For the Love of Christ

Do you know the first martyr who preferred to die rather than to reveal the secret of confession? In 14th-century Prague, there lived Father John Nepomucene, who was a famous preacher. As his fame spread, King Wenceslaus IV invited him to the court to settle arguments and take care of the needs of the people in the city. He eventually became the queen’s confessor, spiritually guiding her to patiently bear the cross of the King’s cruelty. One day, the King, who was infamous for his outbursts of anger and jealousy, called the priest into his chambers and started questioning him about the queen’s confessions. Father John refused to reveal the confession secrets despite the King’s attempted bribes and torture; consequently, he was imprisoned. The King kept coercing him, and even offered him riches and honor in return. When he saw that bribery wouldn’t work, he threatened the priest with the death penalty. Father John was made to undergo all manner of torture, including the burning of his sides with torches, but even that would not move him. Finally, the King ordered him to be put in chains, led through the city with a block of wood in his mouth, and to be thrown from Charles Bridge (the Karlsbrücke) into the river Moldau. The saint's response remained the same and he exclaimed: “I will rather die a thousand times.” The King’s cruel order was executed on March 20, 1393. The body of John of Nepomuk was thereafter drawn out of the Moldau and entombed in the Cathedral of Prague. In 1719, when his grave in the cathedral was opened, his tongue was found to be uncorrupted though shriveled. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1729. Often pictured near a bridge with a finger to his lips and with five stars over his head, it is believed that on the night Father John was murdered, five stars were seen over the spot where he drowned. For his valiant act of faithfulness to the confessional norms, Father John Nepomucene is considered as the patron saint of confessors.

Saint John Bosco, in addition to the many spiritual gifts he was graced with, often had dreams that revealed heavenly messages. In one of those dreams, he was taken to a meadow alongside the playground and shown an enormous snake coiled in the grass. Frightened, he wanted to run off, but the person who accompanied him held him back, asking him to get closer and take a good look. John was afraid, but his companion encouraged him to keep going, handed him a rope, and asked him to slap the snake with it. Hesitantly, John snapped the rope across its back, but as it sprang up, the snake got ensnared in the rope that had taken the shape of a noose. It struggled for a bit and died quickly. His companion took the rope and put it in a box; upon opening the box a few minutes later, John saw that the rope had shaped itself into the words “Ave Maria.” The snake, a symbol of the devil, was defeated, destroyed by the power of “Ave Maria” or “Hail Mary.” If a single Hail Mary can do that, imagine the power of the Rosary! John Bosco took the lesson to heart and even received further confirmation of his trust in Mary’s intercession. After the death of his dear student Dominic Savio, the saint had a vision of him in heavenly garb; this humble teacher asked the child saint what was his greatest consolation at the time of death. And he answered: “What comforted me the most at the moment of death was the aid of the mighty and lovable Mother of the Savior, Mary Most Holy. Tell this to your young people that they should not forget to pray to her as long as they live!” Saint John Bosco later wrote, “Let us devoutly say a Hail Mary whenever we are tempted, and we’ll be sure to win.”

People are often surprised when I tell them that my closest friend at the monastery is Fr. Philip, who happens to be 94. He being the oldest monk of the community, and me being the youngest, make quite the duo; another fellow monk affectionately refers to us as the “alpha and omega.” In addition to our discrepancy in age, there are numerous differences between us. Fr. Philip served in the Coast Guard before entering the monastery, studied Botany and English, has lived in Rome and Rwanda, and is fluent in several languages. In short, he has much more life experience than me. That said, we do share some things in common: we’re both California natives and converts from Protestantism (he Presbyterian and me Baptist). We enjoy opera immensely, and more importantly, we lead a life of prayer together. It is only natural to select friends who share our common interests. But as we get older and our situations in life transition, we find ourselves losing some friends while gaining new ones. Aristotle says that all friendships must share something in common. Enduring friendships are those that share long-lasting things. For example, friendship between two surfers persists as long as there are waves to be caught. However, if there is no swell or if one surfer gets injured and can no longer paddle out, the friendship will fade unless they find something new to share. Therefore, if we wish to have lifelong friends, the key is to find something that can be shared for a lifetime, or better yet, eternity. The high priest, Caiaphas, accused Jesus of blasphemy when He claimed to be the Son of God. Far more blasphemous than this statement was when Jesus told His disciples, “You are my friends.” For what could the Son of God have in common with fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot? What can God possibly have in common with us? He is much older than we are. He has more life experience. He is both Alpha and Omega. Whatever we share in common must have been given to us by Him in the first place. Among the many gifts He shares with us, Scripture is explicit about which lasts the longest: “His steadfast love endures forever.” “Love…endures all things.” “Love never ends.” As it turns out, being friends with God is quite simple. All we have to do is “love because He first loved us.”

