Anyone could approach him without an announcement, but when we did we would often see him reading silently and we would not want to interrupt his study. We would sit quietly and watch him at work for a while, and then go away.
Ambrose taught Augustine the elements of Christianity and baptized him in 386. The rest is history.
Born into the home of a high-ranking official of the Roman government, Ambrose learned politics firsthand and became a provincial governor himself in northern Italy, with offices in Milan. When the bishop of Milan died, the church there was in doctrinal turmoil. Christians split into factions and were unable to agree on who should become their next bishop. Because emotions ran high and violence was likely to occur, Ambrose stepped forward as the community’s civil servant, urging the people to reach a decision in a rational and peaceful manner. A young person in the basilica where he was speaking was impressed enough by his diplomatic approach to cry out, “Ambrose for bishop!” Many others soon joined in, chanting in unison.
Ambrose was disturbed by this turn of events. He was a secular person who had never been baptized and had no desire for the position. While the Christians continued to call his name, Ambrose quietly slipped out of the building and went into hiding. A week later, on December 7, 374, he received the sacrament of baptism and was consecrated bishop of Milan.
Desiring to become a competent bishop, Ambrose engaged in a crash course of religious education. He gave away his possessions, began daily prayer and in-depth study of Scripture and Christian theology. He began to preach every Sunday at the basilica in Milan and took a personal interest in teaching new converts and those preparing for ministry. He served as an outstanding bishop, carefully leading the church through a critical period of its history. It is not an exaggeration to say that Ambrose was the most influential Christian in Italy. Pivotal moments in church history turned in healthy ways under his leadership.
Not only did Ambrose help define orthodox Christian doctrine, he also stood firmly against the abuse of secular power. The emperor Valentinian attempted to bring a peaceful resolution to theological squabbles among his subjects by directing Ambrose to let a heretical group control one of his churches. Ambrose resolutely refused, and the emperor sent troops to enforce his order. They laid siege to the church with Ambrose and his congregation inside. He sent a statement of his position to the palace: “The emperor is in the church, he is not above it.” Valentinian blinked and backed down.
Another direct confrontation with political authority occurred when another emperor, Theodosius, called for a massacre in Thessalonica in retaliation for the murder of its governor. Imperial troops killed thousands of innocent Thessalonican citizens. Horrified, Ambrose sent a letter to the emperor barring him from communion and urging him to do penance: “What has happened at Thessalonica is unparalleled in human memory. You are human, and temptation has overtaken you. I implore you to penance. The devil took away your crown of piety. Drive him from you while you can.” Theodosius did as his bishop had directed. Later, Ambrose conducted the funeral for Theodosius, commenting, “He stripped himself of every sign of royalty and bewailed his sin openly in the church. The emperor was not ashamed to do the public penance which lesser individuals try to avoid. To the end of his life he never ceased to grieve for his error.”
A famous mosaic image of Ambrose depicts him as a young man impressively dressed as a bishop, but with his head slightly tilted in humility. He died at the age of fifty-seven on Good Friday, 397. It is significant that his feast day is set on the day of his consecration as bishop.
DECEMBER 8
Romaric (d. 653)
From moneyed to monk
After his conversion, Romaric, a nobleman in the court of France’s Clotaire II, became a monk. Because of his selfless example, some of the serfs he freed joined him. We know little about him beyond the fact that he helped to found a monastery on his estate in the Vosges Mountains near Alsace-Lorraine. Many tourists seek this gently beautiful landscape today, enjoying hikes through the woods, skiing on the hills, and kayaking down its streams. He died peacefully in 653.
DECEMBER 9
Peter Fourier (1565–1640)
Teaching others
In 1597, Peter Fourier accepted an appointment to one of France’s most neglected parishes. Mattaincourt in Lorraine presented enormous difficulties for the thirty-two-year-old priest and theology professor. He selected the parish from a list because it seemed to be the neediest.
Peter undergirded his new ministry and all of his activity with intense prayer. His manner of living exemplified simple faith in action. He considered the free education of children the thing the neighborhood needed most, and began by attempting to teach boys, but he failed. With four female volunteers, he opened a free school for girls.
Peter himself had a prodigious memory and a reputation for knowing by heart all of Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas (January 28). He instructed the four women on a daily basis. He wanted them to teach older girls how to prepare invoices and receipts. Speaking and writing proper French was also important, but above all, he wanted the girls to be taught about the love of God and morality. He wrote some dialogues about virtues and vices that the children would recite for adults in church on Sunday afternoons. He aimed these directly at the weaknesses he observed in his parish.
Peter Fourier spent the final four years of his life in political exile, teaching in one of the schools opened under his guidance. After his death, his influence spread across the Atlantic to Canada and the United States.
