JULY 25
James (first century)
Close to Christ
James worked together with his brother John, his father Zebedee, and the brothers Peter and Andrew in the fishing trade. This was serious business with considerable investment in time and equipment. When the catch was good, they preserved the fish in salt and sold them far from home.
James responded to Christ’s call and became one of two apostles with this name. This James played a part in that special trio of friends who accompanied Jesus in the greatest of spiritual moments—the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, the Mount of Transfiguration, the night of agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. Along with Peter and John, James was clearly a special friend of Christ.
The book of Acts records that he was the first apostolic martyr, that King Herod Agrippa had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword to please the Jewish opponents of Christianity.
JULY 26
Titus Brandsma (1881–1942)
Faith oppressed
The Nazi invasion of Holland in 1940 produced much discussion in churches regarding organized resistance to the Germans. As in every religious debate, people stood on two sides of the issue. There were those who thought Catholics should cooperate with the Nazi occupation in any way that preserved and enhanced the security of Christians. Others felt that the Nazi regime was an unmitigated evil that should be fought against without compromise.
Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite priest and theology professor, stood at the forefront of the group that opposed the Nazis. Because he was a journalist who wrote for several publications, his views were familiar to many. He called the political climate in Germany “the new paganism” and sharply criticized the persecution of Jews.
A German directive issued in 1941 forbade any Jewish student from attending Catholic schools in Holland. Titus Brandsma, president of the Association of Catholic Secondary Schools, openly expressed his dismay. When the Nazis declared that all newspapers must print Nazi propaganda, Brandsma personally explained to each editor why the Catholic press could not agree to do that.
A month later, the Nazis arrested Titus Brandsma. A few months later, he was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, along with twenty-seven hundred other clergy. The inhumane conditions and cruel treatment did not make him bitter. Those who saw him there, and survived to report it, say that he continued his prayer and meditation. Someone heard him summarize the prisoners’ situation this way: “We are in a dark tunnel that we must pass through. Somewhere at the end shines the eternal light.”
Never in robust health, Titus Brandsma became quite ill at Dachau. The guards sent him to the concentration camp’s hospital, the location of infamous medical experiments. They killed Titus with an injection of acid. In 1985, Titus Brandsma became the first Nazi victim to be listed as a martyr.
JULY 27
Panteleon (d. ca. 305)
Martyred for faith
Panteleon, whose name implies that he cared for everyone, was a fourth-century Christian physician whose practice included meeting the health needs of the Roman Emperor. As he grew up, he turned away from the religion his mother had taught him and began to live a wild bachelor’s life. His conscience drove him back to Christianity, and legend says that he converted his pagan father. He was generous with the poor, treating them medically without asking payment for his services, and he achieved some of his cures through prayer.
When the Diocletian persecution of the church began, colleagues turned in Panteleon as a known Christian. The Roman authorities arrested and tortured him. There is a story that he proposed and won a contest in court to see who could heal a paralytic. Regardless of this miracle, Panteleon was sentenced to die. He was nailed to a tree and beheaded around the year 305.
It is worth noting that a reliquary said to contain his dried blood is kept in a church at Ravello. Like the blood of Januarius (September 19), it is reported to liquefy on special days.
JULY 28
Samson (d. 565)
Christian mission
This saint is not the Old Testament strong man, but a Welsh monk who lived in the sixth century. Scholars do not place much confidence in the biography written nearly two hundred years after his death.
Samson was a disciple of Illtyd (November 6) who became abbot of the monastery on Caldey Island. He became one of the leading British missionaries of his time, a wandering Celtic monk-bishop.
Samson died around 565, and remains a popular saint in Brittany and Wales.
JULY 29
Olaf Tryggvason (995–1030)
Spreading the Gospel
This patron saint of Norway was its king from 1016 to 1029. As a young man Olaf was a pirate and a fighter, but while traveling in France, he became a Christian and helped Ethelred II of England resist the Danes in 1013. When the excellent fighter and eloquent speaker returned to Norway, he seized the throne and performed better than any other Norwegian leader before him. He brought peace, security, and dependable law-enforcement to his land.
Olaf’s primary interest was in Christianizing Norway, and to help him in this effort, he invited English missionaries to work in his land. Using both persuasion and force, he pushed for conversions and conformity. An inevitable backlash of resistance led to his deposition and exile in 1029. With Swedish backing, he attempted a return the next year, but was killed at Stiklestad on July 29, 1030.
A spring of water with alleged healing properties emerged from the soil near his grave. Grimkell, an English bishop who had assisted Olaf in his Christianizing efforts, built a chapel there and declared him a saint
JULY 30
Maria de Jesús Sacramentado Venegas de la Torre (1868–1959)
Dedication to Christ
Maria was born in Mexico, the youngest of twelve children. Her family encouraged participation in church activities, and by the time she was fifteen she was busily engaged in teaching Christianity to neighbors as well as in taking care of the poor.
