Feast Day: January 20^th

Last week we saw St. Hilary exemplify for us the work of mercy to instruct the ignorant.  This week, we turn our attention to a much more popular saint, St. Sebastian.  Famously a member of the praetorian guard, he continued in that office even under the Emperor Diocletian, caring for and encouraging imprisoned Christians during that tyrant’s persecution, as well as working physical (restoring speech) and spiritual miracles (converting many to the faith) along the way.  He was eventually discovered as a Christian and ordered to be killed by being shot full of arrows.  Of course, dramatically, he didn’t quite die, and was nursed back to health by the saintly Irene, before returning to Diocletian remonstrating him for his cruelty and preaching to him the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Diocletian was not moved by his words and had him martyred fully this time, ordering him to be beaten to death. 

As a youthful martyr, an “athlete for Christ”, Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes, runners, archers, and sports – a distinction that has made him a popular patron, and friend, for countless young people in the centuries since – but he is also a patron for plague victims.  Originally, this came from the likeness between the welts which were the primary symptom of the black plague and Sebastian’s pierced and bruised body, but then, a thousand years after St. Ambrose’s sermons on this saint first got his story out, Guillaume Dugay, a composer in Milan, Sebastian’s hometown, composed a beautiful hymn begging the saint’s intercession as the black death raged through the city.  Take a moment to pray the words that follow, and please make the time to listen to this piece sung:

O Saint Sebastian,
always, evening and morning,
at all hours and minutes,
while I am of sound mind
protect and preserve me,
and, O martyr, untie me from the cords
of harmful weakness
called the epidemic.

From this kind of plague
defend and guard me,
along with all my friends.
We confess ourselves sinners
to God and to Holy Mary
and to you, O faithful martyr.

You, citizen of Milan,
you can make cease
this pestilence, if you so wish,
and from God accomplish this,
for among many it is known
that you have from Him this benefit.

Zoe the mute you healed
and restored healthful
to Nicostratus her husband,
and you did this miraculously.
In their suffering you consoled
the martyrs and promised
to them eternal life
and all that’s owed to martyrs.

O martyr Sebastian,
you with us always, remain with us!
And through your merits
we, who are in this life —

Guard, heal, and rule us,
and from the plague protect us,
presenting us to the Trinity
and the holy virgin mother.

And may we so finish life,
that we have mercy
and the company of martyrs
and the vision of holy God.

O how he shined with wondrous grace,
Sebastian, famous martyr,
who bearing a soldier’s insignia,
but caring for his brothers’ victory,
comforted their weakening hearts
with words brought from heaven.

– Fr. Dominic once MC’d for a confirmation at which six of the young men chose Sebastian for their confirmation patron.  They thought it was funny.  I thought it was awesome!  What better patron than a man bold enough to be martyred twice for his faith in Jesus Christ?  Who is your confirmation saint?  Have you asked them recently how they could help you to grow in your faith?

This past Monday, the Church celebrated the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, a feast that was restored to the universal Roman liturgical calendar in 2002.  In previous times, the feast was celebrated on January 1 under the title of the Circumcision of the Lord, in accordance with the Scripture passage: “When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given Him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (Lk 2:21) Traditionally, the month of January is dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, so it is well worth our attnetion.  On this feast day, and throughout this month, Catholics are invited to consider the power of this name and the great reverence we should have every time we use it.  In his Letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes:

         Because of this, God greatly exalted Him
         and bestowed on Him the name
         that is above every name,
         that at the name of Jesus
         every knee should bend,
         of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
         and every tongue confess that
         Jesus Christ is Lord,
         to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)

I find it fitting that this devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus falls during this month when our Family of Faith formation topic is the first four Commandments, with the Second Commandment stating: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” (Ex. 20:7)  Because of this Commandment, there can be a tendency to avoid using the name of Jesus at all out of fear of using it irreverently, but the Lord desires for us to have confidence in calling out to Him by name and always keeping His Holy Name in our hearts.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote the following beautiful words about the Holy Name:

This name is the cure for all diseases of the soul. Are you troubled? Think but of Jesus, speak but the Name of Jesus, the clouds disperse, and peace descends anew from heaven. Have you fallen into sin, so that you fear death? Invoke the Name of Jesus, and you will soon feel life returning. No obduracy of the soul, no weakness, no coldness of heart can resist this holy Name; there is no heart which will not soften and open in tears at this holy name. Are you surrounded by sorrow and danger? Invoke the Name of Jesus, and your fears will vanish.

During this month of the Holy Name of Jesus, may I invite you to pay particular attention to how you use the name of Jesus?  Of course, avoid ever using it in a disrespectful way, but do not let that prevent you from using it regularly in prayer with great devotion, knowing how powerful of a prayer that one single name is for us.  Perhaps you can call this to mind when you say the name of Jesus in the three Hail Mary’s we as a parish have resolved to say each day (one for the clergy of the Cathedral, one for yourself, and one for all members of the parish).

Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary, have mercy on us!

Father Alford    

Feast Day: January 13^th

January 13^th, 367 AD was the day that bishop Hilary of Poitiers, France died peacefully.  He had been born about 57 years prior to well-off pagan parents and had grown from a good classical upbringing to a dramatic early encounter with the Christian Scriptures where he found something he didn’t know he was looking for.  It seems he started towards the beginning because it was when he got to Exodus and God’s words to Moses in the burning bush that finally the sparks caught hold of his heart: “I was frankly amazed at such a clear definition of God, which expressed the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature in words most suited to human intelligence.” [Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, I.5.]  He was baptized at the age of 35, along with his wife and young daughter, but only 5 years later the laity and priests of the small Christian community at Poitiers (I saw it estimated around 350) clamored for him to become their bishop. 