DECEMBER 10
Brian Lacey (d. 1591)
Martyred for faith
Brian Lacy was a sixteenth-century country gentleman in Yorkshire, England, and cousin to a Catholic priest during a notorious time of persecution. Authorities arrested Brian in 1586, accusing him of assisting and hiding priests. He survived that ordeal only to be turned in by his betraying brother Richard in 1591. At the prison in Bridewell, Brian was tortured until he revealed the identities of others who were also providing cover for priests. Ultimately Brian Lacey was sentenced to death for supporting the Catholic Church. He died by hanging on December 10, 1591, in London.
DECEMBER 11
Maria Maravillas de Jesus Pidal y Chico de Guzman (1891–1974)
Saintly influence
Maria, the daughter of a Spanish ambassador, reminds us that saints are also a part of modern times. She was born in Madrid in 1891 and was profoundly influenced by the writings of John of the Cross (December 14) and Teresa of Avila (see October 15), sixteenth-century Christian mystics who wrote in the Spanish language. Just as many people today are attracted to Trappist monasteries by reading the writings of Thomas Merton, through her reading Maria determined to become a shoeless Carmelite nun. When her father died in 1913, her mother discouraged her from taking such a radical step. On October 12, 1919, Maria fulfilled her desire by joining the Discalced Carmelites of El Escorial in Madrid.
Sensitive to the guidance of God, Maria worked with three other Carmelites to establish Cerro de los Angeles, the first of several Teresan Carmelite Monasteries she would found around the world. Her goal was to provide living according to the spirit and ideals of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. When someone criticized the flimsy structures and bare walls of her convents, she replied, “It is not our concern to plant a seed. The Discalced Carmelites have already been founded. Even if our convents collapse, nothing will happen.”
Mother Maravillas, as she was called, gained the respect and admiration of those in her communities, but her spiritual life was a private affair, known only to her spiritual directors. In fact, she experienced discouraging times of spiritual dryness and stress. Her solution was total abandonment to God’s will as she understood it.
Maria founded the Association of Saint Teresa two years before her death. Her last words were uttered repeatedly: “What happiness to die a Carmelite!”
DECEMBER 12
Jane de Chantal (1572–1641)
&
nbsp; Gentle in spirit
Many fine young women today are known as “Viz girls.” They cheer with enthusiasm at athletic events, perform music with competence, demonstrate academic excellence, and sometimes see a sign on their way to the school parking lot that says, “Remember, Drive Gently.” These are the students of Visitation Schools, scattered worldwide.
Jane-Frances Fremiot de Chantal worked with Francis de Sales (January 24) to found the Order of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This new order began with the intention of providing for frail women an alternative to the austerity of traditional convents. By the time she died in 1641, Jane had founded more than eighty popular houses for women fully committed to the religious life.
Jane was born to a wealthy church-supporting family in Dijon, France, in 1572. When she was twenty she married Christopher de Rabutin, Baron de Chantal, and lived an ordinary, happy life as the mother of four children (three others had died in infancy). Widowed after nine years by a hunting accident, Jane decided she would not marry again. Her father-in-law treated her harshly, and she struggled with depression. Faith in God sustained her during this difficult period of her life.
Jane de Chantal stands out as a shining example of how God uses men and women in profoundly spiritual relationships. Three great pairings that come to mind are Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Clare and Francis of Assisi, and Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales.
Life took a dramatic turn for Jane in 1604 when she met the bishop of Geneva, Francis de Sales (January 24). There was a harmony of spirit between these two that resulted in much good for the Church and the world, and Jane asked Francis to be her spiritual director. The correspondence between them is one of the most revealing records we have of the depth and genuineness of the spirituality of both and is a spiritual treasure for readers today.
Life was not easy for Jane. In poor health, she dealt with criticism, opposition, lack of funds, and the death of her children and close friends. Maintaining a cheerful countenance, she survived for sixtynine years, founding eighty-seven international houses of the Visitation. A sentence in her surviving writings may be taken as something of her motto: “Regardless of what happens, be gentle with yourself.”
DECEMBER 13
Lucy of Syracuse (d. 304)
Christian dedication
Lucy is one of the most famous virgin/martyrs of the early fourth century. Christians suffered persecution under the Emperor Diocletian of Rome. Unfortunately, her colorful biographical sketches are highly unreliable. The stories told about her have to do with miraculous healings, rescues, and the avoidance of male advances.
The only historically accurate things we can say about Lucy is that she became a Christian martyr at Syracuse, Sicily, and that she had a significant following for centuries throughout Europe. Churches bore her name in Rome, Naples, Venice, and England. Venice claims to have her remains in a shrine. In Sweden, many people celebrate her feast on this day of brief sunlight with a festival of light in which the youngest daughter of a household dresses in white and wakes the family with coffee, rolls, and the widely known song, Santa Lucia.
DECEMBER 14
John of the Cross (1542–91)
Mystical experience
Few who knew this intellectual genius and intense spirit had any idea of his spiritual depth. Anyone wanting to become acquainted with him today should begin with his poetry.
On a dark night,
Burning with yearning love (oh, happy chance!)
I went out secretly,
While everyone else was asleep. . . .
