Jerome’s mature years were lived in Bethlehem, where he founded a monastery in 386. He seemed to enjoy controversial debate on matters relating to Christianity, making enemies and gathering supporters. In 410, news of the destruction of Rome stunned Jerome, and the horrible reports from Roman refugees greatly moved him. He turned aside from his studies to organize and render assistance. “Today, we must translate words of the Scriptures into deeds.”
Jerome is distinctive among the saints. While he lived a simple life and was devoted to the Church, his behavior and speech are not becoming. His temper, hatred, and anger were ferocious. His careful and invaluable scholarship makes him a saint, not his self-discipline.
Toward the end of his life, Jerome became distraught. Barbarians were overrunning Syria and Palestine. He wrote, “How many monasteries they captured! How many rivers run red with blood! The Roman world is falling.” Growing old, he continued to work with his books day after day. He was writing a commentary on Jeremiah when he died in Jerusalem on September 30, 420.
OCTOBER 1
Thérése of Lisieux (1873–1897)
Life of holiness
The Story of a Soul, the autobiography of Therese of Lisieux, caught the attention of a worldwide readership. Millions of copies in thirty-eight languages have made it one of the best-sellers of all time. Thousands of statues of her stand on several continents. Her appeal and popularity are incredible. And yet, she lived barely twentyfour years, and only a handful of people ever knew her. She did nothing to attract any attention before tuberculosis ended her short life in 1897.
Born into an unremarkable French watchmaker’s family in the little provincial town of Alençon, Thérèse grew up in obscurity, a shy and moody child. She essentially disappeared from the world when she joined some of her sisters in the cloister of the Carmelite convent of Lisieux. The little book she wrote behind its walls made her famous.
The Story of a Soul describes in simple terms a practical way to live a holy life in a commonplace world. Therese left us personal notes, observations, and insights jotted down on the way to sanctity. She calls it the “Little Way,” by which she means doing everything and suffering everything with an awareness of God’s presence. She could see nothing outstanding about herself, a “Little Flower,” but understood she was precious in God’s sight.
Therese said that she could not bring herself to search through stacks of books for prayers. The process gave her a headache. “For me, prayer is an upward leap of the heart, an untroubled glance towards heaven, a cry of gratitude and love which I utter from the depths of sorrow as well as from the heights of joy.”
Therese thought about doing heroic and dramatic things for Christ, but accepted the fact that her “vocation is love.” Her illness taught her that spiritual heroism can occur far from public battlefields. For the final eighteen months of her life she experienced an agonizingly slow and painful death, using it as another opportunity for acceptance and living in the spirit of love. She wrote most of the pages of her book under the duress of this period of her life.
“Don’t think that I am overwhelmed with consolations. I’m not. My consolation is not to have any in this life. Jesus never appears or speaks to me. He teaches me in secret.”
OCTOBER 2
Leodegar (ca. 616–78)
Active faith
Born into a wealthy family and reared in the seventh-century court of King Clotaire II in what became France, Leodegar (sometimes Leodegarius or Leger) occupied himself with both sacred and secular matters. He became a monk at Maxentius Abbey in 650 and its abbot the next year, bringing it under the Benedictine Rule.
Leodegar tutored the children of Queen Bathild (January 30), who often sought his advice. Later, he supported an unsuccessful candidate for the throne and briefly experienced exile. He died violently after two years of imprisonment and torture in Normandy.
OCTOBER 3
Gerard of Brogne (d. 959)
Spiritually alert
This Belgian soldier became a courtier of the count of Namur during the tenth century. While stationed at the embassy in Paris, Gerard became a monk at the Benedictine abbey of St. Denis. His reputation was that of a genuinely nice person who was sensitive to God’s presence. Upon his return home in 914 he founded a monastery which, under his leadership, was at the center of monastic reform in northwestern Europe.
