The feast of St Ambrose and the recycling of responsories (Responsories Pt 4)

Late antique mosaic in St.Ambrogio church in Milan
Source: Wiki commons

St Ambrose

Today is the feast of St Ambrose, a wonderful saint, who Pope Benedict XVI, in a  General Audience you can read here credited with the introduction of lectio divina to the West.

One of his key works to this end is his commentary on Psalm 118, which has as its base a translation and adaption of Origen's (now lost except in the form of catena extracts) commentary on the longest of the psalms, which had also been translated into Latin (with some amendments) independently by St Hilary of Poitiers a few decades earlier.  

St Ambrose's commentary though, is some four times larger than St Hilary's version, expanded by instruction on lectio divina; its links to contemplation through an embedded commentary on the Song of Songs; as well as an extended discussion of humility that may have influenced the ordering of the twelve steps of humility in the Rule as well as the organisation of  Psalm 118 in the Benedictine Office (1). 

The responsories and memory

I hope to come back to St Ambrose's influence on St Benedict in due course, but today I want to continue my discussion of the responsory repertoire of Matins, picking up from the point I made yesterday about it being a largely oral repertoire for several centuries.

One of the key questions for the responsories is, what strategies did monks use to maintain the repertoire?

Memorising

Most people's memories in late antiquity were, of course, much better trained than ours.  Monks for example, were expected to memorise the entire psalter and be able to sing it from memory.  

But then as now, some found it much easier to do than others.  There are two nice saint's stories that draw out just how major an undertaking this could be.   Many monks could learn the psalter in a year or so.  St Alexander the Sleepless, however, a Syrian monk who eventually ended up in Constantinople, and famous for the perpetual liturgy he established there, which involved shifts of monks,  apparently took seven years to learn the psalter, because, his biographer tells us, he insisted on knowing their meanings as he learnt them (2).

Similarly, when the seventh century Northumbrian monk (later bishop) St Wilfrid decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, he first headed for Kent, where he spent a year relearning the psalter according to the version in use in Rome, as he had previously learnt St Jerome's other translation (3).

Collective memory

Even with this effort though, it is unlikely that all monks learnt all of the responsories.

Monks generally learned large chunks of Scripture by heart for example, but some early sources suggest that different monks in a community would learn different sections of Scripture, and then would be responsible for those particular readings in the Office.  Over time of course, greater availability of books, certainly implied by St Benedict's Rule, probably reduced the need for this.  But something similar could well have occurred with responsories, with different monks responsible for maintaining different parts of the repertoire.

The other key factor in their maintenance though, was the repurposing of  responsories for different feasts and occasions.

'Stock' responsories (1) The saints

For feasts like today's of St Ambrose, for example, there are actually no responsories specific to the saint in the Roman or Benedictine Offices even today.  Instead, the responsories linked to the feast are those of the 'Common of a confessor bishop and doctor'.

Similarly, two of today's 'Advent' responsories actually are actually also used on the feast of the Annunciation, possibly remnants of the original placement of this feast before Christmas rather than in March.

This practice of reusing responsories for different feasts is nicely attested to by a ninth century antiphoner from Prüm dating from the 860s which represents the earliest surviving Benedictine antiphoner, and which Todd Mattingly has argued is derived from a now lost exemplar that was intended to serve as a kind of how to say the Benedictine (rather than Roman) Office starter-kit, including where to source the additional responsories needed, such as from the various Commons (4).

Properization?

And unlike the Mass, where 'properization' (fixing of texts to particular feasts) seems to have largely finalised by at least the eighth century (and probably a lot earlier for many days), there seems to have been a great deal more flexibility around which responsories were used and when until quite late, probably reflecting that earlier reliance on memory and perhaps dependence on the availability of particular singers for particular chants.

The late tenth century Hartker MSS, for example, gives a choice of fourteen different responsories for the common of a confessor, for example, two more than could ever be needed.  By contrast, it only lists three responsories for the feast of All Saints.  That doesn't mean that only three responsories were said however - even in the 1960 version, the feast  has only two unique responsories; the rest are drawn from the feasts of various saints and from the commons.

All of this has important implications for the history of the Office, not least because several historians have pointed to the lack of a sufficient number of responsories in early antiphoners as a key plank for their claims that the Benedictine Office was not said in Gaul or Anglo-Saxon England until the tenth century, and that the Carolingian reforms aimed at imposing the Rule and Office on all monks were probably never fully implemented in practice (5).

But more on this anon.

Missus est angelus

In the meantime, enjoy this version of one of today's responsories, also used for the feast of the Annunciation:

R. Missus est / Gábriel Angelus ad Maríam Vírginem desponsátam Ioseph, † núntians ei verbum; et expavéscit Virgo de lúmine: † ne tímeas, María, invenísti grátiam apud Dóminum: * Ecce concípies, et páries, † et vocábitur Altíssimi Fílius. V. Dabit ei Dóminus Deus sedem David, patris eius, et regnábit in domo Iacob in ætérnum. R. Ecce concípies, et páries, † et vocábitur Altíssimi Fílius.

R. The Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, a Virgin espoused to Joseph, to bring unto her the word of the Lord, and when the Virgin saw the light, she was afraid. Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace from the Lord. * Behold, thou shalt conceive and bring forth a son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest. V. The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. R. Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bring forth a son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest.

You can find a copy of the chant setting here.

Notes

1.  For a discussion of the differences between Hilary and Ambrose's translations, with comparisons to the Palestinian catena, see Isabella Image, The Human Condition in Hilary of Poitiers The Will and Original Sin between Origen and Augustine, Oxford, 2017.

2.  Translations of the Life of St Alexander the Sleepless can be found in Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, 2002, pp 250 - 280 and Jean-marie Baguendard (trans), Les Moines acémètes, Vies des Saints Alexandre, Marcel et Jean Calybite, Bellefintaine, 1988.

3. Eddius Stephanus, Life of Wilfrid.  A translation by J F Webb is available in Penguin under the title the Age of Bede.  It is not clear that Wilfrid needed the entire year to relearn the psalter - his hagiographer claims he was held up in Kent in part by the need to find a satisfactory escort  and obtain royal permission for his departure.  But as Susan Rankin pointed out in 'Singing the Psalter in the Early Middle Ages' (in Daniel J Di Censo and Rebecca Maloy eds, Chant, Liturgy and the Inheritance of Rome Essays in Honour of Joseph Dyer, London 2017), it was not simply a matter of learning the variant texts, but also absorbing differences in how the psalms were divided into verses and sub-divided for pause places.

4. Todd Matthew Mattingly, "Trier Stadtbibliothek 1245/597:A Ninth-Century Antiphoner and the Conciliar Origins of the Monastic Office", paper given at the Leeds Medieval Congress, July 2014.

5.  Anne Walters Robertson, The Service-Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages,  Oxford, 1991; Jesse Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, 597-c.1000. London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2014.

St Martin of Tours and the missing monastic saints of the Office

Shield, on the medieval city walls of Aigues-Mortes, depicting St-Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar.
Source: Wikicommons, photo by Ad Meskens

I want to draw your attention to one of the oddities of the Benedictine sanctoral calendar, namely its longstanding decidedly un-monastic focus.

St Martin, as I've written previously is a wonderful saint, and one certainly worth celebrating.

Feast rankings

The ranking of the feast as Class II in the 1960 monastic calendar though, is something of an oddity, since St Martin is the only non-Benedictine monastic saint to be accorded this level of feast in the 1960 monastic calendar, and the feast is ranked only as a Class III one in the Roman calendar.

All of the other feasts of monastic saints of the same rank (duplex majus) in the previous versions of the calendar - such as those of St Basil the Great and St Augustine - were downgraded to Class III feasts rather than Class I or II, when translated into the 1960 calendar.

The rationale for the reduction of feasts to Class III is, I think, fairly obvious and understandable.  In the Roman Office, whose calendar the Benedictine has largely mimicked since Trent, there was a huge incentive to add more feasts, since festal Matins in the Roman Office was significantly shorter than the ferial version, with nine psalms said rather than twelve.

In the Benedictine Office, though, the effect of higher level feasts is diametrically opposite: the length of the already relatively long Night Office more than doubles.  Instead of one or three readings, Matins of Class II feasts has twelve readings and responsories, as well as an extra Nocturn made up of three canticles, two extra hymns (the Te Deum and Te decet laus) are added, as well as a gospel reading.

Why then did St Martin escape the reforms?

Monastic saints in the Benedictine calendar

In general the monastic calendar gives pretty short shrift to most monastic saints, Benedictine or otherwise. 

Although the key later medieval founders of religious institutes are generally well-presented in the calendar, many key earlier monastic saints are missing altogether.  St Pachomius, for example, was only added to the monastic calendar (as a memorial) in 1960; St John Cassian, though long listed in the martyrology (and present in some of the earliest, such as that associated with St Bede) for July 23, still does not feature in the calendar at all.

