December 13 Damasus, Lucy, John of the Cross

Thommy and John et al.
Good morning
I love you.

12/13/09
1223

I started today with Saints of the Roman Calendar - a variation on my daily saints reading/prayer. I’ve had this book for a long time and haven’t used it much. With my other hardcopy sources somewhere yet undiscovered in the boxes filling my apartment qua storeroom, I’ve read this little red book. A lot easier to read in bed than the laptop…

I wouldn’t usually read about a saint not a John, Ken, William, Thomas, or Jesuit. But, the blurbs in this book are very short and tie into the prayers of the Mass - besides, there he was between The Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe. For a short read, what the heck, why not…. I followed up Saints of the Roman Calendar with Angels and Saints and Catholic Encyclopedia on line…..



Pope Saint Damasus I
December 11 b: 306? d: 384

Damasus was elected Pope, i.e., bishop of Rome, in 366 (a sixty year old deacon of the Church of St. Lawrence the Martyr) by the clergy and the people. The son of a Spaniard father and, maybe, Roman mother, Damasus was probably born but certainly grew up in Rome. The history of the papacy is worth a read if only for Machiavellian reasons. To the extent that our leaders, our Popes in particular, personify our faith, our religion, our pursuit of eternal happiness, then their lives are worth our time to learn about them.

Damasus’ election was not uneventful. His reign was marked by violence from the start. Another group decided to elect a different Bishop of Rome. Both sides tried to enforce their selections through violence. Emperor Valentinian recognized Damasus and banished his opponent, (367) Ursinus, to Cologne. Though the physical fighting stopped, Damasus had to struggle with these opponents throughout his years as Bishop of Rome. [How much of this struggle accounted for his sidling up to Theolosius I? How much of this accounted for his vehement positioning of the Bishop of Rome as The Bishop? Or was his positioning a cause of the competitive election of the other man?]


Damasus was the first to use the term “Apostolic See”. Words do matter; names even moreso. Personal names; the title of the position we hold. To the extent that others first, usually, respond to our position rather than our person, Damasus hit the nail on the head - there’s more to who he was than bishop of Rome; the one liner, Apostolic See was a declaration, an affirmation of the primacy of the bishop of Rome. By the middle of the fourth century we had not begun to settle on the matter of ‘one leader’, a perpetuation of the Rock of Peter. Damasus took us a big step in that direction for better or worse. We have gone down that road more and more. I suggest too far and to our detriment have we centralized our leadership and de-emphasized the localness of our church, the place of our bishop in our local leadership - a man who might better serve us were he to rise from our midst by acclamation of the people and the clergy….

In the fourth century this Spaniard confronted the division between East and West by declaring the primacy of the West, the bishop of Rome. To make his point beyond “Apostolic See”, Damasus called St Jerome to Rome to, among other things, translate the Bible from Greek into Latin [the vulgate - the vulgate of the west!]. Damasus also translated the liturgy from Greek into Latin, except the Kyrie: thus, both furthering the divide between East and West and more publicly emphasizing his assertion of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome.

Damasus did not have cordial relations with his counterparts in the Eastern Church. Go figure! St Basil said Damasus was too proud to listen to those who told him the truth. A warning for all of us. Veritas Splendor! We seek Truth. Truth is not a function of perception, opinion, position - Truth is real and an absolute unto itself. We discover Truth; Truth is revealed to us. Aristotle. Ayn Rand. The messenger is irrelevant to Truth. Once we personalize the message, once we make Truth dependent upon a source [or maintain that any particular person can not be a bearer of Truth] then we too are subject to Basil’s admonition of Damasus.

The fourth century was rife with heresies - maybe to be expected in the formative years of our church. How do we know the boundaries of our faith until some go beyond and upon proper discernment we determine they went too far? Arianism; the Donatists; Novatianists; et al. Let’s assume that these were theologians of good faith and intellectual honesty pursuing the depths and breaths and limits of our beliefs. At some point they are determined as right or not right. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that we settled definitively on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. If Pius IXth and the Church of his day had decided no to the Immaculate Conception, all those people, for 1,850 years, would have been wrong and, possibly, in hindsight, deemed heretics. How do you pursue your faith and how it is limitlessly constrained by the doctrines, the teaching authority, of Mother Church?