He didn’t wait long to get to work.  Within two years we have his first large writing: a Commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel, the earliest complete commentary on that Gospel in Latin. Like so many of the bishops of this same time – recall Ambrose in Milan, and Gregory and Basil in Cappadocia – these words were not merely pious reflections of a saintly man, nor just the writings of a scholarly theologian, nor even the authoritative teachings of a successor of an apostle – they were a courageous confrontation against the untruths rampant in his day (and perhaps ours too).

Apostles must therefore take death into their new life and nail their sins to the Lord’s cross. They must confront their persecutors with contempt for things present, holding fast to their freedom by a glorious confession of faith, and shunning any gain that would harm their souls. They should know that no power over their souls has been given to anyone, and that by suffering loss of this short life they achieve immortality. [St. Hilary of Poitiers, Commentarius in Evangelium Matthaei, 1]

Arianism was not just in Italy or Turkey, it was also here in France, in fact, spewing from the pen of Saturninus, the bishop just a bit further south in France.  Rallying what orthodox bishops that he could find, Hilary managed to excommunicate Saturninus and his minions, and had the guts to also write a letter to Constantius II (the Arian son of the Emperor Constantine).  His missive does not survive, but evidently it was rather scathing because Hilary was promptly exiled to Turkey, and when he returned a decade later, he would describe Constantius II as “a tyrant whose sole object had been to make a gift to the devil of that world for which Christ had suffered.” [Hilary of Poitiers, Contra Constantium Augustum]

There, far from home, Hilary dove deep into what first brought him to love the Lord, the Bible.  He wrote his most famous work during, De Trinitate, during these years, but within its pages we find a man expounding doctrine on the bedrock of Scripture:

Since their [the heretics] malice, inspired by the devil’s cunning, empties the doctrine of its meaning while it retains the Names which convey the truth, we must emphasise the truth which those Names convey. We must proclaim, exactly as we shall find them in the words of Scripture, the majesty and functions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and so debar the heretics from robbing these Names of their connotation of Divine character, and compel them by means of these very Names to confine their use of terms to their proper meaning. … For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used … to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible. He [God] fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding.  [St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, II.5., multiple translations]

This is a man who could not be dislodged from the truth of Scripture, no matter the consequences, even if it meant exile from his beleaguered flock, and family!  This little boy, Hilarius (his name deriving from the Greek word hilaros, which in fact means cheerful, merry, or happy) was joyous only in remaining faithful to the revelation of God.  Writing a letter back to his people, similar to St. Paul and sounding much like that imprisoned apostle, he says “Although in exile we shall speak through these books, and the word of God, which cannot be bound, shall move about in freedom.” 

His preaching in the Arian East remained so strident in the full truth of the Gospel, that he was exiled from exile.  Sulpicius Severus, a renowned Christian historian of this age of the Church so filled with heresy, and heroes, wrote that the Emperor eventually sent Hilary back to Poitiers frustrated by the “sower of discord and a disturber of the Orient.” He returned to much acclaim, and a faithful flock, and resumed his episcopal duties for the final few years of his life, leaving the Church his final commentary on the Psalms, teaching the ignorant to the very end.

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. [Hilary of Poitiers, Instructio Palmorum, 5]

Fr. Dominic Rankin has tried his best to bring Hilary’s voice into this quick glance at his life.  For a better, and beautiful, further glimpse, may I recommend Pope Benedict XVI’s words on this great early bishop:

In the account from Matthew’s Gospel that we hear today for the Epiphany, we hear the following: “behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem.” (Mt 2:1) Although there has been speculation about where these magi are from, the Scriptures really do not say more than this.  Regardless, we know that their coming to Jerusalem and then Bethlehem involved a journey of some sort.  That journey, as we hear in the passage, was guided by a star which eventually led them to their destination, seeing the “newborn King of the Jews.”  Without that star to guide them, the magi would likely have been lost and would never have had this life-changing encounter with Jesus.

In the example of the magi, we are invited to see an analogy of our lives as Christians.  On the day of our Baptism, the light of Christ is placed into our hearts and we are called to follow that light throughout the journey of our lives, for that light will lead us to where Jesus dwells most completely, in His home in Heaven.  Without the light of Christ to guide us, we can get lost and we risk never having the opportunity to encounter Jesus in His Kingdom.

Knowing the difficulty that we would face on our journey, the Lord provides us, though the Scriptures and through His Church, a map and a vehicle to guide us toward our final home.  One of the images for the Church is that of a ship, sailing across the choppy waters of this world.  As long as we stay on the ship, we can be assured of our reaching our destination in safety.  The Lord will always provide us the sufficient grace that we need to stay on the ship, but the Lord will never take away our freedom.  This means that if we choose to, we can jump ship and try to go it alone without the protection of the Church, but to do so will have tragic consequences for us.

As we make this journey toward Heaven, the Lord has also provided a map for us to keep us on the right path, to keep us safely on the ship of the Church leading us to our home.  That map is marked out by the Ten Commandments.  By following these directions, we can have great confidence in knowing that we will not get lost on our journey.  Over the next two months, our Family of Faith formation focus will be the Ten Commandments.  Sadly, when many hear about the Ten Commandments, they only hear a set of rules that restrict freedom.  In truth, these commandments are the path to freedom, the freedom of living fully as the children of God. 

As we begin this new calendar year, we continue the journey that we began on the day of our Baptism.  Perhaps there have been times when we have chosen to follow a different map than the one provided by the Ten Commandments.  Maybe we have tried another vehicle for our journey other than the Church.  I invite you to set out on the next leg of your journey with trust in the Lord – His teachings and His Church.  He has given both to us as a sign of His love for us and out of His desire for us to not get lost on our way to Heaven.  Will you trust Him more fully this year?

Father Alford