Even Benedictine saints are sparsely represented in the General Calendar - very few of the Order's wealth of saints are actually included at all, and even where they are, there are cases where they are actually ranked lower than in the Roman calendar.

St Benedict aside, the only monastic saints ranked Class II (or above) are St Scholastica (St Benedict's twin sister), St Gregory the Great (author of the Life of St Benedict) and, in the case of woman's monasteries only, St Gertrude the Great.

Trent and local traditions

This lack of emphasis on monastic saints did not actually originate in 1960 or even 1913, date of the previous major cull of the Benedictine calendar, though those purges certainly exacerbated the problem.

Rather, as far as I can see, the issue is a longstanding one, dating back, as far as I can see to the post Tridentine breviaries, which, as part of the counter-reformation purge of saints and imposition of a uniform calendar, largely wiped out a great wealth of monastic feasts and local cults to be found in medieval calendars.

Instead, the Breviaries of Paul V and Urban VIII largely mirrored the Roman calendar, albeit with a few supplemental feasts and approvals for saints particular to congregations and monasteries.

St Martin and St Benedict

The reason for the prominence given to St Martin in the 1960 calendar presumably goes firstly to the fact that St Benedict dedicated a chapel to the saint at Monte Cassino and secondly to his status as a soldier-saint (given the soldiers of Christ imagery in the Benedictine Rule).

The connection between the two saints seems to have continued in Rome as well, since one of the four monasteries, almost certainly Benedictine, that supported St Peter's basilica in the mid seventh century, was dedicated to St Martin.

St Martin's prominence in a 1960s era calendar though, is a little surprising since St Benedict's reason for dedicating a chapel to him was probably to highlight his own adoption of St Martin's (very un-PC) activist missionary approach, which included converting pagan temples, as St Benedict also did at Monte Cassino, into monasteries and churches.

St Martin, though, was an extremely popular saint throughout the middle ages, and an influential model referred to in many early rules and monastic texts, almost displacing (or at least equaling references to St Antony) in the West.  

Martinian monasticism

Missionary activity aside though, St Martin's form of monasticism seems to have been very different in character to that promoted by St Benedict.

Although RB 1980, written some forty years ago now, could claim that the monastic life as lived in late antiquity was pretty much the same everywhere, few historians would accept that today.

Rather, historians are rediscovering, for late antiquity, the existence of what modern catholics would call distinct charisms - quite diverse forms of monastic life founded on very different theological and spiritual principles.

Where St Benedict, for example, advocated manual work, and encouraged his monks to try and support themselves as far as possible, St Martin's monks followed an entirely different branch of monastic theology, and did no manual work at all (the exception was that junior monks only were allowed to copy manuscripts).

Similarly, when it comes to the liturgy, the two approaches seem to have been very different.  

St Benedict followed St Augustine in urging that prayer be frequent (RB 4), short but fervent (RB 19) rather than literally continuous.   St Benedict's Office probably took up somewhere between four and eight hours a day; by contrast St Martin's seems to have been very long indeed, swallowing up most of the monastic day and night.  

Indeed, even once Cassian's advocacy for a twelve psalm maximum for an hour of the Office had spread to Tours, the 567 Synod of Tours rather creatively reinterpreted the 'Rule of the Angel' as setting a minimum number of psalms rather than a maximum 'out of honour and reverence' for St Martin! 

Influences on St Benedict?

On the face of it, then, if you were thinking about which (if any) pre-Benedictine monastic saints merited Class II status in the Benedictine calendar, I for one would be inclined to place St Basil the Great and St Augustine higher on my list.  

That said, the life of St Martin is certainly an inspiring one, both as a model of charity, of determination to confront, combat and convert both pagans and Arian heretics, and as a monastic founder.

St Romuald OSB (June 19; Feb 7)

Fr Angelico

Today is the feast of St Romuald in some calendars - in the 1962 calendar his feast is celebrated in Feburary, but he actually died on June 19 and his feast has been restored to the date in most modern calenars.  The Martyrology says:

At Ravenna, St. Romuald, anchoret, founder of the monks of Carnaldoli, who restored and greatly extended monastic discipline, which was much relaxed in Italy. He is also mentioned on the 7th of February.

You can read more about the saint here.

January 29: St Frances de Sales, Memorial

Saint Francis de Sales, August 21, 1567 – December 28, 1622 was Bishop of Geneva and is a doctor of the Church. He is best known for his writings, particularly Introduction to the Devout Life.

A useful article on Salesian spirituality by Mgr Francis Vincent argues that the starting point of St Frances' theology is optimism.  He quotes from a sermon by the saint:

"When sinners become so hardened in their sins that they live as if there were no God, no heaven, no hell, then it is that the Lord makes known to them His pity and the sweetness of His mercy."

He stressed the need for interior reform, and the desire for love, as the basis for spiritual progress.

In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI gave one of his splendid General Audiences on the saint:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“God is God of the human heart” (The Treatise on the Love of God, I, XV). These apparently simple words give us an impression of the spirituality of a great teacher of whom I would like to speak to you today: St Francis de Sales, a Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

Born in 1567, in a French border region, he was the son of the Lord of Boisy, an ancient and noble family of Savoy. His life straddled two centuries, the 16th and 17th, and he summed up in himself the best of the teachings and cultural achievements of the century drawing to a close, reconciling the heritage of humanism striving for the Absolute that is proper to mystical currents.

He received a very careful education; he undertook higher studies in Paris, where he dedicated himself to theology, and at the University of Padua, where he studied jurisprudence, complying with his father’s wishes and graduating brilliantly with degrees in utroque iure, in canon law and in civil law.

In his harmonious youth, reflection on the thought of St Augustine and of St Thomas Aquinas led to a deep crisis. This prompted him to question his own eternal salvation and the predestination of God concerning himself; he suffered as a true spiritual drama the principal theological issues of his time. He prayed intensely but was so fiercely tormented by doubt that for a few weeks he could barely eat or sleep.

At the climax of his trial, he went to the Dominicans’ church in Paris, opened his heart and prayed in these words: “Whatever happens, Lord, you who hold all things in your hand and whose ways are justice and truth; whatever you have ordained for me... you who are ever a just judge and a merciful Father, I will love you Lord.... I will love you here, O my God, and I will always hope in your mercy and will always repeat your praise.... O Lord Jesus you will always be my hope and my salvation in the land of the living” (I Proc. Canon., Vol. I, art. 4).

The 20-year-old Francis found peace in the radical and liberating love of God: loving him without asking anything in return and trusting in divine love; no longer asking what will God do with me: I simply love him, independently of all that he gives me or does not give me. Thus I find peace and the question of predestination — which was being discussed at that time — was resolved, because he no longer sought what he might receive from God; he simply loved God and abandoned himself to his goodness. And this was to be the secret of his life which would shine out in his main work: the The Treatise on the Love of God.

Overcoming his father’s resistance, Francis followed the Lord’s call and was ordained a priest on 18 December 1593. In 1602, he became Bishop of Geneva, in a period in which the city was the stronghold of Calvinism so that his episcopal see was transferred, “in exile” to Annecy.

As the Pastor of a poor and tormented diocese in a mountainous area whose harshness was as well known as its beauty, he wrote: “I found [God] sweet and gentle among our loftiest rugged mountains, where many simple souls love him and worship him in all truth and sincerity; and mountain goats and chamois leap here and there between the fearful frozen peaks to proclaim his praise” (Letter to Mother de Chantal, October 1606, in Oeuvres, éd. Mackey, t. XIII, p. 223).

Nevertheless the influence of his life and his teaching on Europe in that period and in the following centuries is immense. He was an apostle, preacher, writer, man of action and of prayer dedicated to implanting the ideals of the Council of Trent; he was involved in controversial issues dialogue with the Protestants, experiencing increasingly, over and above the necessary theological confrontation, the effectiveness of personal relationship and of charity; he was charged with diplomatic missions in Europe and with social duties of mediation and reconciliation.

Yet above all St Francis de Sales was a director: from his encounter with a young woman, Madame de Charmoisy, he was to draw the inspiration to write one of the most widely read books of the modern age, The Introduction to a Devout Life.

A new religious family was to come into being from his profound spiritual communion with an exceptional figure, St Jane Frances de Chantal: The Foundation of the Visitation, as the Saint wished, was characterized by total consecration to God lived in simplicity and humility, in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well: “I want my Daughters”, he wrote, not to have any other ideal than that of glorifying [Our Lord] with their humility” (Letter to Bishop de Marquemond, June 1615). He died in 1622, at the age of 55, after a life marked by the hardness of the times and by his apostolic effort.

The life of St Francis de Sales was a relatively short life but was lived with great intensity. The figure of this Saint radiates an impression of rare fullness, demonstrated in the serenity of his intellectual research, but also in the riches of his affection and the “sweetness” of his teachings, which had an important influence on the Christian conscience.

