Saintliness

This week is outstanding in liturgical celebrations in that we have a Saint’s Feast Day every day. While there are more than ten thousand canonized saints, certainly there are feast days every day of the year, but the Church's universal liturgical calendar only puts forth a few.
 
We begin with two 20th-century martyrs: the German Carmelite nun St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross [Monday], and  the Polish Priest St. Maximilian Kolbe [Saturday], both put to death in Nazi concentration camps for the crime of being Catholic. Saint Teresa was a convert from Judaism, hunted down for her Jewish heritage where she was in hiding in a convent in Holland, in retaliation for the Dutch Catholic Bishops having protested the Nazi Holocaust.
 
Saint Maximilian had been a missionary in Japan, but returned to his native Poland where he was arrested and imprisoned. When a man he recognized as the father of a large family faced the firing squad, Father Kolbe offered to take his place. He was placed in a cell where he was to die of starvation, but finally was put to death by lethal injection. When I visited Auschwitz several year ago, I visited the cell where the Saint died. There is a perpetual candle burning there. It was a very moving experience. It is a little-known fact that there have been more martyrs for the Catholic Faith in the 20th century than in the first nineteen centuries combined. Such is the legacy of Nazism, Fascism and Communism.
 
On Tuesday we have the 4th-century Roman martyr Saint Lawrence, (one of my personal patrons: my middle name is Lawrence). He was a deacon in charge of sacred vessels for the Church in Rome. When the Emperor Valerian said to him, “Bring me all the Church’s treasures,” Lawrence gathered the poor and homeless from the streets and presented them to the Emperor, saying, “These are the Church’s treasures.” Not amused, the Emperor had Lawrence burned alive on a gridiron. I was able to visit the tomb of Saint Lawrence while on sabbatical a few years ago. In the stunning Basilica of San Lorenzo, which dates back to the 6th century, he shares a crypt with Saint Stephen, the Church’s First Martyr, and the 2nd-century martyr Saint Justin.
 
Wednesday brings us the 13th-century Virgin, Saint Clare of Assisi, friend of Saint Francis and founder of the contemplative Order, The Poor Clares. These nuns were permitted to leave the cloister and their perpetual prayer in order to care for the lepers in the area. Visiting the Church of San Damiano and the former convent there today, the place where the Saint slept (upon a pile of straw on the floor) has a constantly renewed bouquet of flowers, nearly 800 years after her death. When visiting the present-day convent, one may view Clare’s beautiful golden hair (she was descendant of Russian nobility), which Saint Francis himself cut as she entered religious life, as well as her much-patched habit.
 
On Thursday we have the 17th-century French Baroness, Saint Jane de Chantal. After her husband died, she provided for her six children and, with the help of Saint Francis de Sales, founded the Order of Visitation Sisters. She went on to establish eighty-five monasteries before her death.

On Friday, we finally come to two mostly unknown Saints, though important enough to be included in our calendar. These are the 3rd-century Martyrs, Saints Pontian and Hippolytus. Pontian was a Pope, and Hippolytus a priest, friends who were once estranged, but later reconciled when they were sent off together into exile on the island of Sardinia. While in exile, Saint Pontian became the first Pope to abdicate, in AD 325, in order to allow for the election of his successor. Saint Hippolytus is the author of the Second Eucharistic Prayer, the oldest and briefest of the four Eucharistic Prayers we use at Mass.
 
Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that saints have a past, and sinners have a future. Looking into our past, to the lives of these saints, we can then look to our own future, in hopes that we, too, can grow in holiness and saintliness.