In 1905, Maria made a retreat at San Sebastián Analco, Guadalajara. Here her call to a religious life became certain, and she entered the Daughters of the Sacred Heart the same year. By 1922, she was taking an active role in leadership and making impressive improvements to every aspect of the community’s circumstances. Her life became an inspiring example of love and humility. She died in 1959.
JULY 31
Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)
Enduring influence
We read the lives of saints because they are a source of inspiration and encouragement. It was reading about them that completely changed Ignatius of Loyola’s life. He became one of the greatest saints of the sixteenth century.
Ignatius had received a serious leg wound and back injury from cannon fire in battle, and spent time recovering from repeated surgeries in his family’s castle. To fill the time, he read a Spanish translation by Goberto Vagad of The Golden Legend. These stories of great saints caught his attention, possibly because the saints’ action based on faith resonated with the code of honor and chivalry that he had learned as a young knight. During his long convalescence, Iñigo López de Loyola began to think it would be a great honor to be a knight for the glory of God. He made up his mind to improve his behavior and to follow the example of the saints.
The cannon ball that broke his leg left him deformed and limping for the rest of his life. The first physician to set his broken leg did a poor job. It had to be broken again and reset. When he was able to walk again, he went to the Catalonian shrine of Our Lady at Montserrat. In the manner of knights in romantic tales, Ignatius spent the night there in a vigil. The next morning he exchanged his fine clothes for the sackcloth of a nearby pilgrim and placed his sword and dagger on the altar. The next day he began several months of solitude and meditation, experiencing mystical religious episodes.
The Gospel narratives of Christ fascinated Ignatius, inspiring him to make a pilgrimage to the sites mentioned in them
. His desire to become a priest grew steadily, but he did not have the necessary education, so he began to study Latin and became a student at the University of Paris. He gathered a group of six friends on that campus into a new religious order, the beginnings of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. In 1540, the Jesuits received official recognition from Rome.
Ignatius of Loyola placed himself and his men at the service of the Church, declaring that they were ready to travel even to dangerous territory in order to promote Christianity. The list of martyrs becomes densely populated with Jesuits from this point on.
The Society of Jesus is but one of Ignatius of Loyola’s great contributions to the world. Another is his Spiritual Exercises, a brilliant and inspired guide to spiritual formation. Countless Christians have used it to deepen their meditation and prayer. Four-week-long retreats continue to be offered following the design Ignatius conceived in 1533. Those who do not have a month available for such a retreat still profit from reading through his book. Thomas Merton said, “The Spiritual Exercises are very pedestrian and practical— their chief purpose being to enable all the busy Jesuits to get their minds off their work and back to God with a minimum of wasted time.” Merton went on to say that he wished he had been able to go through the Exercises under Jesuit supervision, but did it on his own. He studied the rules that were in the book and followed them the best he could. “I never even breathed a word about what I was doing to any priest.”
Ignatius writes, “In the same way that strolling, walking, and running exercise the body, spiritual exercises prepare the soul to become free of extravagant attachments and to discover what God wants to accomplish in one’s life.”
Ignatius of Loyola died suddenly on July 31, 1556. At the time of his death, there were about one thousand Jesuits. At the end of the twentieth century there were twenty-five thousand. Jesuits see their function as complementing rather than replacing the work of parish priests.
AUGUST 1
Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787)
Dark doubt
Sometimes we fantasize that church work ought to be entirely beautiful and permeated with glowing spirituality. People who participate in the life of a congregation, and the larger organizations that provide oversight, ought to be respectful of each other. A warm glow of Christian cooperation and singleness of purpose should be the defining characteristic of religious life together.
This is not the way it is. The lives of the saints often remind us that being a committed Christian can be a struggle. Even Christ had detractors. Sometimes the source of difficulty is political. Every group of people will experience tension and conflict regardless of the degree of shared love. At other times, stress is the result of an intensely personal agony of soul. The life of many dedicated Christians often involves a combination of both interpersonal and personal stresses.
Alphonsus Liguori is an outstanding example of what it is like to be a church leader. He became a popular preacher in the region surrounding Naples where he had grown up. As with Jesus, “The common people heard him gladly,” as Mark’s Gospel says. His simple, direct manner of speaking strongly influenced the spirituality and behavior of those who heard him.
In 1732, Alphonsus Liguori organized an order of priests that specialized in preaching to uneducated rural people. He struggled for the remainder of his life trying to win official recognition of this “Congregation of the Holy Redeemer.”