He embodied the different meanings of the word “humanity” which this term can assume today, as it could in the past: culture and courtesy, freedom and tenderness, nobility and solidarity. His appearance reflected something of the majesty of the landscape in which he lived and preserved its simplicity and naturalness. Moreover the words of the past and the images he used resonate unexpectedly in the ears of men and women today, as a native and familiar language.

To Philotea, the ideal person to whom he dedicated his Introduction to a Devout Life (1607), Francis de Sales addressed an invitation that might well have seemed revolutionary at the time. It is the invitation to belong completely to God, while living to the full her presence in the world and the tasks proper to her state. “My intention is to teach those who are living in towns, in the conjugal state, at court” (Preface to The Introduction to a Devout Life). The Document with which Pope Leo xiii, more than two centuries later, was to proclaim him a Doctor of the Church, would insist on this expansion of the call to perfection, to holiness.

It says: “[true piety] shone its light everywhere and gained entrance to the thrones of kings, the tents of generals, the courts of judges, custom houses, workshops, and even the huts of herdsmen” (cf. Brief, Dives in Misericordia, 16 November 1877).

Thus came into being the appeal to lay people and the care for the consecration of temporal things and for the sanctification of daily life on which the Second Vatican Council and the spirituality of our time were to insist.

The ideal of a reconciled humanity was expressed in the harmony between prayer and action in the world, between the search for perfection and the secular condition, with the help of God’s grace that permeates the human being and, without destroying him, purifies him, raising him to divine heights. To Theotimus, the spiritually mature Christian adult to whom a few years later he addressed his Treatise on the Love of God, St Francis de Sales offered a more complex lesson.

At the beginning it presents a precise vision of the human being, an anthropology: human “reason”, indeed “our soul in so far as it is reasonable”, is seen there as harmonious architecture, a temple, divided into various courts around a centre, which, together with the great mystics he calls the “extremity and summit of our soul, this highest point of our spirit”.

This is the point where reason, having ascended all its steps, “closes its eyes” and knowledge becomes one with love (cf. Book I, chapter XII). The fact that love in its theological and divine dimension, may be the raison d’être of all things, on an ascending ladder that does not seem to experience breaks or abysses, St Francis de Sales summed up in a famous sentence: “man is the perfection of the universe; the spirit is the perfection of man; love, that of the spirit; and charity, that of love” (ibid., Book X, chap. 1).

In an intensely flourishing season of mysticism The Treatise on the Love of God was a true and proper summa and at the same time a fascinating literary work. St Francis’ description of the journey towards God starts from recognition of the “natural inclination” (ibid., Book 1, chapter XVI), planted in man’s heart — although he is a sinner — to love God above all things.

According to the model of Sacred Scripture, St Francis de Sales speaks of the union between God and man, developing a whole series of images and interpersonal relationships. His God is Father and Lord, husband and friend, who has the characteristics of mother and of wet-nurse and is the sun of which even the night is a mysterious revelation. Such a God draws man to himself with bonds of love, namely, true freedom for: “love has neither convicts nor slaves, but brings all things under its obedience with a force so delightful, that as nothing is so strong as love nothing also is so sweet as its strength” (ibid., Book 1, chapter VI).

In our Saint’s Treatise we find a profound meditation on the human will and the description of its flowing, passing and dying in order to live (cf. ibid. Book IX, chapter XIII) in complete surrender not only to God’s will but also to what pleases him, to his “bon plaisir”, his good pleasure (cf. ibid., Book IX, chapter I).

As well as by raptures of contemplative ecstasy, union with God is crowned by that reappearance of charitable action that is attentive to all the needs of others and which he calls “the ecstasy of action and life” (ibid., Book VII, chapter VI).

In reading his book on the love of God and especially his many letters of spiritual direction and friendship one clearly perceives that St Francis was well acquainted with the human heart. He wrote to St Jane de Chantal: “... this is the rule of our obedience, which I write for you in capital letters: do all through love, nothing through constraint; love obedience more than you fear disobedience. I leave you the spirit of freedom, not that which excludes obedience, which is the freedom of the world, but that liberty that excludes violence, anxiety and scruples” (Letter of 14 October 1604).

It is not for nothing that we rediscover traces precisely of this teacher at the origin of many contemporary paths of pedagogy and spirituality; without him neither St John Bosco nor the heroic “Little Way” of St Thérèse of Lisieux would have have come into being.

Dear brothers and sisters, in an age such as ours that seeks freedom, even with violence and unrest, the timeliness of this great teacher of spirituality and peace who gave his followers the “spirit of freedom”, the true spirit.


St Francis de Sales is an exemplary witness of Christian humanism; with his familiar style, with words which at times have a poetic touch, he reminds us that human beings have planted in their innermost depths the longing for God and that in him alone can they find true joy and the most complete fulfilment.

January 28: St Cyril of Alexandria, Memorial

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376 - 444), bishop and doctor of the Church, played a central role in the first Council of Ephesus, but he remains controversial character in several respects, perhaps the reason he did not make it into the Roman calendar until 1882 (when he was declared a doctor of the Church).

Patron of unity with the East?

Two twentieth century Popes, Pius XI &XII wrote encyclicals on him, seeing him as a possible patron of Christian unity given his strongly pro-Roman primacy stance.  In Orientalis Ecclesiae, Pius XII wrote:

"St. Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, glory of the Eastern Church and celebrated champion of the Virgin Mother of God, has always been held by the Church in the highest esteem, and We welcome the opportunity of recalling his merits in this brief Letter, now that fifteen centuries have passed since he happily exchanged this earthly exile for his heavenly home.

Our Predecessor St. Celestine I hailed him as 'good defender of the Catholic faith,' as 'excellent priest,' as 'apostolic man.' The ecumenical Council of Chalcedon not only used his doctrine for the detecting and refuting of the latest errors, but went so far as to compare it with the learning of St. Leo the Great; and in fact the latter praised and commended the writings of this great Doctor because of their perfect agreement with the faith of the holy Fathers. The fifth ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople, treated St. Cyril's authority with similar reverence and many years later, during the controversy about the two wills in Christ, his teaching was rightly and triumphantly vindicated, both in the first Lateran Council and in the sixth ecumenical Council, against the false charge of being tainted with the error of Monothelitism. He was, as Our saintly Predecessor Agatho proclaimed, 'a defender of the truth' and 'a consistent teacher of the orthodox faith.'

We therefore think it proper in this Letter to give some account of his spotless life, faith, and virtue; and this for the benefit of all, but especially of those who belong to the Eastern Church and therefore have good reason to be proud of this luminary of Christian wisdom, this valiant hero of the apostolate."

Politics and the mob?

St Cyril might, however, also be a possible patron for those given to forthrightness in the pursuit of truth, and direct in their action to pursue its triumph.  Fr Rengers, in his 'The 33 Doctors of the Church', describes him as an extremely forceful character.  Norman Russell, in Cyril of Alexandria, describes him as "a man of iron will and a consummate ecclesiastical politician."  Secular historians are less generous.

Certainly politics in Alexandria at the time were highly volatile, and Cyril was an active player to various degrees in several nasty conflicts, using at times mobs of rioting desert monks and other vigorous means to advance his agenda in conflict with the secular authorities, Jewish population, heretics, pagans and the Church of Constantinople (his predecessor uncle played a lead role in the deposition of St John Chrysostom, and Bishop Cyril had a series on going quarrels with the See, even before he played the central role in the deposition of bishop Nestorius, see below) .  One lynch mob of monks was responsible for the death of the philosopher Hypatia, though there seems to be no evidence whatsoever of Cyril's direct involvement in this.

St Cyril is most remembered however for his role in the Council of Ephesus in 431, convened to deal with the Nestorian heresy, the view that Our Lady was not Mother of God, being propagated by the bishop of Constantinople.  St Cyril managed to get the right outcome from the Council in part by starting and finishing the Council before Nestorius and his followers (or for that matter, the Papal legates) had arrived.  He then proceeded to communicate the outcome to Nestorius, writing:

"To Nestorius, the new Judas.  Know that by reason of your impious preachings and disobedience to the canons on the 22nd of this month of June, in conformity with the rules of the Church, you have been deposed by the Holy Synod, and you now no longer have any rank in the Church."

Needless to say, the matter was not  resolved, as Nestorius faction convened a counter "Robber Council of Ephesus", sparking a schism that, despite the subsequent efforts of St Cyril to conciliate the situation, was only finally resolved at Chalcedon in 451.

Nonetheless, St Cyril was an important theologian of the first rank, who made significant contributions on the nature of Christ, in fighting for the title of Our Lady as Theotokos (Mother of God), and in defending the faith in his patriarchy.

Pope Benedict XVI gave a General Audience on the saint on 3 October 2007 which helps put his life into perspective.

January 27: St John Chrysostom, Class III

I've become a considerable fan of St John Chrysostom of late largely due to his wonderful commentaries on many of the psalms.  But his life too holds much interest for us (could be I'm particularly attracted to his fearlessness or tactlessness - depending on your perspective  - in denouncing those in high places in both Church and State!).