OCTOBER 4
Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
Total commitment
Francis of Assisi defies brief characterization. Francis comes down to us across seven centuries trailing clouds of glory.
Assisi, Umbria, in the Appenine Mountains of Italy, is the location of the birth of Francis. A wealthy cloth merchant’s son, Francis lived a frivolous and protected life of romance and adventure. Fastidious, he had always avoided the poor and the sick. One day when he was riding on horseback he saw a hideous leper, and something overcame him. Dismounting, he put his cloak around the leper’s shoulders and impulsively kissed the loathsome man’s cheek. From that moment his outlook on life began to change.
An experience while praying in a small, rundown chapel sharpened the focus of his new life. An inner voice said to him, “Francis, repair my church.” He took the order literally and began working to repair the structure. Eventually, he understood that “my church” involved a much larger, more spiritual meaning. It was his assignment to bring the Christian Church back to the simple gospel expressed through poverty.
To finance the church’s repair, Francis sold cloth from his father’s warehouse. His father took him to court for his rash action. He acknowledged his guilt and returned to his father the money he had gained. Before the spectators in the market place where the trial was conducted, Francis then stripped off his fine clothes, saying, “I have called you Father. From here on I say, ‘Our Father who is in heaven.’”
Completely rejecting his wealthy status, Francis began to live outdoors, doing manual labor and ministering to the sick. For a while the head-wagging citizens of Assisi made fun of him, but gradually others began to join him, forming the Friars Minor. A monk might dine on simple food, but he knew supper was always there for him. A friar had no idea where he might find his next meal. Sometimes women joined their number. Even Clare of Assisi (August 11) would sneak out in the darkness of night to join with him.
Legends about Francis abound. Ugolino gathered this largely oral tradition in a volume he entitled The Acts of St. Francis and His Companions. The book soon appeared in a slightly shorter Italian edition known as The Little Flowers of St. Francis (I Fioretti di San Francesco). It contains wonderful stories and became a popular book. This is where we can read such pieces as “The Wolf of Gubbio,” “How to Find Perfect Joy,” “A Sermon for the Birds,” and “Two Saints Dine Together.”
Francis saw his kinship with all of God’s creation, speaking of “Brother Sun and Sister Moon.” Everything from living creatures to inanimate rocks was a respected part of a community he shared. His identification with Christ reached its apex when the wounds of crucifixion appeared on his hands and feet while he prayed alone in 1224. Two years later, he died, welcoming “Sister Death.”
OCTOBER 5
Mary Faustina Kowalska (1905–38)
God’s mercy
Baptized as Helena, Mary Kowalska was born into a large family of Polish peasants in Glogowiec. She left home at sixteen to work as a housekeeper. At twenty, she became a Sister of Our Lady of Mercy and took the name Mary Faustina. Doing menial chores, she remained with that congregation for thirteen years. No one noticed what was going on inside Mary as she went about routine chores, but she had a close, living relationship with God. The spiritual world was as vivid for her as the physical world.
In her personal diary she wrote, “Neither graces, nor revelations, nor raptures, nor gifts granted to a soul make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of the soul with God.” The result of her spiritual awareness became an emphasis in her mission of teaching the mercy of
God for the world.
She died of tuberculosis on October 5, 1938, less than two months past her thirty-third birthday. She is buried, appropriately, at the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Krakow-Lagiewniki, Poland.
OCTOBER 6
Bruno (ca. 1035–1101)
Changing vocations
The Carthusian Order owes its existence to Bruno. After distinguished service at the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, Bruno became a grammar and theology lecturer at Reims, his alma mater. Some of the students he taught during his eighteen-year tenure there became outstanding leaders of the Church.