Inigo Lopez was born to a noble family in 15th-century Spain. Inflamed by the ideals of courtly love and knighthood, he became a fiery warrior. While defending his native town of Palermo against French invaders, Inigo was severely injured by a cannonball during a battle in 1521. Gravely wounded but still full of courage, Inigo won the admiration of the French soldiers who escorted him home to recover rather than send him to prison. Planning to pass his bedridden recovery period enjoying romance novels, Inigo was disappointed to find that the only books available were on the lives of the Saints. He reluctantly leafed through these books but soon became immersed, reading in awe about these glorious lives. Inspired by the stories, he asked himself: “If they can, why can’t I?” This question haunted him as he recovered from his knee injury. But this holy disturbance the saints had sown in him grew stronger and eventually formed him into one of the greatest saints of the Church: Ignatius of Loyola.  Once recovered, Ignatius left his knife and sword at the altar of Our Lady of Montserrat. He gave away his expensive clothes and set out to tread the path of the Divine Master. His courage and passion were not diminished, but henceforth his battles would be for the Heavenly army, winning souls for Christ. His writings, especially the Spiritual Exercises, have touched countless lives and directed them on the road to holiness and Christ. 

Saint Januarius (or San Gennaro, as he is known in his native Italy) was born in Naples during the second century to a wealthy aristocratic family. He was ordained a priest at the remarkable age of fifteen. By age twenty, he was bishop of Naples. During the Christian persecution begun by the emperor Diocletian, Januarius hid many Christians, including his former classmate, Sossius, who would also become a saint. Sossius was exposed as a Christian and imprisoned. When Januarius visited him in jail, he too was arrested. Stories vary as to whether he and his fellow Christians were thrown to wild animals that refused to attack them or into a furnace from which they emerged unharmed. But all the stories agree that Januarius was eventually beheaded around the year 305 A.D. And this is where the story gets very interesting. Pious followers gathered some of his blood into glass vials and preserved it as a relic. That blood, preserved to this day, manifests remarkable qualities. On three occasions each year, as it has since this miracle first occurred in 1389, the coagulated blood liquefies. Stored in glass ampules, the dried dark red blood that clings to one side of the vessel miraculously turns to liquid that fills the bottle from side to side. Besides his feast day, September 19, the miracle also occurs on the day his remains were moved to Naples and the anniversary of Naples being spared from the effects of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1631. Several scientific investigations have tried and failed to explain how solid blood can become liquefied. And any trickery or foul play has been excluded. Joyous shouts of: “The miracle has happened!” fill the Naples Cathedral as the faithful kiss the reliquary that holds the saint’s blood. What an amazing gift God has given the Church in this remarkable saint, and in the miracle that each year reminds us of how Gennaro—and so many others—shed their blood for the sake of their Lord. As Tertullian said, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.’