In any case, Pope Benedict XVI has devoted two General Audiences to this doctor of the Church.  Here is the first one (from 19 September 2007):

"This year is the 16th centenary of St John Chrysostom's death (407-2007). It can be said that John of Antioch, nicknamed "Chrysostom", that is, "golden-mouthed", because of his eloquence, is also still alive today because of his works. An anonymous copyist left in writing that "they cross the whole globe like flashes of lightening".

Chrysostom's writings also enable us, as they did the faithful of his time whom his frequent exiles deprived of his presence, to live with his books, despite his absence. This is what he himself suggested in a letter when he was in exile (To Olympias, Letter 8, 45).

He was born in about the year 349 A.D. in Antioch, Syria (today Antakya in Southern Turkey). He carried out his priestly ministry there for about 11 years, until 397, when, appointed Bishop of Constantinople, he exercised his episcopal ministry in the capital of the Empire prior to his two exiles, which succeeded one close upon the other - in 403 and 407. Let us limit ourselves today to examining the years Chrysostom spent in Antioch.

He lost his father at a tender age and lived with Anthusa, his mother, who instilled in him exquisite human sensitivity and a deep Christian faith.

After completing his elementary and advanced studies crowned by courses in philosophy and rhetoric, he had as his teacher, Libanius, a pagan and the most famous rhetorician of that time. At his school John became the greatest orator of late Greek antiquity.

He was baptized in 368 and trained for the ecclesiastical life by Bishop Meletius, who instituted him as lector in 371. This event marked Chrysostom's official entry into the ecclesiastical cursus. From 367 to 372, he attended the Asceterius, a sort of seminary in Antioch, together with a group of young men, some of whom later became Bishops, under the guidance of the exegete Diodore of Tarsus, who initiated John into the literal and grammatical exegesis characteristic of Antiochean tradition.

He then withdrew for four years to the hermits on the neighbouring Mount Silpius. He extended his retreat for a further two years, living alone in a cave under the guidance of an "old hermit". In that period, he dedicated himself unreservedly to meditating on "the laws of Christ", the Gospels and especially the Letters of Paul. Having fallen ill, he found it impossible to care for himself unaided, and therefore had to return to the Christian community in Antioch (cf. Palladius, Dialogue on the Life of St John Chrysostom, 5).

The Lord, his biographer explains, intervened with the illness at the right moment to enable John to follow his true vocation. In fact, he himself was later to write that were he to choose between the troubles of Church government and the tranquillity of monastic life, he would have preferred pastoral service a thousand times (cf. On the Priesthood, 6, 7): it was precisely to this that Chrysostom felt called.

It was here that he reached the crucial turning point in the story of his vocation: a full-time pastor of souls! Intimacy with the Word of God, cultivated in his years at the hermitage, had developed in him an irresistible urge to preach the Gospel, to give to others what he himself had received in his years of meditation. The missionary ideal thus launched him into pastoral care, his heart on fire.

Between 378 and 379, he returned to the city. He was ordained a deacon in 381 and a priest in 386, and became a famous preacher in his city's churches. He preached homilies against the Arians, followed by homilies commemorating the Antiochean martyrs and other important liturgical celebrations: this was an important teaching of faith in Christ and also in the light of his Saints.

The year 387 was John's "heroic year", that of the so-called "revolt of the statues". As a sign of protest against levied taxes, the people destroyed the Emperor's statues. It was in those days of Lent and the fear of the Emperor's impending reprisal that Chrysostom gave his 22 vibrant Homilies on the Statues, whose aim was to induce repentance and conversion. This was followed by a period of serene pastoral care (387-397).

Chrysostom is among the most prolific of the Fathers: 17 treatises, more than 700 authentic homilies, commentaries on Matthew and on Paul (Letters to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians and Hebrews) and 241 letters are extant. He was not a speculative theologian.

Nevertheless, he passed on the Church's tradition and reliable doctrine in an age of theological controversies, sparked above all by Arianism or, in other words, the denial of Christ's divinity. He is therefore a trustworthy witness of the dogmatic development achieved by the Church from the fourth to the fifth centuries.

His is a perfectly pastoral theology in which there is constant concern for consistency between thought expressed via words and existential experience. It is this in particular that forms the main theme of the splendid catecheses with which he prepared catechumens to receive Baptism.

On approaching death, he wrote that the value of the human being lies in "exact knowledge of true doctrine and in rectitude of life" (Letter from Exile). Both these things, knowledge of truth and rectitude of life, go hand in hand: knowledge has to be expressed in life. All his discourses aimed to develop in the faithful the use of intelligence, of true reason, in order to understand and to put into practice the moral and spiritual requirements of faith.

John Chrysostom was anxious to accompany his writings with the person's integral development in his physical, intellectual and religious dimensions. The various phases of his growth are compared to as many seas in an immense ocean: "The first of these seas is childhood" (Homily, 81, 5 on Matthew's Gospel).

Indeed, "it is precisely at this early age that inclinations to vice or virtue are manifest". Thus, God's law must be impressed upon the soul from the outset "as on a wax tablet" (Homily 3, 1 on John's Gospel): This is indeed the most important age. We must bear in mind how fundamentally important it is that the great orientations which give man a proper outlook on life truly enter him in this first phase of life.

Chrysostom therefore recommended: "From the tenderest age, arm children with spiritual weapons and teach them to make the Sign of the Cross on their forehead with their hand" (Homily, 12, 7 on First Corinthians).

Then come adolescence and youth: "Following childhood is the sea of adolescence, where violent winds blow..., for concupiscence... grows within us" (Homily 81, 5 on Matthew's Gospel).

Lastly comes engagement and marriage: "Youth is succeeded by the age of the mature person who assumes family commitments: this is the time to seek a wife" (ibid.).

He recalls the aims of marriage, enriching them - referring to virtue and temperance - with a rich fabric of personal relationships. Properly prepared spouses therefore bar the way to divorce: everything takes place with joy and children can be educated in virtue. Then when the first child is born, he is "like a bridge; the three become one flesh, because the child joins the two parts" (Homily 12, 5 on the Letter to the Colossians), and the three constitute "a family, a Church in miniature" (Homily 20, 6 on the Letter to the Ephesians).

Chrysostom's preaching usually took place during the liturgy, the "place" where the community is built with the Word and the Eucharist. The assembly gathered here expresses the one Church (Homily 8, 7 on the Letter to the Romans), the same word is addressed everywhere to all (Homily 24, 2 on First Corinthians), and Eucharistic Communion becomes an effective sign of unity (Homily 32, 7 on Matthew's Gospel).

His pastoral project was incorporated into the Church's life, in which the lay faithful assume the priestly, royal and prophetic office with Baptism. To the lay faithful he said: "Baptism will also make you king, priest and prophet" (Homily 3, 5 on Second Corinthians).

From this stems the fundamental duty of the mission, because each one is to some extent responsible for the salvation of others: "This is the principle of our social life... not to be solely concerned with ourselves!" (Homily 9, 2 on Genesis). This all takes place between two poles: the great Church and the "Church in miniature", the family, in a reciprocal relationship.

As you can see, dear brothers and sisters, Chrysostom's lesson on the authentically Christian presence of the lay faithful in the family and in society is still more timely than ever today. Let us pray to the Lord to make us docile to the teachings of this great Master of the faith."

You can read the second of the Holy Father's commentaries on the saint here.

January 26: St Polycarp

St Polycarp (69 – 155 AD) was a 2nd century bishop of Smyrna, martyred for refusing to burn incense to the Emperor.  The account of his martyrdom is one of the earliest surviving of such accounts.  And his Epistle to the Philippians is similarly important as one of the earliest documents of the Fathers.

He is particularly important as a documented link in the apostolic succession: his pupil St Irenaeus relates that he heard the account of Polycarp's discussion with "John the Presbyter" (St John the Evangelist) and with others who had seen Jesus. Irenaeus also reports that Polycarp was converted to Christianity by apostles, was consecrated a bishop, and communicated with many who had seen Jesus.

He also featured in an early play of the controversy of the date for Easter, favouring what has become the Orthodox tradition, and attributing the dating to St John.  He travelled to Rome to discuss the issue with the Pope of the time, however, and St Irenaeus reported that they agreed to each do their own thing on the matter:

"When the blessed Polycarp was at Rome in the time of Anicetus, and they disagreed a little about certain other things, they immediately made peace with one another, not caring to quarrel over this matter. For neither could Anicetus persuade Polycarp not to observe what he had always observed with John, the disciple of our Lord, and the other apostles with whom he associated.... Neither could Polycarp persuade Anicetus to observe it."