His ideas and interpretation of Scripture took a moderate, middle-of-the-road course through the thicket of religious teaching. He believed that Christianity was for everyone. Rather than emphasizing strict adherence to religious laws, he understood that love was the best influence and motivator. Each person is free to follow the dictates of conscience. At the same time, a Christian will carefully apply the details of these principles to every circumstance. Formerly an active lawyer, Alphonsus Liguori was both strict and compassionate.
Respect and controversy resulted from his speaking and writing. He had both strong supporters and vicious opponents. Poor health added to his problems during the final dozen years of his life. He experienced great physical suffering and personal spiritual anguish. Even as he continued the exhausting attempt to win official recognition by both church and state for his congregation, his own people engaged in bitter contentions with each other. After Alphonsus made a clerical error, the order he had founded expelled him, in spite of his illness and increasing blindness.
It was only after his death at the age of ninety that the factions in his congregation ceased their divisive behavior and received official recognition. Their work eventually spread around the world. Posthumously, he became a Doctor of the Church.
AUGUST 2
Eusebius of Vercelli (ca. 283–371)
Expressing belief
Articulating important aspects of faith is not an easy job. Many simply shrug and express some generality such as, “We are all in different boats going to the same destination.” While the details of our private spiritual experience may remain inexpressible, there is great value in being able to state clearly our understanding of the person and work of Christ. The Church’s creeds allow us to do that.
Time, place, and culture have always affected the character of basic Christian beliefs. In the early centuries some began to teach astonishing things about Jesus, and they had a popular following. Creedal statements became a way to sift these ideas through a sieve, searching for what is valuable, authentic, and essential, while discarding the misdirected and harmful.
Eusebius of Vercelli helped to guide Christians in the fourth century through a difficult maze of divergent opinions and teachings. Eusebius of Vercelli should not be confused with the more familiar church historian or the several other prominent leaders who shared the same name. His ability as a scholar contributed to the composition of the Athanasian Creed. From 354 until his death in 371, Eusebius of Vercelli devoted himself to issues of accurate Christian doctrine. The emperor Constantine invited him to participate in a gathering of church leaders from all over his empire in an effort to deal with popular heresies such as Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ. At Milan, in 355, Eusebius declined to sign a condemnation of Athanasius (May 2). As an alternative, he placed the Nicene Creed on the table, insisting that Athanasius should be given a chance to defend himself. He championed the separation of church and state, believing that the secular power should not direct religious decisions. The resulting confusion exasperated Constantine, and he threatened to execute them all. He banished the assembled bishops. Eusebius was exiled to Palestine. One of his surviving letters records the distressing treatment he received there.
Eusebius died a natural death, but some consider him a martyr because of his persecution and suffering.
AUGUST 3
Lydia (first century)
Martyred for faith
The missionary journeys of Paul took him to Philippi, a community in what is now Greece. A single reference in the New Testament book of Acts describes all we know about a woman who lived there.
On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said,”come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.
Lydia marketed purple goods. Because this rare and expensive color is associated with royalty, many commentators conclude that she was wealthy. Others have conceived the possibility that she may have been a common laborer who worked with dyes in a cottage industry. In any event, Lydia and her friends were immigrants from across the Aegean Sea and would have had little respect from the upper class.
Lydia gives us an example of Christian hospitality. After her baptism, she
invited Paul and his companions to stay in her home. A possible indicator that she was a woman of wealth is that her house was large enough to comfortably accommodate the missionaries along with her “household.” She showed no hesitancy in making these strangers feel at home as though they were part of the family. Welcoming hospitality results from understanding our kinship in Christ. It is on the list of highest Christian virtues.
The Church at Philippi became one of the strongest and healthiest that Paul established. He was clearly fond of this congregation. He addresses his letter to them as “to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi.” It was the only stop on his missionary travels where he did not have to work in secular employment to sustain himself. Lydia’s courageous hospitality freed him to devote all of his time to his ministry. “I thank my God every time I remember you,” Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians. “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
AUGUST 4
John-Baptiste Vianney (1786–1859)
Special gifts
Academic standards are necessary, and the proper education of a professional is vital. But sometimes there is good reason to have a little flexibility in order to match the needs of a particularly gifted individual. The machinery that grinds out standardized evaluations may misjudge some outstanding talent that simply will not fit the mold.
John Vianney, a farm boy, grew up in eighteenth-century France. He was a well-behaved, quiet child who enjoyed his experiences with the church. He strongly desired to become a priest. His father needed John to continue helping with farm chores then, and could offer no way to extend John’s limited formal education. At the age of twenty he found a way to study at a nearby village. The lessons were not easy. Latin proved extremely difficult for him.
Butler's Lives of the Saints Page 18