Bruno’s life and ministry took a radical change when he returned to Cologne, became a monk, and began living as a hermit. Soon he moved on to Grenoble and came under the influence of Bishop Hugh (April 1). Hugh encouraged Bruno and six others who were with him to live in solitude. In 1084 Hugh led them to the beautiful Chartreuse area, where they constructed private cells around a chapel for prayer. The name “Carthusian” is a derivative of “Chartreuse.” Bruno and his friends lived in austere solitude, taking their pattern from the practices of Egyptian monks. They devoted much of their time to copying the Bible by hand. Three copies of their Bibles still exist, the only ones saved after an avalanche destroyed their buildings. Bruno continued his monastic life at a safer site farther down the mountain slope.
Pope Urban II, one of his former students, summoned Bruno to Rome, where he participated in decision-making, but Bruno continually declined to become involved in continuing administrative duties. His interest remained with his Carthusian monks, helping them to define and refine their pattern of life. Bruno’s death in 1101 left the monastery with an influential organization that prospered in the following centuries. Seventy-two years after his death, Carthusian monks, under Hugh of Lincoln (November 17), arrived in England and became a vital part of the working out of church history.
OCTOBER 7
Osyth (d. ca. 700)
Commitment
England’s village of St. Osyth, Essex, commemorates a saint who is almost without historical record. Bede (May 25) makes no mention of her in his Ecclesiastical History. Reared in a convent by her more strongly documented aunts, Osyth desired to become an abbess, but instead became a political pawn. Her parents were supposedly Frewald, a chieftain of the seventh-century Mercians, and Wilburga, the daughter of king Penda of Mercia. Her parents married their Saxon princess daughter to Sighere of Essex, “king” of the East Angles, by whom she had a son, Offa. Her son eventually took his father’s position.
Osyth won her husband’s permission to enter a convent. She established a monastery on land donated by Sighere, and there she served as abbess. She died a violent death, apparently at the hands of Danish Viking robbers.
John Aubrey, author of Brief Lives, noted, “In those days, when they went to bed they did rake up the fire, make an X on the ashes, and pray to God and St. Osyth to deliver them from fire, and from water, and from all misadventure.”
OCTOBER 8
Pelagia the Penitent (d. ? 457)
Repentance
Pelagia’s inspiring story originates in what is probably a fifthcentury biography that uses fictional glamour as an antidote to the dull monotony of everyday life in a monastery. Before her conversion, Pelagia considered herself a dancer, but others described her “dancing” as stripping in front of ogling men. Many editions of her tale are in existence. They span several centuries, and the writers often embellished the basic story with new details. Painters relished her as a subject for their canvasses and illustrations.
While some scholars do not take the legends surrounding Pelagia seriously, there is a basic story that may contain historic facts. John Chrysostom (November 13) wrote a sermon based on the Gospel of Matthew that includes an illustrative reference to an performer who lived in Antioch, who was suddenly converted and lived her remaining years in a convent, refusing to receive her former friends and associates.
The way the writers ordinarily tell the story, the attractive Pelagia was an immoral actress who had many lovers, expensive jewels, and a large entourage. She happened to pass by one day when some bishops were listening to an outdoor sermon at a saint’s tomb. She was “provocatively dressed” and surrounded by a cluster of admirers. The stunned bishops averted their gaze, but the preacher pointed her out as a stripper who made an effort to improve her appearance, but did nothing for God.
The next day the same preacher was at work in the church at Antioch when Pelagia wandered in. She converted immediately and requested baptism. Giving away the luxurious things her work had brought her, she became a hermit, dressing in men’s clothing to avoid attention, and living on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Others spoke of her as the “Beardless Hermit.” Those who knew her at this final stage of her life did not know her true identity and sex until after her death.
OCTOBER 9
Louis Bertrand (1526–81)
Christian mission
When Louis Bertrand (Luis Bertran) began his life in Valencia, Spain, in 1526, the excitement of the discovery of a “new world” was reaching fever pitch. Reports of “savages” living in South America led Louis, at the age of thirty-six, to go there with a desire and a commission to preach the gospel to Native Americans.