January 25: Conversion of St Paul, Class III

Pope Benedict XVI devoted a General Audience to the subject of St Paul's conversion, on 3 September 2008:

"Today's Catechesis is dedicated to the experience that Paul had on his way to Damascus, and therefore on what is commonly known as his conversion. It was precisely on the road to Damascus, at the beginning of the 30s in the first century and after a period in which he had persecuted the Church that the decisive moment in Paul's life occurred. Much has been written about it and naturally from different points of view. It is certain that he reached a turning point there, indeed a reversal of perspective. And so he began, unexpectedly, to consider as "loss" and "refuse" all that had earlier constituted his greatest ideal, as it were the raison d'être of his life (cf. Phil 3: 7-8). What had happened?

In this regard we have two types of source. The first kind, the best known, consists of the accounts we owe to the pen of Luke, who tells of the event at least three times in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 9: 1-19; 22: 3-21; 26: 4-23). The average reader may be tempted to linger too long on certain details, such as the light in the sky, falling to the ground, the voice that called him, his new condition of blindness, his healing like scales falling from his eyes and the fast that he made. But all these details refer to the heart of the event: the Risen Christ appears as a brilliant light and speaks to Saul, transforms his thinking and his entire life. The dazzling radiance of the Risen Christ blinds him; thus what was his inner reality is also outwardly apparent, his blindness to the truth, to the light that is Christ. And then his definitive "yes" to Christ in Baptism restores his sight and makes him really see.

In the ancient Church Baptism was also called "illumination", because this Sacrament gives light; it truly makes one see. In Paul what is pointed out theologically was also brought about physically: healed of his inner blindness, he sees clearly. Thus St Paul was not transformed by a thought but by an event, by the irresistible presence of the Risen One whom subsequently he would never be able to doubt, so powerful had been the evidence of the event, of this encounter. It radically changed Paul's life in a fundamental way; in this sense one can and must speak of a conversion. This encounter is the centre St Luke's account for which it is very probable that he used an account that may well have originated in the community of Damascus. This is suggested by the local colour, provided by Ananias' presence and by the names, of both the street and the owner of the house in which Paul stayed (Acts 9: 11).

The second type of source concerning the conversion consists in St Paul's actual Letters. He never spoke of this event in detail, I think because he presumed that everyone knew the essentials of his story: everyone knew that from being a persecutor he had been transformed into a fervent apostle of Christ. And this had not happened after his own reflection, but after a powerful event, an encounter with the Risen One. Even without speaking in detail, he speaks on various occasions of this most important event, that, in other words he too is a witness of the Resurrection of Jesus, the revelation of which he received directly from Jesus, together with his apostolic mission. The clearest text found is in his narrative of what constitutes the centre of salvation history: the death and Resurrection of Jesus and his appearances to witnesses (cf. 1 Cor 15). In the words of the ancient tradition, which he too received from the Church of Jerusalem, he says that Jesus died on the Cross, was buried and after the Resurrection appeared risen first to Cephas, that is Peter, then to the Twelve, then to 500 brethren, most of whom were still alive at Paul's time, then to James and then to all the Apostles. And to this account handed down by tradition he adds, "Last of all... he appeared also to me" (1 Cor 15: 8). Thus he makes it clear that this is the foundation of his apostolate and of his new life. There are also other texts in which the same thing appears: "Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship" (cf. Rm 1: 4-5); and further: "Have I not seen Jesus Our Lord?" (1 Cor 9: 1), words with which he alludes to something that everyone knows. And lastly, the most widely known text is read in Galatians: "But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus" (1: 15-17). In this "self-apology" he definitely stresses that he is a true witness of the Risen One, that he has received his own mission directly from the Risen One.

Thus we can see that the two sources, the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of St Paul, converge and agree on the fundamental point: the Risen One spoke to Paul, called him to the apostolate and made him a true Apostle, a witness of the Resurrection, with the specific task of proclaiming the Gospel to the Gentiles, to the Greco-Roman world. And at the same time, Paul learned that despite the immediacy of his relationship with the Risen One, he had to enter into communion with the Church, he himself had to be baptized, he had to live in harmony with the other Apostles. Only in such communion with everyone could he have been a true apostle, as he wrote explicitly in the First Letter to the Corinthians: "Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed" (15: 11). There is only one proclamation of the Risen One, because Christ is only one.

As can be seen, in all these passages Paul never once interprets this moment as an event of conversion. Why? There are many hypotheses, but for me the reason is very clear. This turning point in his life, this transformation of his whole being was not the fruit of a psychological process, of a maturation or intellectual and moral development. Rather it came from the outside: it was not the fruit of his thought but of his encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not simply a conversion, a development of his "ego", but rather a death and a resurrection for Paul himself. One existence died and another, new one was born with the Risen Christ. There is no other way in which to explain this renewal of Paul. None of the psychological analyses can clarify or solve the problem. This event alone, this powerful encounter with Christ, is the key to understanding what had happened: death and resurrection, renewal on the part of the One who had shown himself and had spoken to him. In this deeper sense we can and we must speak of conversion. This encounter is a real renewal that changed all his parameters. Now he could say that what had been essential and fundamental for him earlier had become "refuse" for him; it was no longer "gain" but loss, because henceforth the only thing that counted for him was life in Christ.

Nevertheless we must not think that Paul was thus closed in a blind event. The contrary is true because the Risen Christ is the light of truth, the light of God himself. This expanded his heart and made it open to all. At this moment he did not lose all that was good and true in his life, in his heritage, but he understood wisdom, truth, the depth of the law and of the prophets in a new way and in a new way made them his own. At the same time, his reasoning was open to pagan wisdom. Being open to Christ with all his heart, he had become capable of an ample dialogue with everyone, he had become capable of making himself everything to everyone. Thus he could truly be the Apostle to the Gentiles.

Turning now to ourselves, let us ask what this means for us. It means that for us too Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, he does not show himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as he did to Paul to make him the Apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ's Heart and feel him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians. And in this way our reason opens, all Christ's wisdom opens as do all the riches of truth.

Therefore let us pray the Lord to illumine us, to grant us an encounter with his presence in our world, and thus to grant us a lively faith, an open heart and great love for all, which is capable of renewing the world."

January 24: St Timothy, Memorial

St Timothy is most famous as the recipient of two of the letters of St Paul.  He accompanied St Paul on several of his journeys, and was consecrated as bishop of Ephesus by him in 65 AD.  He was martyred in the year 80 AD when he tried to stop a pagan procession through the streets.

Pope Benedict XVI gave a General Audience on him (and St Titus) back in 2006 which is well worth reading:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Having spoken at length on the great Apostle Paul, today let us look at his two closest collaborators: Timothy and Titus. Three Letters traditionally attributed to Paul are addressed to them, two to Timothy and one to Titus.

Timothy is a Greek name which means "one who honours God". Whereas Luke mentions him six times in the Acts, Paul in his Letters refers to him at least 17 times (and his name occurs once in the Letter to the Hebrews).

One may deduce from this that Paul held him in high esteem, even if Luke did not consider it worth telling us all about him.

Indeed, the Apostle entrusted Timothy with important missions and saw him almost as an alter ego, as is evident from his great praise of him in his Letter to the Philippians. "I have no one like him (isópsychon) who will be genuinely anxious for your welfare" (2:20).

Timothy was born at Lystra (about 200 kilometres northwest of Tarsus) of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father (cf. Acts 16:1).

The fact that his mother had contracted a mixed-marriage and did not have her son circumcised suggests that Timothy grew up in a family that was not strictly observant, although it was said that he was acquainted with the Scriptures from childhood (cf. II Tm 3:15). The name of his mother, Eunice, has been handed down to us, as well as that of his grandmother, Lois (cf. II Tm 1:5).

Chosen for his good reputation

When Paul was passing through Lystra at the beginning of his second missionary journey, he chose Timothy to be his companion because "he was well spoken of by the brethren at Lystra and Iconium" (Acts 16:2), but he had him circumcised "because of the Jews that were in those places" (Acts 16:3).

Together with Paul and Silas, Timothy crossed Asia Minor as far as Troy, from where he entered Macedonia. We are informed further that at Philippi, where Paul and Silas were falsely accused of disturbing public order and thrown into prison for having exposed the exploitation of a young girl who was a soothsayer by several unscrupulous individuals (cf. Acts 16:16-40), Timothy was spared.

When Paul was then obliged to proceed to Athens, Timothy joined him in that city and from it was sent out to the young Church of Thessalonica to obtain news about her and to strengthen her in the faith (cf. I Thes 3:1-2). He then met up with the Apostle in Corinth, bringing him good news about the Thessalonians and working with him to evangelize that city (cf. II Cor 1:19).

We find Timothy at Ephesus during Paul's third missionary journey. It was probably from there that the Apostle wrote to Philemon and to the Philippians; he sent both Letters jointly with Timothy (cf. Phlm 1; Phil 1:1).

From Ephesus, Paul sent Timothy to Macedonia, together with a certain Erastus (cf. Acts 19:22), and then also to Corinth with the mission of taking a letter to the Corinthians, in which he recommended that they welcome him warmly (cf. I Cor 4:17; 16:10-11).