When your soul is exhausted and you don’t know how to calm your mind… You might be familiar with how Saint Francis of Assisi once asked: “Who are You, Lord my God, and who am I?” He raised his hands in the offering, and from them rose a golden ball as he said: “Lord God, I am nothing, but all of it is Yours.” I first heard this story on a silent retreat where we were tasked to contemplate the same question: Who are You, Lord my God, and who am I? In the chapel, before the Blessed Sacrament, I fell to my knees and prayed that prayer. God revealed my heart to me, covered in layers of old blood-soaked bandages, wounded and hardened. Over the years, I had built barriers around my heart to protect it. In that chapel, I realized I couldn’t heal myself; I needed God to rescue me. I cried to Him: “I don’t have a golden ball to give; all I have is my wounded heart!” I felt God reply: “My beloved daughter, that IS the golden ball. I will take it.” In tears, I mimed, pulling my heart from my chest, and raised my hands in offering, saying: “Lord God, I am nothing, but all of it is Yours.” I was overcome with His presence, and I knew I was completely healed of an affliction that had held me in bondage for most of my life. On the wall beside me, I noticed a copy of Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son, and immediately I felt that my Father had welcomed me home. I was the prodigal daughter returned in poverty and distress, feeling unworthy and repentant, whom He received tenderly as His daughter. Often, our worldly understanding of love limits our understanding of what God can do for us. Human love, no matter how well-intentioned, is conditional. But God’s love is unfailing and extravagant! God is never outdone in generosity; He will not hold back His affection. Pride or fear makes us offer God only the best of ourselves, which prevents Him from transforming the parts we devalue. To receive His healing, we must surrender everything to Him and let Him decide how He will transform us. God’s healing is often unexpected. It requires our full trust. Therefore, we should listen to God, who wants the absolute best for us. Hearing God starts when we surrender everything to Him. By placing God first in our lives, we begin to cooperate with Him. God wants our whole selves—the good, the bad, and the ugly because He wants to transform these dark places with His healing light. God waits patiently for us to find Him in our littleness and brokenness. Let us run to God and embrace Him like lost children returning home to their Father, knowing He will receive us with open arms. We can pray like Francis: “Lord God, I am nothing, but all of it is Yours,” trusting that He will consume us with transforming fire and say: “I will take all of it and make you brand new.”

At half past six, when it was still pitch dark and freezing cold, Joshua Glicklich heard a whisper, a whisper that brought him back to life. My upbringing was very typical like that of any northern lad here in the United Kingdom. I went to a Catholic school and had my first Holy Communion. I was taught the Catholic faith, and we went to Church very often. By the time I got to the age of 16, I had to choose my education, and I chose to do my levels, not at a Catholic sixth form, but at a secular school. That is when I started to lose my faith. The constant pushing of the teachers and priests to deepen my faith and love of God was no longer there. I ended up at university, and this is where my faith was really tested. In my first semester, I was partying, going to all these different events, and not making the best choices. I made some really big mistakes--like going out drinking until God knows what time in the morning and living a life that didn’t make any sense. That January, when students had to return from their first-semester break, I returned a bit earlier than everyone else. That unforgettable day in my life, I woke up at about half past six in the morning. It was pitch black and freezing cold. Even the foxes that I used to see outside my room weren’t to be seen—it was that cold and horrible. I perceived an inaudible voice within me. It wasn’t a nudge or a push that was uncomfortable for me. It felt like a quiet whisper of God saying, “Joshua, I love you. You are my son … come back to me.” I could have easily walked away from that and totally ignored it. Yet I remembered that God does not abandon His children, no matter how far we have strayed. Though it was raining hailstones, I walked to Church that morning. As I put one foot in front of the other, I thought to myself, “What am I doing? Where am I going?” Yet God kept moving me forward, and I arrived at the church for the eight o’clock Mass on that cold, wintry day. For the first time since I was about 15 or 16, I let the words of the Mass wash over me. I heard the Sanctus— “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.” Just before that, the priest said, “Joining with the choirs of the angels and the saints…” I put my heart into it and focused. I sensed angels descending on the altar to the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. I