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Posted by on Nov 23, 2007

Saint of the Day – Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.

Saint of the Day – Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.

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November 23 is the feast day of Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J. (1891-1927). Fr. Pro was a genial easygoing young priest shot by a firing squad for exercising his ministry against the laws of Catholic Mexico. A blind woman who attended his funeral and touched the coffin regained her sight. Other miracles followed. Fr. Pro was from a large family in Guadalupe, Zacatecas. He joined the Jesuits at the age of 20 after a happy and carefree youth. He was known for his quick and gentle wit. Due to the enforcement of anti-clerical laws in 1915, Fr. Pro and his fellow Jesuit novices left to continue their studies in California, Belgium, Nicaragua, and Spain.

To someone not familiar with the history of Mexico, it can be perplexing to understand how such a Catholic country could have outlawed the religion of the vast majority of its citizens. ( An excellent monograph in Spanish is “La Iglesia Catolica y la Politica en Mexico, 1910 – 1938.”) The story is a saga of ongoing conflict between the emerging secular state after Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821 and the spiritual and economic power of the Church. For over 300 years prior to independence, the Church in Mexico fell under the sponsorship of the Spanish Crown. The Church, the religious orders, and lay institutes controlled vast resources of land and natural resources. In order to assert their power, the national elites knew that they needed to dis-establish the temporal power of the Church. Others believed that the only way to create a modern state was to get rid of religion altogether.

By the mid-1800’s, the Reform of President Benito Juarez attempted to deprive the Church of its lands and redistribute lands to the peasants and the native tribes. If this sounds socialist, it is. Mexico was one of the first countries to try to address the evils of social inequality by converting socialist philosophy into public policy. Just as socialist aspirations in European governments gave way to oppressive imperial governments, Mexico was ruled by dictators.

The Mexican bishops, under Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII, responded by developing a Christian social teaching focusing on peace, justice, and equality. The Christian social gospel emerged from Pope Leo XIII’s encylical letter, Rerum Novarum, in 1891 on the relationship between capital and labor. Many of the key bishops in Mexico in the early 20th century had been trained in Rome to provide a core of leaders.

The first socialist revolution of the the 20th century took place in Mexico in 1910. Industrialization, foreign control of natural resources, and endemic poverty passed the tipping point. After massive slaughter, destruction, and social dislocation, the Constitution of 1917 came into force. The anti-Church provisions of the Constitution were enforced unevenly until 1925, when President Calles passed additional legislation specifying penalties for infractions. Fortunately or unfortunately, Fr. Pro who had been recently ordained was sent back to Mexico that same year. His health had been declining and his superiors felt that he would get better away from the rigors of exile. When he returned, the situation had gotten so bad that he had to go underground and minister in secret.

The opposition to President Calles erupted in a rebellion called the Cristero war. The insurgents claimed to be fighting for religious freedom. Their cry was “Viva Cristo Rey,” “Long Live Christ the King.” Of course the history was much more complex, since practicing Catholics and anti-clericals often fought together against other factions that were also diverse in their composition. President Calles thought that the pictures of a public execution of Fr. Pro would demoralize the rebels, who were known as Cristeros. It had the opposite effect. Fr. Pro’s execution re-invigorated the fractured insurgency, drew international condemnation, and led to the involvement of the United States’ ambassador, who helped resolve the conflict in 1929. The activities and involvement of the Church in public life and education was highly restricted. However, the Church’s spiritual ministry was permitted under close control.

In 1988, Pope John Paul II visited Mexico amid jubilant throngs. At the time, he beatified Fr. Pro, who became Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro. In 1990, the Vatican and Mexico established diplomatic relations and began a decade long process of regularizing the independence of Church and state. Fr. Pro’s wish was to offer his life for Mexico. It was a wish that he confided a year before his death and a wish that was fulfilled.

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Posted by on Nov 7, 2007

Saint of the Day – Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.

Saint of the Day – San Diego de Alcalá de Henares

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November 7 is the current feast of St. Didacus, a latinized form of the name Diego. (The traditional feast day was November 12). San Diego (1400 to 1463), was a Franciscan lay brother who exemplified the reform movement of his time. He never learned to read or write and devoted his life to prayer, penance, and the service of the poor and the sick. San Diego’s life is an ironic example of a man who found fame and posterity by renouncing them.

San Diego was born in San Nicolás del Puerto in the province of Sevilla, Spain. As a boy, he served a local hermit, taking on that austere lifestyle and raising vegetables for the poor. At 30, he joined the Franciscans and around 1441 he was sent with a small group to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. Despite his lack of education, he became the Guardian of the small convent. Under his leadership and by his example, the observance and piety of the group came to the attention of Pope Eugene IV. San Diego returned to Spain in 1449 and went to Rome in 1450 for the canonization of fellow Franciscan San Bernardino de Siena. There was a severe outbreak of plague in Rome and San Diego became even more highly regarded for his care of the sick and the dying. He lived at Alcalá de Henares from 1456 until his death on November 12, 1463.