We encounter him again as the joint sender of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, and when Paul wrote the Letter to the Romans from Corinth he added Timothy's greetings as well as the greetings of the others (cf. Rom 16:21).

From Corinth, the disciple left for Troy on the Asian coast of the Aegean See and there awaited the Apostle who was bound for Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey (cf. Acts 20:4).

From that moment in Timothy's biography, the ancient sources mention nothing further to us, except for a reference in the Letter to the Hebrews which says: "You should understand that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon" (13:23).

To conclude, we can say that the figure of Timothy stands out as a very important pastor. According to the later Storia Ecclesiastica by Eusebius, Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus (cf. 3, 4). Some of his relics, brought from Constantinople, were found in Italy in 1239 in the Cathedral of Termoli in the Molise.

January 21: St Agnes Class II/III

St Agnes of Rome (c. 291 – c.304) is one of the saints commemorated in the canon of the Mass. 

The saint

A member of the Roman nobility, she was raised in a Christian family and martyred at the age of 12 or 13 under Diocletian. 

According to her legend, the Prefect Sempronius wished Agnes to marry his son, and on Agnes' refusal on the grounds that she was already affianced to Our Lord, he condemned her to death. As Roman law did not permit the execution of virgins, Sempronius had a naked Agnes dragged through the streets to a brothel.

Various versions of her legend give different methods of escape from this predicament. In one, as she prayed, her hair grew and covered her body. It was also said that all of the men who attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind. In another the son of the Prefect is struck dead, but revived after Agnes prayed for him, causing her release. There is then a trial from which Sempronius excuses himself, and another figure presides, sentencing her to death.

When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, or the flames parted away from her, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that the blood of Agnes poured to the stadium floor where other Christians soaked up the blood with cloths.

On her feast day, two lambs are brought each year to the Pope to be blessed. On Holy Thursday they are shorn, and from the wool is woven the pallium which the pope gives to a newly consecrated metropolitan archbishop as a sign of his jurisdiction and his union with the pope.

The feast

Her feast is Class II in monasteries of nuns, but otherwise Class III.

There is a curious history to her celebration, as in the Roman (though not Benedictine) calendars there is actually a 'second feast' of St Agnes celebrated on January 21, speculation on whose origins you can read about here.  Dom Gueranger's take on the second feast, though, goes as follows:

Five days after the martyrdom of the Virgin Emerentiana, the parents of the glorious Saint Agnes visited the tomb of their child, during the night, there to weep and pray. It was the eighth day since her martyrdom. 

Whilst they were thinking upon the cruel death, which, though it had enriched their child with a Martyr's palm, had deprived them of her society — Agnes suddenly appeared to them : she was encircled with a bright light, and wore a crown on her head, and was surrounded by a choir of virgins of dazzling beauty. On her right hand, there stood a beautiful white lamb, the emblem of the Divine Spouse of Agnus.  Tturning towards her parents, she said to them" Weep not over my death : for I am now in heaven, together with these virgins, living with Him, whom I loved on earth with my whole soul."  

It is to commemorate this glorious apparition, that the holy Church has instituted this Feast, which is called Saint Agnes' Second Feast (Sanctae Agnetis secundo.)...

January 20: SS Fabian (Pope) and Sebastian (Martyrs), Class III

Pope Saint Fabian was a layman when elected pope, a position he held from January 10, 236 until his martyrdom on January 20, 250. 

St Sebastian died in 288 under Diocletian.

From the Roman Breviary:
 
"Fabian was a Roman, and sat as Pope from the reign of the Emperor Maximian till that of Decius. He appointed a deacon to each of the seven districts of Rome to look after the poor. He likewise appointed the same number of subdeacons to collect the acts of the Martyrs from the records kept by the seven district notaries. It was by him that it was ordained that every Maundy Thursday the old Chrism should be burnt and new consecrated. He was crowned with martyrdom upon the 20th of January, in the persecution of Decius, and buried in the cemetery of St. Callistus on the Appian Way, having sat in the throne of Peter fifteen years and four days. He held five Advent ordinations, in which he ordained twenty-two priests, seven deacons, and eleven bishops for divers Sees.

The father of Sebastian was of Narbonne, and his mother a Milanese. He was a great favourite of the Emperor Diocletian, both on account of his noble birth and his personal bravery, and was by him appointed captain of the first company of the Praetorian Guards. He was in secret a Christian, and often supported the others both by good offices and money. When some shewed signs of yielding under persecution, he so successfully exhorted them, that, for Jesus Christ's sake, many offered themselves to the tormentors. Among these were the brothers Mark and Marcellian who were imprisoned at Rome in the house of Nicostratus. The wife of Nicostratus himself, named Zoe, had lost her voice, but it was restored to her at the prayer of Sebastian. These facts becoming known to Diocletian, he sent for Sebastian, and after violently rebuking him, used every means to turn him from his faith in Christ. But as neither promises nor threats availed, he ordered him to be tied to a post and shot to death with arrows.

Sebastian was treated accordingly, and left for dead, but in the night the holy widow Irene sent for the body in order to bury it, and then found that he was still alive, and nursed him in her own house. As soon as his health was restored, he went out to meet Diocletian, and boldly rebuked him for his wickedness. The Emperor was first thunderstruck at the sight of a man whom he believed to been some time dead, but afterwards, frenzied with rage at the reproaches of Sebastian, ordered him to be beaten to death with rods, under which torment the martyr yielded his blessed soul to God. His body was thrown into a sewer, but he appeared in sleep to Lucina, and made known to her where it was, and where he would have it buried. She accordingly found it and laid it in those Catacombs, over which a famous Church hath since been built, called St. Sebastian's-without-the-Walls."

January 17: St Anthony, abbot, Class III

St Anthony (c. 251–356) was not the first monk, but his Life, by St Athanasius, did much to promote the spread of monasticism, particularly in the West.

The Life is an extremely important source for ascetic spirituality.  Here are a few extracts:

"Antony you must know was by descent an Egyptian: his parents were of good family and possessed considerable wealth, and as they were Christians he also was reared in the same Faith. In infancy he was brought up with his parents, knowing nought else but them and his home. But when he was grown and arrived at boyhood, and was advancing in years, he could not endure to learn letters, not caring to associate with other boys; but all his desire was, as it is written of Jacob, to live a plain man at home. With his parents he used to attend the Lord's House, and neither as a child was he idle nor when older did he despise them; but was both obedient to his father and mother and attentive to what was read, keeping in his heart what was profitable in what he heard. And though as a child brought up in moderate affluence, he did not trouble his parents for varied or luxurious fare, nor was this a source of pleasure to him; but was content simply with what he found nor sought anything further.

After the death of his father and mother he was left alone with one little sister: his age was about eighteen or twenty, and on him the care both of home and sister rested. Now it was not six months after the death of his parents, and going according to custom into the Lord's House, he communed with himself and reflected as he walked how the Apostles left all and followed the Saviour; and how they in the Acts sold their possessions and brought and laid them at the Apostles' feet for distribution to then eedy, and what and how great a hope was laid up for them in heaven. Pondering over these things he entered the church, and it happened the Gospel was being read, and he heard the Lord saying to the rich man, 'If thou wouldest be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor; and come follow Me and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.' Antony, as though God had put him in mind of the Saints, and the passage had been read on his account, went out immediately from the church, and gave the possessions of his forefathers to the villagers--they were three hundred acres, productive and very fair --that they should be no more a clog upon himself and his sister. And all the rest that was movable he sold, and having got together much money he gave it to the poor, reserving a little however for his sister's sake.

And again as he went into the church, hearing the Lord say in the Gospel, ' be not anxious for the morrow,' he could stay no longer, but went out and gave those things also to the poor. Having committed his sister to known and faithful virgins, and put her into a convent to be brought up, he henceforth devoted himself outside his house to discipline, taking heed to himself and training himself with patience. For there were not yet so many monasteries in Egypt, and no monk at all knew of the distant desert; but all who wished to give heed to themselves practised the discipline in solitude near their own village. Now there was then in the next village an old man who had lived the life of a hermit from his youth up. Antony, after he had seen this man, imitated him in piety. And at first he began to abide in places out side the village: then if he heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own palace until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue. So dwelling there at first, he confirmed his purpose not to return to the abode of his fathers nor to the remembrance of his kinsfolk; but to keep all his desire and energy for perfecting his discipline. He worked, however. with his hands, having heard, 'he who is idle let him not eat,' and part he spent on bread and part he gave to the needy. And he was constant in prayer, knowing that a man ought to pray in secret unceasingly. For he had given such heed to what was read that none of the things that were written fell from him to the ground, but he remembered all, and afterwards his memory served him for books."

