Saint of the Week: Pope St. Gregory the Great (September 3)

Gregory was the prefect of Rome before he was 30. After five years in office he resigned, founded six monasteries on his Sicilian estate and became a Benedictine monk in his own home at Rome.

Ordained a priest, he became one of the pope’s seven deacons, and also served six years in the East as papal representative in Constantinople. He was recalled to become abbot, and at the age of 50 was elected pope by the clergy and people of Rome.

He was direct and firm. He removed unworthy priests from office, forbade taking money for many services, emptied the papal treasury to ransom prisoners of the Lombards and to care for persecuted Jews and the victims of plague and famine. He was very concerned about the conversion of England, sending 40 monks from his own monastery. He is known for his reform of the liturgy, for strengthening respect for doctrine. Whether he was largely responsible for the revision of “Gregorian” chant is disputed.

Gregory lived in a time of perpetual strife with invading Lombards and difficult relations with the East. When Rome itself was under attack, he interviewed the Lombard king.

An Anglican historian has written: “It is impossible to conceive what would have been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages without the medieval papacy; and of the medieval papacy, the real father is Gregory the Great.”

His book, Pastoral Care, on the duties and qualities of a bishop, was read for centuries after his death. He described bishops mainly as physicians whose main duties were preaching and the enforcement of discipline. In his own down-to-earth preaching, Gregory was skilled at applying the daily gospel to the needs of his listeners. Called “the Great,” Gregory is a Doctor of the Church.

Gregory was content to be a monk, but he willingly served the Church in other ways when asked. He sacrificed his own preferences in many ways, especially when he was called to be Bishop of Rome. Once he was called to public service, Gregory gave his considerable energies completely to this work.

Pope St. Gregory the Great once reflected on Jesus’ call to ‘renounce oneself and take up one’s cross’ by saying, “Perhaps it is not after all so difficult for a man to part with his possessions, but it is certainly most difficult for him to part with himself. To renounce what one has is a minor thing; but to renounce what one is, that is asking a lot” (Homilies on the Gospels). St. Gregory the Great, pray for us!

Biography adapted from American Catholic.

Saint of the Week: St. Bernard of Clairvaux (August 20)

Bernard, the founding abbot of Clairvaux Abbey in Burgundy, France, was one of the most commanding Church leaders in the first half of the twelfth century as well as one of the greatest spiritual masters of all times and the most powerful propagator of the Cistercian reform.

He was born in Fontaines-les-Dijon in 1090 and entered the Abbey of Citeaux in 1112, bringing thirty of his relatives with him, including five of his brothers—his youngest brother and his widowed father followed later. He was sent in 1115 to begin a new monastery near Aube: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light. As a young abbot, he published a series of sermons on the Annunciation. These marked him not only as a gifted spiritual writer but also as the “cithara of Mary” (cithara was an ancient Greek instrument similar to the guitar).

His Peacemaking

Bernard’s spiritual writing as well as his extraordinary personal magnetism began to attract many to Clairvaux and the other Cistercian monasteries, leading to many new foundations. He was drawn into the controversy developing between the new monastic movement vs. the Cluniac order (a branch of the Benedictines). This led to one of Bernard’s most controversial and popular works, his Apologia. Bernard’s dynamism soon reached far beyond monasteries. He was sought as an advisor and mediator by the ruling powers of his age. More than any other, he helped to bring about the healing of the papal schism which arose in 1130 with the election of the antipope Anacletus II. It cost Bernard eight years of laborious travel and skillful mediation. At the same time, he labored for peace and reconciliation between England and France and among many nobles. His influence mounted when his spiritual son was elected pope in 1145. At Eugene III’s command, he preached the Second Crusade and sent vast armies on the road toward Jerusalem. In his last years, he rose from his sickbed and went into the Rhineland to defend the Jews against a savage persecution.

His Extraordinary Writings

Although he suffered from constant physical debility and had to govern a monastery that soon housed several hundred monks and was sending forth groups regularly to begin new monasteries (he personally saw to the establishment of sixty-five of the three hundred Cistercian monasteries founded during his thirty-eight years as abbot), he yet found time to compose many and varied spiritual works that still speak to us today. (Click here to read some; scroll to bottom of the page.) He laid out a solid foundation for the spiritual life in his works on grace and free will, humility and love. His gifts as a theologian were called upon to respond to the dangerous teachings of Peter Abelard, of Gilbert de la Porree and of Arnold of Brescia. His masterpiece, his Sermons on the Song of Songs, was begun in 1136 and was still in composition at the time of his death. With great simplicity and poetic grace, Bernard writes of the deepest experiences of the mystical life in ways that became normative for all succeeding writers. For Pope Eugene, Bernard wrote Five Books on Consideration, the bedside reading of Pope John XXIII and many other pontiffs through the centuries.

Bernard died at Clairvaux on 20 August 1153. He was canonized by Pope Alexander III on 18 January 1174. Pope Pius VII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1830.

Every morning Bernard would ask himself, “Why have I come here?”, and then remind himself of his main duty – to lead a holy life. St. Bernard, pray for us!

Biography adapted from the Benedictines.

Saint of the Week: St. Rose of Lima, Patroness of World Youth Day 2011, and people ridiculed for their piety (August 23)

Virgin, born at Lima, Peru 20 April, 1586; died there the 24 of August, 1617.

Her real name was Isabel, but she was such a beautiful baby that she was called Rose, and that name remained. As she grew older, she became more and more beautiful, and one day, her mother put a wreath of flowers on her head to show off her loveliness to friends. But Rose had no desire to be admired, for her heart had been given to Jesus. So she put a long pin into that wreath and it pierced her so deeply, that she had a hard time getting the wreath off afterward. Another time she became afraid that her beauty might be a temptation to someone, since people could not take their eyes off her. So she rubbed her face with pepper until it was red and blistered.

St. Rose worked hard to support her poor parents and she humbly obeyed them, except when they tried to get her to marry. That she would not do. Her love of Jesus was so great that when she talked about Him, her face glowed and her eyes sparkled.

Rose had many temptations from the devil, and there were also many times when she had to suffer a feeling of terrible loneliness and sadness, for God seemed far away. Yet she cheerfully offered all these troubles to Him. In fact, in her last long, painful sickness, this heroic young woman use to pray: “Lord, increase my sufferings, and with them increase Your love in my heart.”

Many miracles followed her death. She was beatified by Clement IX, in 1667, and canonized in 1671 by Clement X, making her the first canonized saint of the Americas. St. Rose, pray for us! To read more about her, visit this page.