Episodes

  • November 21: The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    November 21: The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Nov 20 2024
    November 21: The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

    Mary was likely consecrated to God as a child

    Stillbirths, infant mortality, and mothers’ dying during labor have been among the most predictable human tragedies since time immemorial. Medical progress has only in recent generations dramatically reduced such deaths, albeit unevenly throughout the world. In light of the real dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, the successful birth of a healthy baby has naturally given rise to ceremonies in many cultures thanking God for the precarious gift of new life. Jewish law required the ritual dedication of first-born sons to God in the Temple. It is probable that a similar custom, if not a law, called for Jewish girls to also be so dedicated. It is the likely presentation of the child Mary in such a ceremony that we celebrate today.

    The Church does not claim that today’s feast is rooted in Sacred Scripture. There is no direct biblical support for Mary’s Presentation except in the apocryphal “Gospel” of Saint James, a problematic text replete with follies. The lack of textual support is, nevertheless, no reason to doubt the ancient tradition, especially preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy, that Joachim and Anne consecrated Mary, their daughter, to God at the age of three in the Jerusalem Temple. The prophet Samuel was similarly presented by his mother, Hannah. Both Hannah and her namesake, Anne, were long barren and were thus all the more grateful to see the fruit of their unexpected pregnancies.

    It is a good and holy thing for Christian parents to proactively dedicate their children to God, or even to invite them to consider a life consecrated to God as priests or religious. While some may consider it an unwise imposition for parents to so explicitly encourage their children to take steps down that holy path, all parents, in fact, are energetic in promoting some level of conformity with their own religious or quasi-religious beliefs. These “beliefs” may be related to the environment, politics, leisure, art, sports, or a thousand other causes or hobbies. Parents always indoctrinate their children. It is intrinsic to their role. The only question is what the content of that indoctrination will be. Ideally, Christian parents hand on to their children their most deeply held beliefs—including their faith in Jesus Christ.

    The essence of any sacrifice is to burn, kill, or destroy something of value in order to close the yawning gap between God and man. A sacrifice can be in thanksgiving, to repent of a sin, or in petition for a favor. Primitive priests in cultures across the globe since time immemorial have stood at their rough stone altars on behalf of their people to offer God fatted calves, heifers, sheep, the finest grain, red wine, and even their fellow man. Abraham was willing to offer his very own son to God. Blood sacrifice gradually receded in Judaism, however, to bloodless sacrifice, and eventually to non-sacrificial pathways to God. The age of priests in the Jerusalem Temple sacrificing animals gradually mutated, from the late first century onward, into rabbis in synagogues teaching from books.

    To present a child to God, either in a formal ritual or in a private dedication, is to lay that child on a symbolic altar and to say to God: “You create. We procreate. My child is Your child. Do with this child as You will.” Such humble and antecedent submission to the will of God is not an abdication of the duty to form a child in human and religious virtue. It is just to be realistic. Children are gifts, not metaphorically but actually. A child is not a piece of property or an object a parent has a right to possess. No one understands this like the infertile couple. When parents consecrate a child to God, whether at baptism or otherwise, even informally, they are manifesting a willingness to return a gift to its remote source, to please the Maker by giving Him what He already possesses, life itself and all who share in it.

    Saints Anne and Joachim, in gratitude for the gift of life, you presented Mary in the Temple. Help all young parents to see in you a model of dependence on God’s providence and may similar consecrations in today’s world prepare saints for the Church of tomorrow.
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    6 mins
  • November 18: The Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

    November 18: The Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
    Nov 18 2024
    November 18: The Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    The Apostles Peter and Paul are the Patron Saints of the City of Rome

    The barque of Peter is tethered to two stout anchors

    A cathedral is theology in stone, the medievals said, a truism which extends to all churches, not just cathedrals, and to their sacred web of translucent glass, glowing marble, gold-encrusted wood, bronze canopies, and every other noble surface on which the eye falls. A Church mutely confesses its belief through form and materials. Today’s feast commemorates the dedication of two of the most sumptuous churches in the entire world: the Basilica of St. Peter, the oversized jewel in the small crown of Vatican City, and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, a few miles distant, beyond Rome’s ancient walls. The foundations of these two Basilicas are each sunk deep into the blood-drenched ground of first-century Christianity, though today’s impressive structures stand proxy for their long-razed originals. If strong churches reflect a strong God, these Basilicas are all muscle.