St Honorius of Fondi, January 16

SS Honoratus and Benedict,
1499

The martyrology records the feast of St Honoratus of Fondi 'of whom blessed pope Gregory makes mention' as January 16, but in the town of Fondi, of which he is patron, the feast is celebrated on October 10.

St Gregory's mention of the saint comes in the first chapter of Book I of the Dialogues:

In times past one Venantius, a noble man, had a living in the country of  Samnium; the farmer whereof had a son called Honoratus, who from his very childhood by the virtue of abstinence did thirst after the joys of heaven: and as in other things he led an holy life, and refrained from all idle talk, so did he much, as I said before, subdue his body by means of abstinence. 

His parents, upon a certain day, had invited their neighbours to a banquet which consisted altogether of flesh, whereof because for the love of mortification he refused to eat, his father and mother began to laugh at him, willing him to fall to that which they had: "For can we," quoth they, "get you any fish here in these mountains?" (for in that place they used sometimes to hear of fish, but seldom to see any.) 

But whiles they were thus jesting, and mocking at their son, suddenly they lacked water: whereupon a servant with a wooden bucket (as the manner is there) went to the well to fetch some: into which, as he was a drawing, a fish entered in, which upon his return, together with the water, he poured forth before them all. And the fish was so great, that it served Honoratus very well for all that day. At this strange chance all were stroken in admiration, and his parents abstained now from further scoffing at his virtue, and began to have him in reverence for his abstinence, whom before for that very cause they did mock and scorn: and by this means, the fish, brought miraculously from the well, discharged God's servant from that shame, which he had endured through their uncivil jesting. 

Honoratus, proceeding forward in virtue, at length was made free by the foresaid Lord Venantius: and afterward, in that place which is called Funda, he built an Abbey, wherein he was the father almost of two hundred monks: and he lived in so great holiness that he gave good example to all the country round about. Upon a certain day, it fell so out, that a stone of an huge greatness, which was digged out of the mountain that hung over the top of his Abbey, tumbled down by the side of the hill, threatening both the ruin of the house and the death of all the monks within: which danger the holy man seeing ready to come upon them, called often upon the name of Christ, and, putting forth his right hand, made against it the sign of the cross, and by that means did he stay it, and pin it fast to the side of that steep hill: which thing Lawrence, a religious man, affirmed to be most true. And because it found not there any place upon which it might rest, it hangeth at this time in such sort, that all which now look upon it do verily think that it would continually fall.

PETER. I suppose so notable a man as he was, and who afterward became master to so many scholars, had himself some excellent teacher of whom he was instructed. 

GREGORY. I never heard that he was scholar to any: but the grace of the Holy Ghost is not tied to any law. 

The usual custom of virtuous men is, that none should take upon him to rule, who first hath not learned to obey: nor to command that obedience to his subjects, which before he hath not given to his own superiors. Yet some there be which are so inwardly taught by the doctrine of God's holy spirit, that although they have no man to instruct them outwardly, yet do they not want the direction of an inward teacher: which liberty of life notwithstanding is not to be taken for an example by such as be weak and infirm, lest, whiles each one doth in like manner presume to be full of the Holy Ghost, and contemn to learn of any, they become themselves erroneous masters. 

But that soul which is full of God's holy spirit, hath for proof thereof most evident signs, to wit, the other virtues, and especially humility, both which if they do perfectly meet in one soul, apparent it is that they be testimonies of the presence of heavenly grace. And so we read not that John Baptist had any master, nor yet that Christ, who by his corporal presence taught his Apostles, took him in amongst the number of his other disciples, but vouchsafed to instruct him inwardly, and left him, as it were, in the sight of the world to his own liberty. So Moses, likewise, was taught in the wilderness, and learned by the Angel what God gave him in charge, which by means of any mortal man he knew not: but these things, as before hath been said, are of weaklings to be reverenced, and not by any means to be followed.

January 14: St Hilary, Bishop, Doctor of the Church, Memorial

Hilary of Poitiers (c310 –368) was Bishop of Poitiers.  He has a particular importance to the Western monastic tradition for his patronage and encouragement of St Martin of Tours. 

From Pope Benedict XVI's General Audience on the saint:

"Today, I would like to talk about a great Father of the Church of the West, St Hilary of Poitiers, one of the important Episcopal figures of the fourth century. In the controversy with the Arians, who considered Jesus the Son of God to be an excellent human creature but only human, Hilary devoted his whole life to defending faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, Son of God and God as the Father who generated him from eternity.

We have no reliable information on most of Hilary's life. Ancient sources say that he was born in Poitiers, probably in about the year 310 A.D. From a wealthy family, he received a solid literary education, which is clearly recognizable in his writings. It does not seem that he grew up in a Christian environment. He himself tells us of a quest for the truth which led him little by little to recognize God the Creator and the incarnate God who died to give us eternal life. Baptized in about 345, he was elected Bishop of his native city around 353-354. In the years that followed, Hilary wrote his first work, Commentary on St Matthew's Gospel. It is the oldest extant commentary in Latin on this Gospel. In 356, Hilary took part as a Bishop in the Synod of Béziers in the South of France, the "synod of false apostles", as he himself called it since the assembly was in the control of Philo-Arian Bishops who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. "These false apostles" asked the Emperor Constantius to have the Bishop of Poitiers sentenced to exile. Thus, in the summer of 356, Hilary was forced to leave Gaul.

Banished to Phrygia in present-day Turkey, Hilary found himself in contact with a religious context totally dominated by Arianism. Here too, his concern as a Pastor impelled him to work strenuously to re-establish the unity of the Church on the basis of right faith as formulated by the Council of Nicea. To this end he began to draft his own best-known and most important dogmatic work: De Trinitate (On the Trinity). Hilary explained in it his personal journey towards knowledge of God and took pains to show that not only in the New Testament but also in many Old Testament passages, in which Christ's mystery already appears, Scripture clearly testifies to the divinity of the Son and his equality with the Father. To the Arians he insisted on the truth of the names of Father and Son, and developed his entire Trinitarian theology based on the formula of Baptism given to us by the Lord himself: "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit".

The Father and the Son are of the same nature. And although several passages in the New Testament might make one think that the Son was inferior to the Father, Hilary offers precise rules to avoid misleading interpretations: some Scriptural texts speak of Jesus as God, others highlight instead his humanity. Some refer to him in his pre-existence with the Father; others take into consideration his state of emptying of self (kenosis), his descent to death; others, finally, contemplate him in the glory of the Resurrection. In the years of his exile, Hilary also wrote the Book of Synods in which, for his brother Bishops of Gaul, he reproduced confessions of faith and commented on them and on other documents of synods which met in the East in about the middle of the fourth century. Ever adamant in opposing the radical Arians, St Hilary showed a conciliatory spirit to those who agreed to confess that the Son was essentially similar to the Father, seeking of course to lead them to the true faith, according to which there is not only a likeness but a true equality of the Father and of the Son in divinity. This too seems to me to be characteristic: the spirit of reconciliation that seeks to understand those who have not yet arrived and helps them with great theological intelligence to reach full faith in the true divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In 360 or 361, Hilary was finally able to return home from exile and immediately resumed pastoral activity in his Church, but the influence of his magisterium extended in fact far beyond its boundaries. A synod celebrated in Paris in 360 or 361 borrows the language of the Council of Nicea. Several ancient authors believe that this anti-Arian turning point of the Gaul episcopate was largely due to the fortitude and docility of the Bishop of Poitiers. This was precisely his gift: to combine strength in the faith and docility in interpersonal relations. In the last years of his life he also composed the Treatises on the Psalms, a commentary on 58 Psalms interpreted according to the principle highlighted in the introduction to the work: "There is no doubt that all the things that are said in the Psalms should be understood in accordance with Gospel proclamation, so that, whatever the voice with which the prophetic spirit has spoken, all may be referred nevertheless to the knowledge of the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnation, Passion and Kingdom, and to the power and glory of our resurrection" (Instructio Psalmorum, 5). He saw in all the Psalms this transparency of the mystery of Christ and of his Body which is the Church. Hilary met St Martin on various occasions: the future Bishop of Tours founded a monastery right by Poitiers, which still exists today. Hilary died in 367. His liturgical Memorial is celebrated on 13 January. In 1851 Blessed Pius IX proclaimed him a Doctor of the universal Church.

To sum up the essentials of his doctrine, I would like to say that Hilary found the starting point for his theological reflection in baptismal faith. In De Trinitate, Hilary writes: Jesus "has commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt 28: 19), that is, in the confession of the Author, of the Only-Begotten One and of the Gift. The Author of all things is one alone, for one alone is God the Father, from whom all things proceed. And one alone is Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist (cf. I Cor 8: 6), and one alone is the Spirit (cf. Eph 4: 4), a gift in all.... In nothing can be found to be lacking so great a fullness, in which the immensity in the Eternal One, the revelation in the Image, joy in the Gift, converge in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit" (De Trinitate 2, 1). God the Father, being wholly love, is able to communicate his divinity to his Son in its fullness. I find particularly beautiful the following formula of St Hilary: "God knows not how to be anything other than love, he knows not how to be anyone other than the Father. Those who love are not envious and the one who is the Father is so in his totality. This name admits no compromise, as if God were father in some aspects and not in others" (ibid., 9, 61).

