Saint Theodora Guérin’s Story (October 2, 1798 – May 14, 1856)
Trust in God’s Providence enabled Mother Theodore to leave her homeland, sail halfway around the world, and found a new religious congregation.
Born in Etables, France, Anne-Thérèse Guérin’s life was shattered by her father’s murder when she was 15. For several years she cared for her mother and younger sister. She entered the Sisters of Providence in 1823, taking the name Sister Saint Theodore. An illness during novitiate left her with lifelong fragile health, but that did not keep her from becoming an accomplished teacher.
At the invitation of the bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, Sr. Saint Theodore and five sisters were sent to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, in 1840, to teach and to care for the sick poor. She was to establish a motherhouse and novitiate. Only later did she learn that her French superiors had already decided the sisters in the United States should form a new religious congregation under her leadership.
Mother Theodore and her community persevered despite fires, crop failures, prejudice against Catholic women religious, misunderstandings, and separation from their original religious congregation. She once told her sisters, “Have confidence in the Providence that so far has never failed us. The way is not yet clear. Grope along slowly. Do not press matters; be patient, be trustful.” Another time she asked, “With Jesus, what shall we have to fear?”
Mother Theodore was buried in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, now the Shrine of St. Mother Theodore, in Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. She was beatified in 1998, and canonized as Saint Theodora Guérin eight years later.
Reflection
God’s work gets done by people ready to take risks and to work hard—always remembering what Saint Paul told the Corinthians, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.” Every holy person has a strong sense of God’s Providence.
Perhaps no aspect of Catholic piety is as comforting to parents as the belief that an angel protects their little ones from dangers real and imagined. Yet guardian angels are not only for children. Their role is to represent individuals before God, to watch over them always, to aid their prayer, and to present their souls to God at death.
The concept of an angel assigned to guide and nurture each human being is a development of Catholic doctrine and piety based on Scripture but not directly drawn from it. Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:10 best support the belief: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”
Devotion to the angels began to develop with the birth of the monastic tradition. Saint Benedict gave it impetus and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the great 12th-century reformer, was such an eloquent spokesman for the guardian angels that angelic devotion assumed its current form in his day.
A feast in honor of the guardian angels was first observed in the 16th century. In 1615, Pope Paul V added it to the Roman calendar.
Reflection
Devotion to the angels is, at base, an expression of faith in God’s enduring love and providential care extended to each person day in and day out.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s Story (January 2, 1873 – September 30, 1897)
“I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.”
These are the words of Thérèse of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun called the “Little Flower,” who lived a cloistered life of obscurity in the convent of Lisieux, France. And her preference for hidden sacrifice did indeed convert souls. Few saints of God are more popular than this young nun. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, is read and loved throughout the world. Thérèse Martin entered the convent at the age of 15 and died in 1897 at the age of 24.
Life in a Carmelite convent is indeed uneventful and consists mainly of prayer and hard domestic work. But Thérèse possessed that holy insight that redeems the time, however dull that time may be. She saw in quiet suffering a redemptive suffering, suffering that was indeed her apostolate. Thérèse said she came to the Carmel convent “to save souls and pray for priests.” And shortly before she died, she wrote: “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.”
Thérèse was canonized in 1925. On October 19, 1997, Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a Doctor of the Church, the third woman to be so recognized in light of her holiness and the influence of her teaching on spirituality in the Church.
Her parents, Louis and Zélie, were beatified in 2008 and canonized in 2015.
Reflection
Thérèse has much to teach our age of the image, the appearance, the “self.” We have become a dangerously self-conscious people, painfully aware of the need to be fulfilled, yet knowing we are not. Thérèse, like so many saints, sought to serve others, to do something outside herself, to forget herself in quiet acts of love. She is one of the great examples of the gospel paradox that we gain our life by losing it, and that the seed that falls to the ground must die in order to live.
Preoccupation with self separates modern men and women from God, from their fellow human beings, and ultimately from themselves. We must re-learn to forget ourselves, to contemplate a God who draws us out of ourselves, and to serve others as the ultimate expression of selfhood. These are the insights of Saint Thérèse, and they are more valid today than ever.
Most of the saints are remembered for some outstanding virtue or devotion which they practiced, but Jerome is frequently remembered for his bad temper! It is true that he had a very bad temper and could use a vitriolic pen, but his love for God and his son Jesus Christ was extraordinarily intense; anyone who taught error was an enemy of God and truth, and Saint Jerome went after him or her with his mighty and sometimes sarcastic pen.
He was above all a Scripture scholar, translating most of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. Jerome also wrote commentaries which are a great source of scriptural inspiration for us today. He was an avid student, a thorough scholar, a prodigious letter-writer and a consultant to monk, bishop, and pope. Saint Augustine said of him, “What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal has ever known.”
Saint Jerome is particularly important for having made a translation of the Bible which came to be called the Vulgate. It is not the most critical edition of the Bible, but its acceptance by the Church was fortunate. As a modern scholar says, “No man before Jerome or among his contemporaries and very few men for many centuries afterwards were so well qualified to do the work.” The Council of Trent called for a new and corrected edition of the Vulgate, and declared it the authentic text to be used in the Church.
In order to be able to do such work, Jerome prepared himself well. He was a master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic. He began his studies at his birthplace, Stridon in Dalmatia. After his preliminary education, he went to Rome, the center of learning at that time, and thence to Trier, Germany, where the scholar was very much in evidence. He spent several years in each place, always trying to find the very best teachers. He once served as private secretary to Pope Damasus.
After these preparatory studies, he traveled extensively in Palestine, marking each spot of Christ’s life with an outpouring of devotion. Mystic that he was, he spent five years in the desert of Chalcis so that he might give himself up to prayer, penance, and study. Finally, he settled in Bethlehem, where he lived in the cave believed to have been the birthplace of Christ. Jerome died in Bethlehem, and the remains of his body now lie buried in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.