    The present Basilica of St. Peter was dedicated, or consecrated, in 1626. It was under construction for more than one hundred years, was built directly over the tomb of the Apostle Peter, and considerably enlarged the footprint of the original Constantinian Basilica. That prior fourth-century Basilica was so decrepit by the early 1500s that priests refused to say Mass at certain altars for fear that the creaky building’s sagging roofs and leaning walls would collapse at any moment. The ancient Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls was consumed by a mammoth fire in 1823. The rebuilt Basilica was dedicated on December 10, 1854, just two days after Pope Pius IX had formally promulgated the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. The Basilica’s vast classical elegance is breathtaking—its marbled central nave stretches out longer than an American football field.

    The two Basilicas were, for centuries, linked by a miles-long, roofed colonnade that snaked through the streets of Rome, sheltering from the sun and rain the river of pilgrims flowing from one Basilica to the next as they procured their indulgences. Rome’s two great proto-martyrs were like twins tethered by a theological umbilical cord in the womb of Mother Church. The pope’s universal ministry was explicitly predicated upon these two martyrs. Rome’s apostolic swagger meant the Bishop of Rome’s headship was not merely symbolic but actively intervened in practical matters of church governance throughout Christendom. The pope, the indispensable Christian, was often depicted in early Christian art as a second Moses, a law-giver, who received from Christ the tablets of the New Testament for the new people of God.

    At intervals of five years, every diocesan bishop in the Catholic Church is obligated to make a visit “ad limina apostolorum”—“to the threshold (of the tombs) of the apostles.” This means they pray at the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul in Rome and personally report to Saint Peter’s successor. These visits are a prime example of the primacy of the pope, which is exercised daily in a thousand different ways, a core duty far more significant than the pope’s infallibility, which is exercised rarely.

    There is no office of Saint Paul in the Church. When Paul died, his office died. Everyone who evangelizes and preaches acts as another Saint Paul. But the barque of Peter is still afloat in rough seas, pinned to the stout tombs which, like anchors, hold her fast from their submerged posts under today’s Basilicas. A church is not just a building, any more than a home is just a house. A church, like a home, is a repository of memories, a sacred venue, and a corner of rest. On today’s feast, we recall that certain churches can also be graveyards. Today’s Basilicas are sacred burial grounds, indoor cities of the dead, whose citizens will rise from beneath their smooth marble floors at the end of time, like a thousand suns dawning as one over the morning horizon.

    Holy martyrs Peter and Paul, your tombs are the sacred destinations of many pilgrimages to the eternal city. May all visits to the Basilicas dedicated to your honor deepen one’s love and commitment to Mother Church.
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    6 mins
  • November 18: Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, Virgin

    November 18: Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, Virgin
    Nov 18 2024
    November 18: Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, Virgin
    1769–1852
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of perseverance amid adversity

    Born into a refined French family, her life ended in hardship on the American prairie

    Today’s saint was born into a large, refined, educated Catholic family situated in an enormous home in the venerable city of Grenoble, France. Rose’s parents and extended family were connected to other elites in the highest circles of the political and social life of that era. Despite this favored parentage, Rose would leave the world and all the advantages she inherited to become a hardscrabble missionary nun serving rough settlers and Indians in the no man’s land of the American plains. Saint Rose was named after the first canonized saint of the New World, Saint Rose of Lima. As a child, her imagination had been fired by hearing about missionaries on the American frontier. She dreamed of being one of them, yet her path to becoming a pioneer missionary would be circuitous.

    When Rose felt the call to a contemplative religious life as a teen, she joined, against her father’s wishes, the Order that so many French women of status joined—the Congregation of the Visitation, founded by Saint Jane Frances de Chantal in the early seventeenth century. The massive social upheavals of the French Revolution shuttered her Visitandine convent, though, and she spent years living her Order’s rule privately outside of a convent as her country disintegrated into chaos. After the revolution, when religious life was no longer illegal, Rose tried to re-establish her defunct convent by personally purchasing its buildings. The plan didn’t work, and Rose and the few remaining sisters united themselves to a new French Order, which would later be known as the Religious Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

    Saint Rose was destined to be a holy and dedicated nun in her Order’s schools. But in 1817, a bishop serving in the United States came to France on a recruitment tour, as so many bishops did in the first half of the nineteenth century. The bishop visited Rose’s convent in Paris, and Rose’s childhood dreams were rekindled. After receiving permission from her superiors, in 1818 Rose boarded a ship with four other sisters for the two-month sea voyage to New Orleans, U.S.A. The second act of her life was starting at age forty-nine. From this point forward, her life was replete with the physical hardships, financial struggles, and everyday drama typical of the French and Spanish missionaries who brought the faith to the ill-educated pioneers and Indians on the edge of the American frontier.