Damasus was a great promoter of devotion to the martyrs. He made the catacombs sanctuaries and accessible for devotion. He was also zealous in locating the relics of the martyrs so that out heroes of the faith would serve as our models.

In 379, Damasus took us, I suggest to you, way over the edge. It was through Damasus’ efforts that Theolosius I made Christianity the State Religion. A move consistent with Damasus’ identifying the Bishop of Rome as the Apostolic See and the first among all bishops. This, along with articles of faith, became a wedge between the East and West of our faith, our Body of Christ, our then and still today, divided Church. ….

You can see, I hope, why Damasus caught my attention. The son of a Spanish official living in Rome is elected Bishop of the eternal city. He then puts us on several interwoven paths of Church history - for better and worse….

Damasus was a writer, mostly of epigram and not long missives or tombs. From the Decree of Damasus (attributed to Damasus) [From The Faith of the Early Fathers , by William A. Jurgens, Copyright 1970, the Order of St. Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota]:

The arrangement of the names of Christ, however, is manifold:
Lord, because He is Spirit;
Word, because He is God;
Son, because He is the only-begotten son of the Father;
Man, because He was born of the Virgin;
Priest, because He offered Himself as a sacrifice;
Shepherd, because He is a guardian;
Worm, because He rose again;
Mountain, because He is strong;
Way, because there is a straight path through Him to life;
Lamb, because He suffered;
Corner-Stone, because instruction is His;
Teacher, because He demonstrates how to live;
Sun, because He is the illuminator;
Truth, because He is from the Father;
Life, because He is the creator;
Bread because He is flesh;
Samaritan, because He is the merciful protector;
Christ, because He is anointed;
Jesus, because He is a mediator;
Vine, because we are redeemed by His blood;
Lion, because he is king;
Rock, because He is firm;
Flower, because He is the chosen one;
Prophet, because He has revealed what is to come.

Damasus, in addition to a masterful politician on the world stage, was, obviously, a prayerful man, a thinker in images. Add your meditations to his insights. Add your own metaphors to his.


1315, time out for Patriots v. Panthers….
1609, Panthers win, with the 13 points….
1852, post nap….



Saint Lucy
December 13 b. ~283 d. ~304
Patron of Blindness

Another saint I picked up in the Saints of the Roman Calendar. … There’s Charlie Brown’s Lucy. There’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds. There’s KK’s daughter Lucy. Those are the Lucys I know….

And then there is the story of this young, betrothed woman who went on a pilgrimage from Syracuse to the tomb of St Agatha, patron of Catania. To understand Lucy’s story, you have to know Agatha’s.

Agatha is one of the most highly venerated virgin martyrs of Christian antiquity. Her martyrdom probably took place during the persecution of Decius (250-253; maybe 70 years before Lucy took her fateful pilgrimage). The veneration of this saint rapidly spread beyond her native Catania - she was an inspiration to many Christians in an era of many persecutions, certainly during Lucy’s time.

Agatha, beautiful daughter of a distinguished family, was desired by the Senator Quintianus. Agatha, however, was herself an avowed pious virgin and spurned the Senator’s advances. Calculate all the dynamics at play here. Man wants woman who dares to say no! Very [self] Important Person wants the hand of this beautiful damsel for his wife; and she dares say no! Roman Senator publicly wants Christian girl; and she says no! She chooses virginity instead of him; how dare she! The woman of that era did not have a say in the matter. What does it say about Agatha’s parents that they allowed this response to represent them to the Senator. But I digress.