remember receiving the Holy Eucharist and thinking, “Where have I been, and what has all of this been about if not for Him?” As I received the Eucharist, a flood of tears overcame me. I realized that I was receiving the body of Christ. He was there within me, and I was His tabernacle—His resting place. From then on, I began to attend student Mass regularly. I met many Catholics who loved their faith. I often remember the quote by Saint Catherine of Siena, “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” That’s what I saw in these students. I saw the Lord letting these people be who they were meant to be. God guided them gently like a Father. They were setting the world on fire—they were evangelizing by making their faith known to others on campus, sharing the Good News. I wanted to get involved, so I became part of the university chaplaincy. During this time, I learned to love my faith and to express it to others in a way that wasn’t overbearing but Christ-like. A few years later, I became the president of the Catholic Society. I had the privilege of leading a group of students in their faith development. During this time, my faith grew. I became an altar server. That’s when I got to know Christ—being up close to the altar. The priest says the words of transubstantiation, and the bread and wine turn into the true Body and Blood of Christ. As an altar server, all of this was right there in front of me. My eyes were opened to the absolute miracle that happens everywhere, at every Mass, on every altar. God respects our free will and the journey of life we take. However, to reach the right destination, we have to choose Him. Remember that no matter how far we have strayed away from God, He is always there with us, walking right beside us and guiding us to the right place. We are nothing but pilgrims on a journey to Heaven.

Saint Lawrence was one of the seven deacons in charge of giving help to the poor and needy under Pope Sixtus II and was martyred during the persecution of Emperor Valerian in 258. When persecution broke out, Pope Sixtus was condemned to death. As he was led to execution, Lawrence followed him weeping. “Father, where are you going without your deacon?” he asked. “I am not leaving you, my son,” answered the Pope. “In three days, you will follow me.” Full of joy, Lawrence gave to the poor the rest of the money he had on hand and even sold expensive vessels to have more to give away. The Prefect of Rome, a greedy man, thought the Church had a great fortune hidden away. So he ordered Lawrence to bring the Church’s treasure to him. The Saint said he would do it in three days. Then, he went through the city and gathered together all the poor and the sick people who were supported by the Church. When he presented them to the Prefect, he said, “This is the Church’s treasure!” In great anger, the Prefect condemned Lawrence to a slow, cruel death. The Saint was tied on top of an iron grill over a slow fire that slowly roasted his flesh. But Lawrence was burning with so much love of God that he almost did not feel the flames. God gave him so much strength and joy that he even joked during this torture. “Turn me over,” he said to the judge. “I’m done on this side!” Just before he died, Lawrence said, “At last, I am finished.” Then, he prayed that the city of Rome might be converted to Jesus and that the Catholic faith might spread all over the world. After that, he went to receive the martyr’s reward. Today, Saint Lawrence is hailed as the patron saint of the poor due to his legacy of helping the less privileged during his life.

It is a relentless saga when trying to find the truth but a quick renewal when truth itself finds you Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was once asked what book he would want to have with him if ever he found himself stranded on a desert island. Along with the Bible he chose St Augustine’s Confessions. Some might have found the choice surprising but I think I agree. Having just gone through the book again for the fourth or fifth time I found myself even more engrossed in it than ever before. The first half of the book which recounts his conversion story is especially engaging. Like The Story of a Soul by St Thérèse this book feels at once more familiar after several readings and yet somehow more filled with new lights. What St Augustine does is to instruct us in how to pursue something which is fundamental to spiritual growth, namely, the attainment of self-knowledge. He traces the thread of the working of God’s grace, as well as his own sinfulness, from his earliest memories right through to the time of his conversion and beyond. He even goes back further than his own memories can take him and writes of what he was told of his babyhood by others. The little detail about him being prone to laughter during his sleep as a baby is particularly endearing. After this fourth or fifth reading, I have been left pondering something which I would like to share with you in this short article. It has to do with the influence of his youthful friendships. Parents cannot be vigilant enough