For this reason the Son is fully God without any gaps or diminishment. "The One who comes from the perfect is perfect because he has all, he has given all" (ibid., 2, 8). Humanity finds salvation in Christ alone, Son of God and Son of man. In assuming our human nature, he has united himself with every man, "he has become the flesh of us all" (Tractatus super Psalmos 54, 9); "he took on himself the nature of all flesh and through it became true life, he has in himself the root of every vine shoot" (ibid., 51, 16). For this very reason the way to Christ is open to all - because he has drawn all into his being as a man -, even if personal conversion is always required: "Through the relationship with his flesh, access to Christ is open to all, on condition that they divest themselves of their former self (cf. Eph 4: 22), nailing it to the Cross (cf. Col 2: 14); provided we give up our former way of life and convert in order to be buried with him in his baptism, in view of life (cf. Col 1: 12; Rom 6: 4)" (ibid., 91, 9).

Fidelity to God is a gift of his grace. Therefore, St Hilary asks, at the end of his Treatise on the Trinity, to be able to remain ever faithful to the baptismal faith. It is a feature of this book: reflection is transformed into prayer and prayer returns to reflection. The whole book is a dialogue with God.

I would like to end today's Catechesis with one of these prayers, which thus becomes our prayer:

"Obtain, O Lord", St Hilary recites with inspiration, "that I may keep ever faithful to what I have professed in the symbol of my regeneration, when I was baptized in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. That I may worship you, our Father, and with you, your Son; that I may deserve your Holy Spirit, who proceeds from you through your Only Begotten Son... Amen" (De Trinitate 12, 57). "

January 10: St Paul the First Hermit, Memorial

St Paul of Thebes (died circa 341) fled to the desert during the persecution of Decius and Valerianus around 250 AD.  St Jerome's life of the saint relates that he lived in the mountains of this desert in a cave near a clear spring and a palm tree, the leaves of which provided him with raiment and the fruit of which provided him with his only source of food till he was 43 years old, when a raven started bringing him half a loaf of bread daily.

St Jerome also tells the story of the meeting of St Anthony the Great and St Paul, when the latter was aged 113. They conversed with each other for one day and one night. When St Anthony next visited him, Paul was dead. Anthony clothed him in a tunic which was a present from St Athanasius of Alexandria and buried him, with two lions helping to dig the grave.

He is remembered as the first Christian hermit.

You can read St Jerome's Life of the saint here.

January 4: St Titus, Bishop and Confessor, Memorial

St Titus appears in the martyrology today with this description:

"In Crete, the birthday of St Titus, who was ordained Bishop of the Cretans by St Paul the Apostle, and, after having faithfully fulfilled the office of preaching, died a blessed death.  He was buried in the church to which he was appointed a worthy minister by the blessed Apostle."

In the Roman calendar, his feast-day is kept on February 6, but in the Benedictine it is kept on the actual day.

December 28: The Holy Innocents; Octave of the Nativity

The Biblical account of the reasons for this ancient feast of the first martyrs for Christ is St. Matthew 2:16-18:

"Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."

December 27: St John the Evangelist; Octave of the Nativity

Pope Benedict XVI has given a series of General Audiences on St John:

• John, Son of Zebedee;
• John the Theologian;
• John, the Seer of Patmos.

Here is the first of the series:

"Let us dedicate our meeting today to remembering another very important member of the Apostolic College: John, son of Zebedee and brother of James. His typically Jewish name means: "the Lord has worked grace". He was mending his nets on the shore of Lake Tiberias when Jesus called him and his brother (cf. Mt 4: 21; Mk 1: 19).

John was always among the small group that Jesus took with him on specific occasions. He was with Peter and James when Jesus entered Peter's house in Capernaum to cure his mother-in-law (cf. Mk 1: 29); with the other two, he followed the Teacher into the house of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue whose daughter he was to bring back to life (cf. Mk 5: 37); he followed him when he climbed the mountain for his Transfiguration (cf. Mk 9: 2).

He was beside the Lord on the Mount of Olives when, before the impressive sight of the Temple of Jerusalem, he spoke of the end of the city and of the world (cf. Mk 13: 3); and, lastly, he was close to him in the Garden of Gethsemane when he withdrew to pray to the Father before the Passion (cf. Mk 14: 33).

Shortly before the Passover, when Jesus chose two disciples to send them to prepare the room for the Supper, it was to him and to Peter that he entrusted this task (cf. Lk 22: 8).

His prominent position in the group of the Twelve makes it somewhat easier to understand the initiative taken one day by his mother: she approached Jesus to ask him if her two sons - John and James - could sit next to him in the Kingdom, one on his right and one on his left (cf. Mt 20: 20-21).

As we know, Jesus answered by asking a question in turn: he asked whether they were prepared to drink the cup that he was about to drink (cf. Mt 20: 22). The intention behind those words was to open the two disciples' eyes, to introduce them to knowledge of the mystery of his person and to suggest their future calling to be his witnesses, even to the supreme trial of blood.

A little later, in fact, Jesus explained that he had not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (cf. Mt 20: 28).

In the days after the Resurrection, we find "the sons of Zebedee" busy with Peter and some of the other disciples on a night when they caught nothing, but that was followed, after the intervention of the Risen One, by the miraculous catch: it was to be "the disciple Jesus loved" who first recognized "the Lord" and pointed him out to Peter (cf. Jn 21: 1-13).

In the Church of Jerusalem, John occupied an important position in supervising the first group of Christians. Indeed, Paul lists him among those whom he calls the "pillars" of that community (cf. Gal 2: 9). In fact, Luke in the Acts presents him together with Peter while they are going to pray in the temple (cf. Acts 3: 1-4, 11) or appear before the Sanhedrin to witness to their faith in Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 4: 13, 19).

Together with Peter, he is sent to the Church of Jerusalem to strengthen the people in Samaria who had accepted the Gospel, praying for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 8: 14-15). In particular, we should remember what he affirmed with Peter to the Sanhedrin members who were accusing them: "We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4: 20).

It is precisely this frankness in confessing his faith that lives on as an example and a warning for all of us always to be ready to declare firmly our steadfast attachment to Christ, putting faith before any human calculation or concern.

According to tradition, John is the "disciple whom Jesus loved", who in the Fourth Gospel laid his head against the Teacher's breast at the Last Supper (cf. Jn 13: 23), stood at the foot of the Cross together with the Mother of Jesus (cf. Jn 19: 25) and lastly, witnessed both the empty tomb and the presence of the Risen One himself (cf. Jn 20: 2; 21: 7).

We know that this identification is disputed by scholars today, some of whom view him merely as the prototype of a disciple of Jesus. Leaving the exegetes to settle the matter, let us be content here with learning an important lesson for our lives: the Lord wishes to make each one of us a disciple who lives in personal friendship with him.

To achieve this, it is not enough to follow him and to listen to him outwardly: it is also necessary to live with him and like him. This is only possible in the context of a relationship of deep familiarity, imbued with the warmth of total trust. This is what happens between friends; for this reason Jesus said one day: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.... No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (Jn 15: 13, 15).

In the apocryphal Acts of John, the Apostle is not presented as the founder of Churches nor as the guide of already established communities, but as a perpetual wayfarer, a communicator of the faith in the encounter with "souls capable of hoping and of being saved" (18: 10; 23: 8).

All is motivated by the paradoxical intention to make visible the invisible. And indeed, the Oriental Church calls him quite simply "the Theologian", that is, the one who can speak in accessible terms of the divine, revealing an arcane access to God through attachment to Jesus.

Devotion to the Apostle John spread from the city of Ephesus where, according to an ancient tradition, he worked for many years and died in the end at an extraordinarily advanced age, during the reign of the Emperor Trajan.

In Ephesus in the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian had a great basilica built in his honour, whose impressive ruins are still standing today. Precisely in the East, he enjoyed and still enjoys great veneration.

In Byzantine iconography he is often shown as very elderly - according to tradition, he died under the Emperor Trajan - in the process of intense contemplation, in the attitude, as it were, of those asking for silence.

Indeed, without sufficient recollection it is impossible to approach the supreme mystery of God and of his revelation. This explains why, years ago, Athenagoras, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the man whom Pope Paul VI embraced at a memorable encounter, said: "John is the origin of our loftiest spirituality. Like him, "the silent ones' experience that mysterious exchange of hearts, pray for John's presence, and their hearts are set on fire" (O. Clément, Dialoghi con Atenagora, Turin 1972, p. 159).

May the Lord help us to study at John's school and learn the great lesson of love, so as to feel we are loved by Christ "to the end" (Jn 13: 1), and spend our lives for him."