The Senator had Agatha committed to a Brothel. Agatha would not be made into a prostitute to defile her virginity. [I wish we knew more about the how of this successful resistance.] …. The Senator then had Agatha subjected to cruel tortures - including having her breasts cut off. St. Peter intervened and had her healed. Eventually, Agatha succumbed to the tortures and died - giving herself, in finality, to God, not to Quintianus.

So, Lucy, daughter of a noble family, betrothed to her own important man, goes on a pilgrimage to St Agatha’s shrine, fifty miles away. Didn’t anyone see what was coming? What was possibly already decided? Lucy’s father died when she was young. She could not go to the shrine on her own; her mother, Eutychia, had to allow it; endorse it; accompany her. Eutychia was persuaded to make a pilgrimage to Catania, in the hope of being cured of a hemorrhage, from which she had been suffering for several years. Could it be that daughter had already decided - not this man, not any man, Lucy would be a virgin committed to Christ and the Church. She had to give her mother cover - - Like Tevya’s dream?

We know for sure that a Syracuse woman known as Lucy lost her life in the persecution of Christians in the early fourth century. Her veneration spread to Rome. The details of her bravery, her legend, our inspiration requires the details of martyrology.

Lucy’s mother arranged for a marriage - of course, she was beautiful, they were a distinguished family, Lucy’s husband would bring life long security to the girl and her mother and their family. Lucy knew her mother would not be dissuaded by a young girl’s private, personal [selfish] vow - especially one so socially illogical.

Through prayers at the tomb of St Agatha, Lucy’s long illness was cured. Pretty clear whose side God was on. Lucy’s mother was now prepared to listen to her daughter’s desire to give her dowry to the poor and commit her life to God/Church.

Alas, the rejected bridegroom did not see the light. [ok, a pun. Lucy means light]. The suitor, showing us all why Lucy and her parents made the right decision to begin with, betrayed Lucy to the governor as a Christian. The governor tried to send her into prostitution. The guards who came for her could not lift her; they found her stiff and as heavy as a mountain. After many tortures, Lucy was finally killed. Whatever the details for Lucy, we know that her faith withstood tests we can hardly imagine. One of them, according to legend, was that Lucy’s eyes were put out as part of her torture - thus, her being patron of the blind/people with eye trouble and in art she holds a dish with two eyes on it.

Though the details of her martyrdom cannot be regarded as accurate, there can be no doubt of the great veneration that was shown to St. Lucy by the early church. She is one of those few female saints whose names occur in the canon of St. Gregory, and there are special prayers and antiphons for her in his "Sacramentary" and "Antiphonary". She is also commemorated in the ancient Roman Martyrology.




St. John of the Cross
December 14 b. 1542 d. 1591 bl. 1675 c. 1726


Read Jim Kinn’s book - he’s insightful and helps understand a man and his mission in a way that the original sources make it difficult to do in our day and age. John of the Cross is a saint for all ages. Fr. Jim helps make him embraceable in our age….

John de Yepes, youngest child of Gonzalo de Yepes and Catherine Alvarez, poor silk weavers of Toledo, knew from his earliest years the hardships of life. John’s father gave up wealth, status, and comfort when he, an aristocrat, married a weaver’s daughter. He was disowned by his noble family. [It’s oxymoronic to say a “noble” family disowned their son. The secret of a Father‘s love, it‘s forever, no matter what.] It’s possible John was of Jewish descent; as was St Teresa of Avila.

Like Lucy, John’s father died when John was a child. John’s mother kept the family together even when it meant wandering homeless in search of work. Even when they found work, it was often not enough to feed all the children of the family; John often went hungry. [How was it like for Grandpa and his brothers and sisters? How much like John of the Cross’s was his youth? How does our not knowing more of the details make us less able to have fortitude and courage in our own tribulations?

John was sent to the poor school at Medina del Campo, where the family had gone to live, and proved an attentive and diligent pupil; but when apprenticed to an artisan, he seemed incapable of learning anything. We all must find our place of success. Let our failures teach us what we must improve. Let our successes be a guide to God’s will for us.