when it comes to the question of their children’s friends. So many of us have been drawn away from whatever little virtue we had in our youth by the example and enticement of our wayward companions. Augustine was no different. Life in the fourth century sounds surprisingly similar to life in our own day. Pears and Peers Augustine’s famous story of the stealing of the pears illustrates the point. He probes his memory for the motivation behind the decision to rob an orchard, even though he had better pears at home and wasn’thungry. Most of the pears ended up being thrown to the hogs. He knew full well at the time that what he was doing was an act of gratuitous injustice. Did he do evil then purely for the sake of doing evil? Yet, this is not the way that our heart is generally disposed. Sin in us is normally the perversion of some good. In this case, it was done out of a kind of rambunctious camaraderie and the mocking delight of a group of friends at the thought of the outrage of the owners of the orchard. It was friendship gone awry that was its motive. Augustine would never have done such a thing alone, but only because he was spurred on by his peers. He was desperate to impress them and to have his share in their act of mindless mischief. Friendship is one of God’s greatest gifts, but friendship warped by sin can have ruinous effects. The eloquent lament of the saint unmasks its danger, “O friendship all unfriendly! You strange seducer of the soul, who hungers for mischief from impulses of mirth and wantonness, who craves another’s loss without any desire for one’s own profit or revenge—so that, when they say, “Let’s go, let’s do it,” we are ashamed not to be shameless.” (Confessions. Book II, 9). Captivity There is a similar pattern in relation to the sin which would become fatal poison for Augustine’s soul and which could have led to his eternal perdition. The sin of lust also took hold of his heart as he journeyed with his friends ever further out upon what he calls the “stormy fellowship” of human life. In the company he kept during his teenage years it became the custom to want to outdo one another in lasciviousness. They would boast of their exploits and even exaggerate the real scale of their immorality to impress one another. The only thing that they were by now ashamed of was innocence and chastity. His holy mother had warned him sternly in his sixteenth year to avoid fornication and to stay away from other men’s wives. He would later write to the Lord about his arrogant dismissal of her admonitions, “These appeared to me but womanish counsels, which I would have blushed to obey. Yet they were from Thee, and I knew it not.” (Confessions.Book II, 3) What began with one or two sins of the flesh became a habit before long, and sadly for Augustine, this evil habit would later begin to feel like a necessity. What started as a boast to his friends finally enchained his will and took on a life of its own within him. The demon of lust had found its doorway into the throne room of his soul through a vain longing to impress. The Spark of Truth After reading Cicero at age nineteen, the saving grace of his intellectual quest to discover wisdom was sparked off. This passionate search would lead him through the study of different schools of philosophy, gnosticism, and a prolonged pondering of the problem of evil. All the while, this journey ran parallel to the sexual immorality which had engulfed his life. His mind was groping upwards for light, but his will was still mired in the mud of sin. The climactic point of this journey, when both tendencies within him would at last clash violently, came at around the age of thirty-two. It was then that the struggle which would determine his eternal fate—and whether or not he would become a light for all subsequent generations of Christians or simply disappear into darkness—broke into a raging interior inferno. After listening to the sermons of the great Saint Ambrose and after reading the letters of Saint Paul, there could be no more doubt in his mind that in the Catholic Church alone would he find the truth he had always sought. It was clear to him now that Jesus Christ was his heart’s true desire and yet he was powerless to break the chains of lust which had shut that same heart up in a prison of vice. He was too sincere in the face of truth to think that he could ever come to life in Christ without a willingness to die to grave sin. War and Liberation The final battle which would decide the war for his soul followed upon a discussion with his friends about some illustrious Romans who had left everything behind to follow Christ. (Now the presence of good friends was beginning to right the wrongs of youth.) Seized with a holy desire to follow the example of the saints, and yet unable to do so because of his attachment to lust, an emotional Augustine stormed out of the house into the garden. Seeking out a place of solitude, he allowed the tears of regret and inner frustration to finally flow freely. They were to prove cleansing tears. The moment had at last come when he was ready to let go. He consented to