    Rose and her troupe of sisters had to take a steamboat up the Mississippi River to Missouri after the bishop’s promises of a convent in New Orleans came to nothing. In remote Western Missouri, Rose began a convent in a log cabin and then started a school and a small novitiate. The people were poor, the settlers generally unschooled, the weather cold, the food inadequate, and life hard. Rose struggled to learn English. Yet after ten years, the Sacred Heart Sisters were operating six convents in Missouri and Louisiana. In 1841, the Sisters began to serve Potawatomi Indians who had been harshly displaced from Michigan and Indiana into Eastern Kansas. At seventy-one years old, Rose joined this missionary band to Kansas not for her practical usefulness but for her example of prayer. Saint Rose prayed so incessantly that she was on her knees before the tabernacle when the Indians went to sleep and kneeling there when they woke up, still praying. Wondering at this, some children put pebbles on the train of her habit one night. The next morning the pebbles were still there. She hadn’t budged an inch all night long! The Potawatomi called her “She Who Prays Always.” Howling cold and the rigors of frontier life forced Rose to return to a more humane convent existence for the last quiet years of her life. She was beatified in 1940 and canonized in 1988.

    Saint Rose, you persevered heroically in your vocation despite serious challenges. Inspire all religious to continue in their unique vocations despite setbacks, and to unite, as you did, a quiet contemplative soul with a missionary’s courage and drive.
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    6 mins
  • November 17: Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious

    November 17: Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious
    Nov 17 2024
    November 17: Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious
    1207–1231
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of the Third Order of Saint Francis

    A faithful wife loses her husband and becomes a Franciscan

    The marriage of today’s saint was not any less happy for being arranged. Elizabeth of Hungary’s parents betrothed her at the age of four to a young German nobleman named Ludwig and sent her away as a child to live in his family’s court. Elizabeth wed Ludwig when she was fourteen and he twenty-one. Only in a post-industrial age have the teenage years been understood, in some countries but not all, as a time of self-discovery, boundary pushing, rejection of tradition, and excuse for total confusion. Puberty, not the entire span of the teen years, was historically understood as the passage to adulthood, responsibility, and a professional life. It was typical of her era, and of many other eras too, that Elizabeth would marry at fourteen. She was ready and became a contented, serious, and successful wife and mother, bearing three children, while still a teen.

    Before Ludwig left on Crusade in 1227, he and Elizabeth vowed never to remarry if one were to die before the other. Then Ludwig died on his way to the Holy Land. Elizabeth was distraught but fulfilled her promise. So at the age of twenty, her already pious and prayerful soul waded into deeper Christian waters. Her mortifications became more rigorous, her financial generosity more total, and her prayer time more all consuming. Most of all, Elizabeth’s life now began to revolve almost uniquely around the poor, the aged, and the sick. She opened a hospice near a relative’s castle and there welcomed anyone in need.

    Elizabeth also fell under the spell of a charismatic and over-bearing spiritual director who insisted that she make the most severe emotional and physical sacrifices in her quest for perfection. As a sign of her commitment to the poor, and to aid her in conquering herself, Elizabeth took the habit of a Third Order Franciscan in 1227. Franciscanism was spreading like wildfire throughout Europe, and Elizabeth was not the only noblewoman far from Assisi to be drawn to the message of Saint Francis so soon after his death. A native Hungarian, who came in search of Elizabeth in Germany at this time, was shocked to find her dressed in drab grey clothes, poor, and sitting at a spinning wheel in her hospice. He begged Elizabeth to return to her father’s royal court in Hungary. She refused. She would stay near the tomb of her husband, stay near her children, now in the care of nuns and relatives, and stay close to the poor whom she loved so much.

    Most likely worn out by her austerities and near constant contact with the sick, Elizabeth died at the age of twenty-four on November 17, 1231. Miracles were attributed to her intercession soon after her burial, and testimonies to her holiness were collected so rapidly that she was canonized by the pope just four years after her death. In 1236 a shrine was dedicated to her memory in Marburg, Germany, and her remains were transferred there amidst great ceremony. Pilgrims continued trekking to her shrine throughout the middle ages, until a Lutheran prince, full of dissenting Protestant spit and vinegar, removed Elizabeth’s relics from her shrine in 1539. They have never been recovered.

    Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, we seek your heavenly intercession on this date of your early death. Help all young mothers to persevere in their vocations and all young widows to not despair but to be confident as they walk forward in life, knowing that Christ is at their side.
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    5 mins
  • November 16: Saint Margaret of Scotland

    November 16: Saint Margaret of Scotland
    Nov 16 2024
    November 16: Saint Margaret of Scotland
    c. 1045–1093
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of Scotland, large families, and parents who have lost children

    A foreign-born royal becomes queen and inspires by her refinement and devotion

    In the early eleventh century, a Danish Viking named Canute reigned as King of England. Canute exiled his potential rivals from an Anglo-Saxon royal family. One of these exiles, Edward, made his way to Hungary, married, and had a daughter named Margaret who grew up in a well-educated, royal, Catholic home. Margaret’s father eventually returned to England at the request of the king, his uncle Saint Edward the Confessor, and he brought his family with him, including Margaret. But Edward died shortly after coming home, leaving Margaret fatherless, and then Edward the Confessor died without an heir. War broke out. In 1066 at the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon English lost to the Norman French. Margaret and her siblings were displaced to Scotland, far away from French efforts to eradicate Anglo-Saxon royals who had claims to the English throne. Thus was the circuitous route by which a woman of English blood who grew up in Hungary is commemorated today as Saint Margaret of Scotland.

    Saint Margaret was known to her contemporaries as an educated, refined, and pious woman. She married a Scottish King named Malcolm who was far more rustic than herself. He could not even read. The earliest Life of Margaret, written by a monk who personally knew her, states that Malcolm depended on his wife’s sage advice and admired her prayerfulness. According to Margaret’s biographer, Malcolm saw “that Christ truly dwelt in her heart...What she rejected, he rejected...what she loved, he, for love of her, loved too.” Malcolm embellished Margaret’s devotional books with gold and silver. One of these books, a selection of Gospel passages with illuminated miniatures of the four Evangelists, is preserved in an English museum. King Malcolm and Queen Margaret, along with their six sons and two daughters, truly created a domestic church centered on Christ. One son, David, became a national hero as King of Scotland and is popularly referred to as a saint.

    Margaret’s presence infused the unsophisticated, rural, Scottish court with culture. She brought her more Roman experiences of Church life with her to Scotland, and so pulled the Scottish Church into conformity with Roman and continental practice regarding the dating and observance of Lent and Easter. She encouraged the faithful to more fully observe Sunday by not working and, like so many medieval royals, she was also a prolific foundress of monasteries, including one she intended to be the burial place for Scottish kings and queens. Margaret was known for her concern for the poor, for dedicating hours a day to prayer and to spiritual reading, and for her great skill in embroidering vestments and church linens.

    Saint Margaret died, not yet fifty years old, just a few days after she was informed that her husband and son were killed in battle. Margaret and Malcolm were buried together under the high altar of a monastery. Devotion to the holy queen began soon after her death, and she was canonized in 1250.

    Saint Margaret of Scotland, you were the model of a virtuous queen who cared for both the spiritual and material welfare of your people. Inspire all leaders to give personal witness to holiness so that, through their leadership role, they inspire their people to be more virtuous.
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    5 mins
  • November 15: Saint Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor

    November 15: Saint Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor
    Nov 14 2024
    November 15: Saint Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor
    c. 1206–1280
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of natural scientists

    He knew everything, taught Aquinas, and placed his complex mind at the Church’s service

    Saint Francis de Sales wrote that the knowledge of the priest is the eighth Sacrament of the Church. If that is true, then today’s saint was a sacrament unto himself. There was little that Saint Albert did not know and little that he did not teach. His mastery of all the branches of knowledge of his age was so manifest that he was called “The Great” and the “Universal Doctor.”

    Albert was born in Germany and educated in Italy. During his university studies, he was introduced to the recently founded Dominican Order and joined their brotherhood. While continuing his long course of formal studies, Albert was sent by his superiors to teach in Germany. He spent twenty years as a professor in various religious houses and universities until he finally obtained his degree and began to teach as a master in 1248. His most famous student was the Italian Dominican Thomas Aquinas, whose rare intellectual gifts Albert recognized and cultivated. Albert was also made the Prior of a Dominican Province in Germany, was a personal theologian and canonist to the Pope, preached a Crusade in Germany, and was appointed the Bishop of Regensburg for less than two years before resigning. Albert was neither ruthless nor politically minded, and the complex web of elites who had interests in his diocese required a bishop to display a sensitivity to power relationships which was not among Albert’s skills.

