Long Live Saint Paul the Hermit!
Saint Paul of Thebes (+ 341) – whom we celebrate either on January 10th or, today, on the 15th – is traditionally considered the first hermit in the Catholic Church, if we don’t include John the Baptist, who is a liminal figure between the two Testaments. But there is a similarity, for as a young man of sixteen, embroiled in an inheritance dispute with his brother-in-law, who was going to betray him to the Roman persecutors, Paul fled into the desert. There, he remained in a cave, where a palm tree and a spring provided for his bodily needs, until a raven eventually began bringing a daily portion of bread, when the saint was about 43. And it was in that cave he worked and prayed for the next one hundred years (!), dying at the venerable age of 116.
From what accounts we do have of his hidden life, Paul did not interact with many people at all, and was a true solitary. There was one famous meeting with Saint Anthony the Great, also a hermit, who was told of Paul in a dream, and went to find him, by which point the Paul was a tender 113. They met for a day and a night, and shared a loaf of bread. Paul gave Anthony his poor cloak made of palm leaves, which Anthony (whose own eremitical life was made famous by Saint Athanasius) treasured for his own long life, wearing it only at Easter and Pentecost. Anthony called Paul ‘the first monk’, which is quite the honour.
When Anthony returned a few years later – time works differently for hermits, for whom three years might seem three days – Paul lay peacefully dead. Anthony buried him, with the help of two lions.
Saint Paul the Hermit not only kept his sanity in his life of solitude, but grew to the heights of holiness, his reputation spreading quickly, and continuing to this day. There is a parish in my own diocese – on the Quebec side – named after him, and the site of his death is still a Coptic monastery, also under his patronage. His feast is kept on January 10th in the current Roman martyrology, and on January 15th in the usus antiquior and Eastern Orthodox.
Amare nesciri – love to be unknown, Saint Philp Neri said, who himself lived an eremitical life for a time. As the Second Vatican Council decree on religious life, Perfectae Caritatis, says, the contemplative life is as effective as it is hidden. God makes known and magnifies His own – proclaimed from very the very rooftops! – in ways that are as surprising, as they are mysterious.
Saint Paul the Hermit, et ora pro nobis! +
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Canonizing Sister Faustina and Divine Mercy
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER MASS IN ST PETER’S SQUARE FOR THE CANONIZATION OF SR MARY FAUSTINA KOWALSKA Sunday, 30 April 2000 1. “Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius”; “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever” (Ps 118: 1). So the Church sings on the Octave of[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→
An Ideological and Improper Translation
I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→