At fourteen, John took a job caring for hospital patients who suffered from incurable diseases and madness. In the midst of this poverty and suffering, John learned to search for beauty and happiness - not in the world but in God. What is it in our experiences that help us turn to God? What do our experiences teach us about the Love of God? How did a fourteen year old look into the ugliness of sickness and bedlam and find God’s beauty? How do we? Unfortunately, the blurbs I’ve read for this missive do not give us the details. Nor does John of the Cross’s own writings illuminate the path he took to his holiness although he does tell us that his road did go through many horrific patches.

For seven years John divided his time between waiting on the poorest of the poor, and frequenting a school established by the Jesuits. Already at that early age he treated his body with the utmost rigor; twice he was saved from certain death by the intervention of the Blessed Virgin. We might not discipline ourselves to the edge of death. We certainly must discipline ourselves to show our respect of our body as a Temple of God. The view in my mirror is not one of a temple….

The Carmelites having founded a house at Medina, he there received the habit on 24 February, 1563, and took the name of John of St. Matthias. Again, we don’t have the details that construct the bridge from hospital work and Jesuit schooling [both supremely Jesuit] to his joining the Carmelites. Possibly it was his austerity? Fortunately, he had a place to take his rigor. How did I choose the Jesuits? They happened to be at Cheverus. What if the teachers at Cheverus were Dominicans? I still think my desire to be one of God’s marines, the appeal of becoming a soldier for the pope was in me before I knew that meant Jesuit.

After profession he obtained leave from his superiors to follow to the letter the original Carmelite rule without the mitigations granted by various popes. He was sent to Salamanca for the higher studies, and was ordained priest in 1567. We have the inkling that John wanted to be an absolutist. What’s the sense of being a Carmelite if it did not mean following the rule laid down at the beginning; not the watered down version. Of course his superiors let him do that - so long as he went off to monastery out of sight, out of mind. Little did they know….

After John joined the Carmelite order at age 21, Saint Teresa of Avila asked him to help her reform movement. St. Teresa, had come to Medina to found a convent of nuns. She persuaded John to help her in the establishment of a monastery of friars carrying out the primitive rule. John supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer. He changed his name from John of Matthias to John of the Cross: from a name given to him by his order to a name taken by and for himself. Go figure! [Like from Jack to John?]

But! Many Carmelites felt threatened by this reform. Some members of John's own order kidnapped him. He was locked in a cell six feet by ten feet and beaten three times a week by the monks. There was only one tiny window high up near the ceiling.

Remember how John responded to the torturous experience of the hospital? In that unbearable dark, cold, and desolation, his love and faith were like fire and light. He had nothing left but God -- and God brought John his greatest joys in that tiny cell. When we have everything, it’s a gift from God. When we have nothing, we have the Gift of God. When our life is less than nothing, without light or love, John reminds us that our fire and light is God; who is forever with us. Like Mandela, in his cell, with the line from the poem, ‘I am captain of my soul’ - there is always God’s presence…. In the midst of his sufferings he was visited with heavenly consolations, and some of his exquisite poetry dates from that period.

After nine months, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and creeping past the guard. Taking only the mystical poetry he had written in his cell, he climbed out a window using a rope made of strips of blankets. With no idea where he was, he followed a dog to civilization. He hid from pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the nuns. From then on, his life was devoted to sharing and explaining his experience of God's love. Our lives, too, should be one devoted to sharing and explaining our experience of God’s love. And when we do not experience God’s love, our life should be dedicated to our faith in God’s love and doing what it takes to discover His presence within us.

As John of the Cross wrote: "Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?" and "Where there is no love, put love -- and you will find love."

The reform spread rapidly but partly through human passion which sometimes ran high, its existence became seriously endangered.

Try, after reading Fr. Jim’s book, reading John of the Cross in the original. John left us many books of practical advice on spiritual growth and prayer that are just as relevant today as they were then. Ascent of Mount Carmel; Dark Night of the Soul; and A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ

Since joy comes only from God, John believed that someone who seeks happiness in the world is like "a famished person who opens his mouth to satisfy himself with air." He taught that only by breaking the rope of our desires could we fly up to God.