San Diego became a reluctant hero, even in death, because of the number of documented miracles that were attributed to him. However, he was not canonized a saint until 1588, due to reforms that the Church was undertaking to remove the lives of the saints from the realm of legend to those of rigorous historical fact. Despite the reformed standards, the holiness of his life and documentation of miracles made his biography similar to those of devotional legend.

San Diego’s wide popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries was emblematic of a major shift in Spanish society. San Diego’s patron, Santiago (Sant Yago – St. James the Apostle), was the patron of Spain and represented her struggle to reconquer Iberia after the Moorish conquest. As Santiago Mata Moros, St. James the Killer of Moors, was a less relevant model as the Reconquest came to a close. San Diego’s example of heroic Christian virtue became a new model of the Christian ideal in the emerging union of the seven kingdoms.

When Sebastián Vizcaíno entered San Miguel Bay in Alta California aboard the San Diego in 1602, he renamed it San Diego Bay, because his men would hear Mass there on November 12. On July 1, 1769, Blessed Junipero Serra would found Mission San Diego de Alcalá on the same bay, the mission which would later give rise to the City of San Diego, California.

Although San Diego now enjoys the obscurity that he sought in life, he should be remembered and celebrated as someone who saw that mysticism and service to the marginalized could not be separated. Spirituality and social justice are the two necessary dimension of meeting and serving the living Christ.

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Mission San Diego de Alcalá, San Diego, CA

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Posted by on Sep 25, 2007

Saint of the Day – Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.

Saint of the Day: St. Elzear & Bl. Delphina – The Happy Couple

Today, an unconsummated marriage would probably not be considered advisable by the Church and mental health experts. St. Elzear and Blessed Delphina were a couple who were married and lived together chastely. They are saints because of their care of the poor and the suffering. This couple is also known for their conscientious exercise of their duties as members of the nobility. Interestingly, they were known and remembered as a happy couple.

Personally, I don’t think that I would have responded by taking a vow of chastity on my wedding night the way St. Elzear did when he found out the Delphina had already made one. We have a contemporary theology of marriage that stresses and endows love making and sex within marriage as sacramental.

Certainly the late Middle Ages (St. Elzear 1286 -1323, Bl. Delphina 1283- 1358) was not a “puritanical” time. In fact, Puritanism would not happen for another 200 years and would never take root in the Mediterranean.

St. Elzear was born at the family castle in Ansouis, Provence, in the south of France. At 23, he became lord of Ansouis and Count of Ariano in the Kingdom of Naples. The Count and Contessa became influential in the court of King Robert of Naples and Elzear was the tutor to the King’s son Charles. He was also the “justiciar” or head of law enforcement and justice for southern Abruzzi under King Robert. St. Elzear died on September 27, 1323 while on a diplomatic mission to Paris to arrange the marriage of Charles to Mary of Valois. Blessed Delphina would survive him for another 35 years and spend the time in continued acts of charity.

As nobles, producing children was a serious responsibility. Even when having children was precluded due to medical reasons, noblemen usually had some illegitimate sons at hand. William the Conqueror was one such son. Since the marriage of the Count and Contessa of Ariano (St. Elzear and Blessed Delphina) was so atypical by the standards of their day and ours, how do we relate to it?

Perhaps it was a marriage of convenience, in the sense that due to their social station they were obliged to marry but would have really preferred monastic vocations. Since their state in life was determined when they were young children of a noble family, they simply found a way around it.

Young children at the ages of 5 -7 were sent as oblates to monasteries and convents. Hildegard of Bingen and St. Thomas Aquinas are two examples. We also know, of course, that many people who found themselves in “enforced” monastic vocations would do their best to bend or break the rules.

Then as now, marriages – especially those among the rich and powerful -were not happy affairs. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) and her Church sanctioned marriages to King Louis VII of France and King Henry II of England demonstrates the far from Romantic character of such marriages. In fact, Eleanor of Aquitaine was a major promoter of the troubadour movement. The origins of what we today experience as romantic love originally began as songs of chaste love for the unattainable woman. As we know, the reality of courtly love was far from chaste, but it seemed to provide some fluidity in a tight social structure. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t cause feelings of betrayal and rejection resulting in duels, beatings, and death. The case of King Henry VIII in the early modern period (1491 -1547) provides a window onto the complexity of marriage in Europe in previous centuries.