release his grip on sin for good. No sooner had this holy spiritual desire overcome his inordinate desire for physical pleasure than he heard a child’s voice singing repeatedly, “Take and read.” He interpreted this as a command from Almighty God placed upon the lips of babes. Rushing back to the house to take up the book of Saint Paul’s letters which he had left on the table, he told himself that he would accept whatever words his eyes first fell upon as an expression of the will of God for his life. This was what he read, “Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Romans 13:13-14) Triumph Along with these words of Sacred Scripture, supernatural light was infused into his soul. Only moments after truly desiring to be delivered for the first time ever, deliverance was now his. The chains which had fettered his will for so long, subjecting it to the tempestuous rule of the passions, had been smashed to pieces by the grace of Christ the Liberator. His tormented soul was permitted to enter instantly into joy, peace, and the freedom of the children of God. In that momentous hour for the whole Church, the man once enslaved to lust through the unfortunate company kept as a youth had died and one of the most influential saints of all time had suddenly come to life. Looking back years later, it was hard for the saint to believe that he could have ever allowed such paltry trifles to hold him back from the Lord and the ecstatic joys that would be given him in Christ. He had been like one clinging desperately to worthless trinkets while priceless treasure was held out to him. The Protestant scholar R.C. Sproul sums up the consensus of all Christians about the monumental importance of what happened on that day, “If there is any giant that stands out in the history of the Church as the man upon whose shoulders the whole history of theology stands, it is a man by the name of Aurelius Augustine, Saint Augustine.”

We know each of us has a guardian angel. But how often do we ask for his help? The first time I realized my guardian angel was my best hope was when I was scheduled to teach three workshops at a Christian writing conference several hours away by car. I woke up with a horrible migraine and cried as I wondered how I would manage the drive. I did not want to be unprofessional and cancel at the last minute. I cried because there is an element of shame in being chronically ill—I suffer from migraine headaches that can debilitate me for nearly half the days in a month—and I did not want to admit how weak I was. So, I prayed to my angel to bring me safely there and back. I still don’t know how I made the long drive. I put on my Rosary CD, and then listened to the Gospel of John, thinking how beautiful it would be to have Jesus upon my heart if I were to die. Not that I wanted to die. My children were still young. My husband would miss me. And I was loving my writing life even more since we had converted to Catholicism. I wanted everybody to have what I had—Jesus! And boom! The revelation hit me—my guardian angel isn’t here just to protect me from bodily harm but to make sure I get to Heaven. Heaven! That’s the goal. God loves us so much He appoints an angel from the moment of our conception to guard and protect us from all dangers, and to guide us to our eternal home. This awareness, which I’ve had since I was a small child, still astounds me. As a child, I had complete trust in God’s protection. But the problem of suffering, so present in my life, was difficult to reconcile with belief in an omnipotent God. So, at age twelve I lost my faith, and ended my invocations to my guardian angel. But, without my knowledge, my angel was still guiding me. I am very thankful to my angel for protecting me from death during my twenties because had I died then, my intellect so clouded by sin, I might have rejected God’s mercy and gone to Hell. It is by the grace of God, and the patience and long-suffering of my guardian angel, that I’ve been able to hear His promptings and return to God, and when my plans derail, to pray “not my will but Thine”. I am also returning to that childhood state of complete trust and surrender. If I am anxious about anything, I ask my angel to take care of the situation. I call upon the guardian angels of my children when I’m at the brink of losing my patience. I also call upon the angels of the people to whom I want to be a faithful witness. What a comfort it is to draw upon heavenly assistance. Guardian angels carry our prayers and offerings to the throne of God; they come to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with us, and if we are unable to attend, as it was for many during the pandemic, we can ask our angel to go in our place to praise and adore our blessed Lord. These heavenly creatures are a gift to us. Let us always remember they are watching over us and want us to reach Heaven! Cultivate a relationship with your angel. They are God’s gift to each of us. Dear angel! Ever at my side. How loving must thou be To leave thy home in Heaven to guard a guilty wretch like me. ~ Fr. Frederick William Faber (AD 1814-1863)