Above all, he was concerned for those who suffered dryness or depression in their spiritual life and offered encouragement that God loved them and was leading them deeper into faith. "What more do you want, o soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfaction and kingdom -- your beloved whom you desire and seek? Desire him there, adore him there. Do not go in pursuit of him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and you won't find him, or enjoy him more than by seeking him within you."

Mother Teresa’s writings are a modern version of this quest, this faith, this love. Again, Mandala [Invictus tells a great story; it’s a so so movie], what is it that gets you up and going when your entire being wants to just lie down and give up?

Towards the end of his life, while praying before the crucifix, a voice asked John what he wanted for his service for the Lord. John answered that he desired to endure suffering for the Lord and to be despised and counted as nothing. Be careful what you wish for!

The opposition to the reform, and to John of the Cross personally, continued almost to his last days. As his final illness increased, he was removed to the monastery of Ubeda, where he at first was treated very unkindly. His constant prayer, "to suffer and to be despised", being thus literally fulfilled almost to the end of his life.

At last, even his adversaries came to acknowledge his sanctity, and his funeral was the occasion of a great outburst of enthusiasm.

John was not what one would term a scholar. But, he was intimately acquainted with the "Summa" of St. Thomas Aquinas, as almost every page of his works proves. [and how many people not considered a scholar have even flipped the pages of Aquinas’ tomb?] Holy Scripture he seems to have known by heart. [This may not be scholarly, but how many Catholics who are not serious students of scripture have memorized even small portions of the Bible?] John evidently obtained his knowledge more by meditation than in the lecture room. [Try daily prayer. Daily scripture reading/meditation/contemplation. No doubt much of scripture will become second nature to you.]

John’s own system, of mysticism like that of St. Teresa, whose influence is obvious throughout, might be termed empirical mysticism. They both start from their own experience, St. Teresa avowedly so, while St. John, who hardly ever speaks of himself, "invents nothing" (to quote Cardinal Wiseman), "borrows nothing from others, but gives us clearly the results of his own experience in himself and others. He presents you with a portrait, not with a fancy picture. He represents the ideal of one who has passed, as he had done, through the career of the spiritual life, through its struggles and its victories".

How do you develop your spirituality? Grounded in ‘study’ of Scripture and our Church Fathers? Assimilate God, Faith, Church into your own experience. How do you find God and make His Will the purpose and fulfillment of your life?

John’s axiom is that the soul must empty itself of self in order to be filled with God, that it must be purified of the last traces of earthly dross before it is fit to become united with God.

Not until sin is removed (a most formidable task) is it fit to be admitted to what he calls the "Dark Night", which consists in the passive purgation, where God by heavy trials, particularly interior ones, perfects and completes what the soul had begun of its own accord. It is now passive, but not inert, for by submitting to the Divine operation it co-operates in the measure of its power.

Here lies one of the essential differences between St. John's mysticism and a false quietism. The perfect purgation of the soul in the present life leaves it free to act with wonderful energy: in fact it might almost be said to obtain a share in God's omnipotence, as is shown in the marvelous deeds of so many saints.

As the soul emerges from the Dark Night it enters into the full noonlight described in the "Spiritual Canticle" and the "Living Flame of Love". St. John leads it to the highest heights, in fact to the point where it becomes a "partaker of the Divine Nature". It is here that the necessity of the previous cleansing is clearly perceived the pain of the mortification of all the senses and the powers and faculties of the soul being amply repaid by the glory which is now being revealed in it.

St. John has often been represented as a grim character; nothing could be more untrue. He was indeed austere in the extreme with himself, and, to some extent, also with others, but both from his writings and from the depositions of those who knew him, we see in him a man overflowing with charity and kindness, a poetical mind deeply influenced by all that is beautiful and attractive.

Sip from his cup….

I love you
Dad/bill