    After his short time as a diocesan bishop, Albert spent the rest of his life teaching in Cologne, punctuated by travels to the Second Council of Lyon in 1274 and to Paris in 1277 to defend Aquinas from his theological enemies. Albert’s complete works total thirty-eight volumes on virtually every field of knowledge known to his age: scripture, philosophy, astronomy, physics, mathematics, theology, spirituality, mineralogy, chemistry, zoology, biology, justice, and law. Albert’s assiduous study of animals, plants, and nature was groundbreaking, and he debunked reigning myths about various natural phenomena through close personal observation. He devoured all the works of Aristotle and organized and distilled their content for his students, re-introducing the great Greek philosopher to the Western world forever and always. This life-long project of philosophical commentary was instrumental in grounding subsequent Catholic theological research on a wide and sturdy platform of critical thinking, which has been a hallmark of Catholic intellectual life ever since.

    Albert’s comprehensive approach to all knowledge contributed to the flourishing of the nascent twelfth-century institutions of learning known as universities. The “uni” in university implied that all knowledge was centered around one core knowledge—that of God and His Truth. The modern understanding is that a “multiversity” is merely an administrative forum in which numerous branches of knowledge spread out in pursuit of their separate truths unhinged from any central focus or purpose.

    Saint Albert’s prodigious mind never ceased to be curious. Every bit of knowledge which he culled led him to gather even more. His encyclopedic knowledge embraced reality itself as one sustained instance of God loving the world. No bifurcation, no subcategories, no “my truth” and no “your truth.” God was real and God was knowable. Reality and Truth were one for Albert and his era, and autonomous reason could be trusted to lead the honest, rational seeker to those eternal verities. Albert was beatified in 1622 and was canonized and named a Doctor of the Church in 1931.

    Saint Albert the Great, your knowledge of the sacred and physical sciences understood God as a total reality. Through your divine intercession, help the faithful to see reality not as divided but as an expression of the Trinitarian God, a knowable person who is accessible to reason.
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    6 mins
  • November 13: Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin (USA)

    November 13: Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin (USA)
    Nov 13 2024
    November 13: Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin (USA)
    1850–1917
    USA Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of immigrants and hospital administrators

    Indomitable and charismatic, she moved mountains for God

    The hurricane of apostolic activity that was Mother Cabrini motored powerfully over the Atlantic Ocean, gathered force as it swept into the American heartland, and then rested there, perpetually oscillating, for almost three decades. A serene eye, though, hovered at the center of this low roar of activity. Mother Cabrini accomplished so much, so well, and so quickly, precisely because her soul rotated calmly around a fixed point, the immovable Christ. A peaceful focus on God in the morning rained down a storm of good works in the afternoon and evening.

    Frances Cabrini was the tenth child born into a rural but well-to-do family in Northern Italy. Her uncle, a priest, had a deep influence on her, as did the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, whose school she attended as a teen. After graduation, she petitioned for entrance into the Daughters and, later, the Conossian Sisters. But Frances’ tiny frame had never quite conquered the frailty resulting from her premature birth. These Orders needed robust women capable of caring for children and the infirm. Nuns did not take vows so they could take care of other nuns. So even an application from an otherwise stellar candidate like Frances was reluctantly rejected due to her ill health. Frances eventually obtained a position as the lay director of an orphanage. Her innate charisma pulled people toward her like a magnet, and soon a small community of women grew up around her to share a common religious life.

    As proof of her apostolic zeal, Frances added “Xavier” to her baptismal name in honor of the great missionary Saint Francis Xavier. She then founded a modest house, along with six other women, dedicated to serving in the Church’s foreign missions. Frances was clearly the leader and wrote the new Institute’s Rule. Eventually the small Order received Church approval as the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The sisters’ excellent work became well known, and in 1887 Mother Cabrini, the Superior, met with Pope Leo XIII in Rome to inquire about her sisters evangelizing in China. The Pope listened to her in silence and then concluded simply: Her mission was “not to the East, but to the West.” The plug had been pulled on entire regions of Italy and their populations drained away to the United States. They needed the Church’s attention.

    In 1889 Mother Cabrini left for the United States with six sisters. Disembarking from the ship in New York Harbor, they were met by not even a single person. No one expected them, and no one welcomed them. The Archbishop was cold and told Mother Cabrini that he wanted Italian priests, not sisters, and that her ship was still docked in the harbor if she wanted to return to Italy. She replied “I have letters from the Pope” and stayed and persevered amidst the most extreme hardships.