Speaking only Spanish, he preached through an interpreter, although there are reports that God granted him a gift of tongues that occasionally made him immediately understandable. Six years of ministry in Panama, Colombia, and the Indies resulted in thousands being converted to Christianity.
The behavior of Spanish adventurers in the New World shocked Louis. Their avarice and cruelty went beyond what he could accept as normal commerce.
Louis returned to Spain in 1569 and began to teach another generation how to present the gospel. He insisted that fervent prayer had to be the background for effective preaching, and that one’s behavior gave power to what one said.
While Louis was preaching in the cathedral at Valencia, a lingering illness caught up with him, and friends carried him from the church to his bed. He remained in bed for eighteen months, dying on October 9, 1581, at the age of fifty-five.
OCTOBER 10
Daniel Comboni (1831–81)
Missionary insight
Africa beckoned to a young man attending a school for poor children in Verona, Italy. The director of that school loved Africa and often talked about it with his students. They nicknamed him “Father Congo.” With this inspiration, Daniel Comboni dedicated his life to the evangelization of Africa. In 1849 he began serious studies in language, medicine, and theology.
Ordained a priest, Daniel departed for Africa with five other missionaries in 1857. Their voyage to Khartoum, capital of Sudan, lasted four months. He recognized immediately that his task would be difficult. The Africans in that region had learned to distrust Europeans because of the slave trade. The hot, humid climate was unbearable, and the labor was exhausting. Some of his fellow missionaries died. In a letter to his parents he wrote, “We are called to labor, to sweat, even to die, but the thought that we labor and die for love of Jesus Christ and for the salvation of the most abandoned souls, is too sweet for us to falter in this great commitment.”
Poor health forced him to return to Italy after two years. Only he and two others survived the trip to Khartoum. The missionary effort failed, but Daniel Comboni did not lose sight of his dream. He began to travel all across Europe, raising funds for a new kind of mission in Africa. He wanted to convert Africa through Africans. Working to rescue Africans from slavery, he made a Herculean effort to bring an end to slave trading. Eight trips to Africa gave him an opportunity to turn much mission work over to the Africans themselves. He compiled a dictionary of the Nubian language.
He died in Khartoum, among the people he served and loved.
OCTOBER 11
Mary Soledad (1826–87)
Serving the sick
Mary was born a shopkeeper’s daughter in Madrid, Spain, and given the name Bibiana Antonia Emanuela.
She had a stable and sturdy home life. The Daughters of Charity led her education, and during these early years she demonstrated more interest in sharing her food with poor playmates, and teaching them prayers, than in games.
A committed religious life appealed to Emanuela from childhood. When she became old enough to strike out on her own, she applied to become a Dominican, but was rejected because of her poor health. In 1848, Don Michael Martinez y Sanz, a lay member of the Servites, asked her to be one of seven women devoted to Christian service as nurses for the poor. She took the name Mary Soledad. Soledad translates as “solitude,” or “desolate,” a name implying “alone and grief-stricken.” An English equivalent term refers to the Virgin Mary as “Our Lady of Sorrows.” The group called themselves “Handmaids of Mary Serving the Sick.”
It was not an easy life. A cholera epidemic struck Madrid almost as soon as the nurses were organized. Getting more help proved a difficult challenge. When Don Martinez sent half of the group to West Africa in 1856, Mary Soledad tried to keep the work going with only six others assisting. When they were subjected to slander and bureaucratic bickering, it took the involvement of the queen of Spain to put the ministry on solid footing. In 1865 cholera broke out again, this time with ferocity. Mary and her sisters did a remarkable job of caring for the many victims, winning the community’s praise for their selfless devotion.
Strife returned when some of her helpers left to work with another religious order about 1870. Detractors criticized her program. One friend commented, “Mother Mary is like an anvil. She constantly takes a beating.” Again, things eventually improved, and she opened her first foreign house in Santiago, Cuba, about 1875. Forty-six other houses followed worldwide.
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