Feast Day: May 19th
DNF is the acronym for “Did Not Finish” and shows up next to an athlete’s name when they began a race but never cross the finish line. Perhaps they got injured, or gave up half-way through, but for whatever reason they did not complete the course. To fail to finish is never in someone’s plans for the day, but it happens, and their response to it often shows more of the character of the person than those who finish strong and make it seem easy.
Here is the opening line of one of the articles I read about Celestine V in preparing for this article (from Catholicnewsagency.com): “Celestine is a saint who will always be remembered for the unique manner in which he was elected Pope, for his spectacular incompetence in that office, and for the distinction of being the first pontiff ever to have resigned.” I suspect none of us want “spectacular incompetence” next to our name in the record books. But if I may ask an important question: Where is Celestine now? Right now, he is at peace, in heaven, with all the saints in the blessed presence of God, filled with a joy and fulfillment and freedom and glory that all of our hearts yearn for. What matters in life is NOT whether others count it a success but whether Our Lord does!
Celestine was born Pietro di Murrone, in the Kingdom of Sicily, to a poor family with many siblings whose father, Angelo, died when he was young. His mother, Maria, surely struggling, would still ask her children “which one of you is going to become a saint?” Little Peter piped up “Me, mama! I’ll become a saint!” He worked the fields like his father for a time, but eventually set off to become a Benedictine monk at the age of 17 eventually growing in virtue sufficientlyto retire to a cavern in the Marrone mountains, there gaining a reputation for great holiness and asceticism. He would pray and read the scriptures, model his penances after those of John the Baptist, and keep himself from temptation by working the rest of the time. And, typical for someone seeking radical holiness, others were inspired by his example and followed him into the mountains.
At first the group was called the Murronites or the Hermits of San Damiano, but as the intense life of his order exploded in popularity Pietro found it necessary to affiliate it with the Benedictines. (The Church, following the Second Council of Lyon, was pruning the number of upstart religious orders, asking that they be connected with longstanding and upstanding communities). With several hundred monks and a few dozen monasteries, Pietro handed the reigns off to one of his disciples and returned to his solitude and sacrifice.
The decades rolled by, and when Pietro was closing in on his eighth decade the cardinals who were supposed to be electing the next Pope had dallied around for two years with no decision. The Church, as it turns out, is made up of human beings and takes within herself the woundedness and sinfulness and political machinations that we find inside each of our hearts, and so the famous monk pens a letter to the cardinals, warning that re bay operating by worldly standards, failing God, sullying Christ, and risking His judgement.
The old, ill, dean of the College of Cardinals cried out “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I elect brother Pietro di Morrone!” The other cardinals followed suit, and so we find ourselves with the hilarious scene of the cardinals and princes trekking out to Pietro’s remote hermitage pleading with him to take on the responsibility of Pope. He eventually agrees, but it turns out hermits are not necessarily great popes! He was saintly, but a disastrous leader. Swayed by the politics that swirled around him, his papal decrees were divisive or impractical. As Advent of 1294 approached, he delegated three cardinals to lead the church since he wanted to fast and prepare for Christmas. (They refused.) Inquiring whether it was permissible, he issued one final decree, declaring that a Pope has the right to resign, which he promptly did after only 5 months as pope. He failed. He did not finish.
And he didn’t even get to go back to his hermitage. Celestine’s successor was afraid he could become a rival anti-pope, so he imprisoned Celestine where the holy hermit would die several months later. That successor, Boniface VIII, would go on to be one of the strongest political figures of his age, clashing spectacularly with kings and emperors, and establishing the Church’s practice of celebrating Jubilees ever 25 or 50 years in 1300. But while he was celebrating worldy victories, Celestine was simply thanking God in his prison: “You wanted a cell, Peter, and a cell you have.” Celestine is now canonized a saint, Boniface is not. We must ask whether he traded many worldly victories for an eternal loss. Let us pray that he did not!
– Fr. Dominic recently found himself walking and jogging the final two miles of the Boston Marathon, a personal-best slipping out of his grasp. Failure IS an option. It is the right option if it leads to our greater sanctity.