; His is the tongue of fire that seeks nothing but to speak to every heart and kindle in it the fire of that same love. By using their God-given gifts to foster true understanding of the faith among people despite the cost to themselves, Cyril and Methodius showed that barriers such as human language are nothing to our God, in Whose eyes we are deeply and eternally loved, not for who or what we are, but that we are at all.

    Further, as the reading from Genesis implies, we grieve the heart of God not only when we ourselves remain cold to the Divine flame but when we try to extinguish that flame in others. Like the disciples in the boat, the missionaries who harassed Cyril and Methodius heard but did not understand. Perhaps it was envy or jealousy of the brothers’ ingenuity or success that hardened their hearts. Regardless, we are called to look inside ourselves and ask if we too are envious or jealous of the gifts God gave others. It is true that other people have gifts that we do not, but it is equally true that we possess gifts that they do not. To each has been given the same Spirit; from each is expected the fruits of that gift.

    Therefore, let us resolve to be fluent in the language of love: Pray and thank God for the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to ourselves and to all people of good will; work to develop those gifts that God’s will be done on Earth; rejoice in the success of these gifts and above all, remember that success in ministry means the salvation of souls, each infinitely loved by God, Who is Love itself.

     

    Saints Cyril and Methodius, pray for us.

  • 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.