    Starting from absolute zero, Mother Cabrini miraculously began her work among Italian immigrants. She would work almost exclusively with, and for, Italians the rest of her life. She begged, pleaded, and cajoled. She pulled every lever of charm and persuasion she could reach. It worked. Her deep spirituality and constant state of motion soon put her in contact with Italian benefactors eager to help their own. Mother Cabrini was then seemingly everywhere, doing everything. She founded hospitals, orphanages, schools, workshops, and convents in New York, Denver, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Chicago. She trekked to Nicaragua, Argentina, and Brazil. She sailed back to Italy nine times. She became an American citizen but remained fully Italian in her identity and a source of pride for America’s many “Little Italies.”

    Mother Cabrini’s relentless energy, remarkable administrative skills, shrewdness, humility, and charisma quickly built an empire of charity. When she died in Chicago, she left behind sixty-seven institutions and a robust Order of dedicated nuns. On July 7, 1946, she became the first United States citizen to be canonized a saint.

    Mother Cabrini, you were indefatigable in your work for Christ and the Church. You knew no rest, no stranger, and no obstacle that could not be overcome. Inspire all evangelizers and teachers to be so brave and tireless in their service.
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    6 mins
  • November 12: Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr

    November 12: Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
    Nov 12 2024
    November 12: Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
    1580–1623
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of reunion between Orthodox and Catholics

    A holy bishop is murdered for unifying East and West

    Saint Josaphat died for something few in his era died for—ecumenism. In fact, the word ecumenism did not even exist when Josaphat was martyred. Josaphat was born in Ukraine but grew to manhood working a trade in Vilnius, Lithuania. In his late teens, he felt called to be a monk, so he rejected an offer of marriage and joined a monastery in Vilnius in 1604. Josaphat’s austerities, intelligence, and prayerfulness made him a natural leader, and he was duly ordained a deacon and priest and earned a reputation as an effective preacher.

    But it was a historic decision by Orthodox religious leaders, about ten years before Josaphat became a monk, that would bend the arc of his life and eventually lead to his death. In 1595 the Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev and five other Orthodox bishops representing millions of Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Belarusian) faithful met in the city of Brest and signed a declaration of their intention to enter into union with the Bishop of Rome. The Pope accepted their conversion from Orthodox to Catholic, while allowing them to keep their Byzantine liturgical rites and traditions. The Union of Brest was a one-of-a-kind event. Yet it triggered Orthodox violence and bitterness toward the Catholic Church which has endured into modern times.

    Josaphat joyfully embraced the entrance of his native Orthodox faith into the Catholic fold. But he also insisted that the Eastern traditions of his pan-Slavic people should perdure, and be respected, while his people ecclesiastically migrated into the paddock of the Roman Pontiff. Unity, yes. Uniformity, no. The Church, historically, had long been composed of various liturgical traditions reflecting its numerous cultures. The Latin Rite, though, eventually predominated as Western nations grew stronger and colonized huge chunks of the world. The Union of Brest’s careful balance of accepting theological and jurisdictional unity with Rome while insisting on liturgical distinctiveness was confusing to many of the faithful Slavic peasants of Northeastern Europe. Nonetheless, when Josaphat was named a Bishop in present day Belarusia, he continued to champion the union with Rome with all his considerable powers and was largely successful in curtailing Orthodox clergy from exercising ministry in his diocese.

    Because he represented something new, an Eastern Rite Catholic, Josaphat was misunderstood by his co-religionists who should have supported him the most, particularly Polish and Lithuanian bishops and princes. The tensions of the time came to a head when an Orthodox bishop established a competing diocesan and parish structure alongside that of Josaphat’s diocese and parishes. The faithful experienced two church structures that were virtually identical in their liturgy but divergent in their leaders and lines of authority.

    In response to Orthodoxy’s aggressive incursion into his ecclesial territory, Josaphat put his usual vigor into preaching and teaching the importance of union with Rome. But in 1623, while seeking to stop an Orthodox priest from secretly ministering in his jurisdiction, Josaphat was ambushed by Orthodox faithful who conspired with their leaders to rid themselves of this thief of souls. Saint Josaphat was brutally attacked by a mob, his head was cleaved by an axe, and his body dumped into a river. Josaphat was beatified in 1643 and canonized in 1867. In the twentieth century, Josaphat’s remains were brought to Rome and buried under the altar of Saint Basil in St. Peter’s Basilica.

    Saint Josaphat, you gave your life attempting to bring East and West together. Give us your spirit of unity so that our prayers bring all Christians into common union under the leadership of a common head, the successor of Saint Peter.
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    6 mins