The Count and Contessa feeding the poor, living as lay Franciscans, and in the case of St. Elzear healing lepers were definitely unusual for the time. What was probably most striking about them is that they were known as a happy couple. Their marriage – even if its lack of consummation might not adhere to the Church’s definition of one – was a partnership for a radical living of the Gospel.

In our own culture and time, can we say as much about our marriages and the joy, happiness and moral guidance they bring to others?

There are two slightly different accounts of these saints, with some inconsistencies. Please see Saint of the Day at AmericanCatholic.org and Catholic Online.

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Posted by on Sep 18, 2007

Saint of the Day – Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J.

Saint of the Day: St. Joseph of Cupertino

Joseph Desa (1603-1663) was born in Cupertino, near Brindisi in the Kingdom of Naples.

St. Joseph of Cupertino is a challenge to anyone of an intellectual bent. His life is the prototypic story of an uneducated child, beset by poverty, who has ecstatic experiences beginning at age 8 which leave his mouth agape. His school mates called him “voca aperta.” The young child had quite a temper, which his mother tried to moderate, and he was later apprenticed to a shoemaker. At 17 he was turned away from the Friars Minor Conventual because of his ignorance. The Capuchins at first accepted him as a lay brother but his continued ecstasies made it impossible for him to do his work, so he found himself out on the street again. His mother and his uncles had given up on him and abused him as a good for nothing. Finally, after repeated prayers and a lot of tears he was allowed to work in the stable at the Franciscan convent of La Grotella near Cupertino. He was basically a lay servant. His humility, obedience, and love of penance must have impressed the friars because he was not only allowed to became a cleric but he was also ordained a priest over a period of years. Despite his lack of education, he demonstrated an amazing knowledge which appeared to be infused as a mystical gift. He was able to solve intricate problems.

His life was one long series of episodes of ecstasy, vision, and levitation. His superiors had to keep sending him from convent to convent to escape the curious.

John Coulson in his brief biography relates an incident that was all too typical.

“In 1645 the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, the High Admiral of Castile, having spoken for some time with him in his cell at Assisi, said that his wife too would like to meet him. The Father Guardian told him to go down to the church: Joseph said he would obey but did not know whether he would be able to speak to her. He entered the church, saw a statue of our Lady over the altar and straightway flew some twelve paces above the onlookers to its feet, and after a while, ‘uttering his customary shrill cry’, returned to the floor and then his cell, having said nothing to the Admiral, his wife and their large retinue. Instances could be multiplied up to the last month of Joseph’s life.”

Through it all St. Joseph of Cupertino kept his sense of peace and humility. It almost seems as if his life was written as an object lesson about the need for men in religious orders to temper and even validate their spirituality through obedience. This is not an uncommon theme of the time. How much of this is history, legend, and myth?

The art of writing about the lives of saints – hagiography – has undergone extensive criticism in the last 100 years. St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, was removed from the Church calendar by the Vatican in 1969 because there wasn’t enough historical evidence that he had existed or had lived a life of holiness. Many lives of saints had become embellished over the centuries. For example, St. Nicholas was said to have stood up in the bathtub as an infant and preached a sermon.

In the 17th century, a group of Jesuit scholars, the Bollandists, were commissioned by the Pope to prepare a definitive collection of the Acta Sanctorum, The Lives of the Saints – or literally, the Deeds of the Saints. In a bow to the Enlightenment and rationalism, the resulting investigations cleared away a lot of misinformation and also validated significant historical information.

We might expect that the flying Franciscan would have been relegated to the dustbin of history. However, the historical testimony of Pope Urban VIII, who saw St. Joseph of Cupertino in ecstasy, the accounts of powerful nobles and officials who saw his miracles, and the records of the Inquisition, bear historical witness to a saint who baffled his contemporaries as much as he baffles us today.

St. Joseph of Cupertino defies our psychological categories. We could use the terms: hysteria, seizure disorders, aphasia, schizophrenia. Yet he certainly did not fit the social norm of insanity. Against the odds, his superiors judged him worthy of ordination to the priesthood, although his paranormal behavior prevented him from saying Mass in church and participating in processions. In 35 years he could not eat in the common dining room (refectory) or participate in the “choir” or singing of the Liturgy of the Hours (The Divine Office). His creativity in solving problems seems to remove him from the idiot savant category.

If we can’t explain away his behavior as a mental illness, then perhaps we are getting a glimpse of what it means to have a lifestyle of intense religious experience. If we leave science behind, we enter into the language of faith itself, or at a minimum, we enter the language of theoretical physics by talking about additional dimensions beyond the space-time continuum or the notion of parallel universes.

As I wrestle for some type of explanation, I feel that at any moment people will come rushing forward to tell me that I have made a fool of myself in front of some hidden camera. On the other hand, maybe that is what St. Joseph of Cupertino is all about.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

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