The only light I had was the light that flamed in my heart,
But that light guided me better than the noonday sun
To the place where the one I knew was waiting for me.
Then move on to some of his masterful books: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Canticle, Living Flame of Love. No one else has articulated Christian spirituality as eloquently and meaningfully as John of the Cross. The unchallenged master of all mystical theologians, he found a way to express the inexpressible.
Juan de Yepes began life near Avila, Spain. His father’s parents had wealth, but they disinherited their son because he married a girl beneath their social level. Juan never knew his father, who died when he was an infant, leaving his family in poverty. In spite of these difficulties, Juan sought an education. He studied philosophy and scholastic theology at the Carmelite College in Salamanca, one of the most respected universities in Europe. He became a Carmelite friar at the age of twenty-one, taking the name Juan de la Cruz, John of the Cross.
Spanish Carmelites attracted notice for their deep interest in personal spirituality. They encouraged quiet, internal prayer, though many had become careless and self-righteous by the time John joined them.
Another of the great meetings of male and female saints occurred when John was twenty-five and Teresa of Avila (October 15) was fifty-two. It was 1567, the year of John’s ordination. Each recognized a familiar spirituality in the other. Teresa was already hard at work reforming Carmelite nuns, and she had been looking for a man to lead a similar task with the friars. A spiritual bond rapidly grew between them.
The publication of new religious insights in those times brought risks. The Spanish Inquisition hunted for heresy and independent thinking. Church leaders were keenly conscious of this threat. Even more distressing were internal conflicts and power struggles. In 1577 rivals carted John off to a Carmelite monastery in Toledo where they imprisoned and tortured him. “I have a great love of suffering. God gave me a high idea of its value when I was in prison at Toledo.” The poem, a paraphrased fragment of which is printed above, was composed during this imprisonment. After eight or nine months of solitary confinement and beatings that left him marred for life, marginally sustained with bread and water, John escaped in the dark of the night, taking his poems with him.
Returning to his own community, he faced petty bickering among friars, while others were jealous of his abilities and worked in nasty ways to prevent his leadership. It was during this turmoil that John wrote his most renowned books, none of them given any attention while he was alive. Plagued by lingering illness, John died alone on December 14, 1591.
Contemplating this spiritual giant’s life and accomplishments can leave a sensitive person a little numb. Silence seems more appropriate than discussion. One of his most respected translators, Allison Peers, in his introduction to Ascent of Mount Carmel, points out that John had read everything he could find regarding Christian spirituality, had absorbed it and made it his own. Rather than quoting the classics, he expresses thoroughly digested ideas in his own way. The writing of medieval mystics is “often vague and undisciplined; they need someone to select from them and unify them, to give them clarity and order, so that their treatment of mystical theology may have the solidity and substance of scholastic theology. To have done this is one of the achievements of St. John of the Cross.”
DECEMBER 15
Mary-Crucifixa di Rosa (1813–55)
A caring life
Mary-Crucifixa di Rosa’s Italian parents named her Paula at birth. She quit school at seventeen and began to take care of things at home. Clement di Rosa, her father, began trying to find her a husband. It surprised her when he brought a young man to her, and she took no interest in him. She poured out her dismay to the wise priest who had counseled her for years. The priest went to her father and gently told him not to pressure his daughter into marriage. She remained at home for the next ten years, doing increasing amounts of social work among poor girls. A deadly outbreak of cholera in 1836 provided Paula with an opportunity to work in a hospital. This led the intelligent young woman into several other ventures of service to young women in difficulty.
When she founded The Handmaids of Charity, local physicians and hospitals welcomed the work she and her companions rendered the sick on a full-time basis. The Handmaids considered both the physical and the spiritual needs of their patients.
Political upheaval in northern Italy brought open warfare, with both military and civilian casualties. The military took care of their own wounded, but the Handmaids of Charity ministered to wounded civilians and prisoners of war. Mary-Crucifixa di Rosa died in her early forties.
DECEMBER 16
Adelaide (ca. 930–99)
Faithful courage
It was common in medieval times for Christians to practice holiness by withdrawing from the world, and Adelaide’s enemies encouraged her to do that. But Adelaide’s story is a different one. She preferred to stay active in worldly affairs. Daughter of the king of Burgundy and widow of King Lothair of Italy, Adelaide became regent of the Holy Roman Empire. She was familiar with politics, diplomacy, and the ways of the world, so her life story does not read like that of most saints.
There was justifiable suspicion that King Lothair had been poisoned by his successor, Berengarius. Berengarius pressed Adelaide to marry his son, and when she refused, he had her brutally punished and locked away in a castle on Lake Garda. Eventually, Otto the Great of Germany invaded northern Italy, defeated Berengarius, and became a friend of Adelaide. Though Otto was twenty years older, they were married on Christmas Day, 951, at Pavia. The political consequence of this wedding was the consolidation of Otto’s Italian power.
Butler's Lives of the Saints Page 29