Reflection
Jerome was a strong, outspoken man. He had the virtues and the unpleasant fruits of being a fearless critic and all the usual moral problems of a man. He was, as someone has said, no admirer of moderation whether in virtue or against evil. He was swift to anger, but also swift to feel remorse, even more severe on his own shortcomings than on those of others. A pope is said to have remarked, on seeing a picture of Jerome striking his breast with a stone, “You do well to carry that stone, for without it the Church would never have canonized you” (Butler’s Lives of the Saints).
Angels—messengers from God—appear frequently in Scripture, but only Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are named.
Michael appears in Daniel’s vision as “the great prince” who defends Israel against its enemies; in the Book of Revelation, he leads God’s armies to final victory over the forces of evil. Devotion to Michael is the oldest angelic devotion, rising in the East in the fourth century. The Church in the West began to observe a feast honoring Michael and the angels in the fifth century.
Gabriel also makes an appearance in Daniel’s visions, announcing Michael’s role in God’s plan. His best-known appearance is an encounter with a young Jewish girl named Mary, who consents to bear the Messiah.
Raphael’s activity is confined to the Old Testament story of Tobit. There he appears to guide Tobit’s son Tobiah through a series of fantastic adventures which lead to a threefold happy ending: Tobiah’s marriage to Sarah, the healing of Tobit’s blindness, and the restoration of the family fortune.
The memorials of Gabriel and Raphael were added to the Roman calendar in 1921. The 1970 revision of the calendar joined their individual feasts to Michael’s.
Reflection
Each of the archangels performs a different mission in Scripture: Michael protects; Gabriel announces; Raphael guides. Earlier belief that inexplicable events were due to the actions of spiritual beings has given way to a scientific world-view and a different sense of cause and effect. Yet believers still experience God’s protection, communication, and guidance in ways which defy description. We cannot dismiss angels too lightly.
Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are the Patron Saints of:
Death Germany Grocers Police Officers/First Responders Radiologists
Saint Gabriel is the Patron Saint of: Broadcasters/Communicators
Saint Raphael is the Patron Saint of: The Blind, Travelers
Superstition, idolatry, divination, and magic are all things we can encounter in our daily lives, and, with Fr. Mike, we unpack how they break the First Commandment. Fr. Mike reiterates that superstition represents an “excess of religion” and can affect the worship we offer to God. He points out that we can be superstitious even in our Catholic practices. He also explains that idolatry consists of divinizing anything that is not God. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2110-2117.
One of the things I like reading in my hometown newspaper is the obituaries. Up north, where I grew up, we call it the “Irish sports page.” Hey, you gotta have fun! I like reading about what people have done in their lives. Some people have done amazing things. At the end of the obituaries, the religious services for the deceased are announced. I find some of them incomprehensible. “A celebration of life will be held at a restaurant” or wherever. Really? You should have had that a week ago when the person was warmer and could have appreciated it. He’s dead! Unfortunately, the same is done for Catholics: “A celebration of life will be held to celebrate their life.” What the newspapers are printing is heresy and blasphemous. It denies what the Mass is. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not a celebration of someone’s life. The Mass is not an “it.” It’s a “Who.” It is Christ offering Himself to the Father on our behalf for the forgiveness of our sins. And we all need that. Even my sainted mother, who suffered purgatory on Earth because she raised me, needed a savior. We had a Mass of Christian Burial for her, and I performed it.
Christ prays for us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass because, unfortunately, we must leave this world through death. We all contemplate the end of life. I seem to be hurrying toward it a little quicker than I expected. In fact, I’ve been scoping out the best rooms in Hospice. We were never meant to die, and that’s why we fear death. Original sin and the sins we have committed since Baptism have that effect. In the Gospel, Christ said that after death comes judgment. People don’t like that word. Know why they don’t like it? Because they’ve done something wrong. Do you get nervous when you’re driving up Highway 52 to Salisbury and see a State Trooper or the Sheriff? People tend to hit their breaks. But if you’re not speeding, you have nothing to worry about. I just give the officers a blessing and move on. I’m grateful they are there like angels watching over us in case somebody gets hurt.
Sometimes obituaries will say that the deceased person has “gone to see Jesus.” And that’s true. When we leave this world, God, Himself, will look at us and ask, “Did you love Me?” “Did you keep My Commandments?” That is the standard because that is what He said. For some, it is not a pleasant meeting. They only stay for a cup of coffee and then go elsewhere. Others get to stay in Heaven forever. How long we stay depends on how we have lived. According to the Gospel of Matthew, we will be judged according to how we loved and responded to His love.
There is a course we take in seminary called Eschatology, a study of the last days. Within that course is a sub-course about the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. Traditionally, we preach about the Four Last Things during Lent. When we leave this world, all of us will see Jesus. How that meeting goes is entirely up to us. The key thing to note is that God tells us exactly what to do. “If you love Me, keep My Commandments.” And He gives us the final exam questions further along in the Gospel of Matthew. So, you already know what He will ask when you stand before Him. “Did you love Me?” “Yes, Lord. You know I love You.” He’s not going to accept the same excuse that you give police officers: “Oh, I didn’t see the speed limit sign, Officer.” No! He knows what we’ve done because love is an action.
When I work with people who are passing, I ask them if they have made their peace with God. God always wants to save us even at the point of our death. Heaven was stolen once by the Good Thief on the Cross, and it can be stolen again. Many in my hospital work have been able to steal Heaven at the last minute. I have baptized several people while they were on their deathbeds, and one wasn’t even Catholic, but he wanted to be baptized. They realize that they want peace. I never mention the “D” word. The Hospice staff don’t understand how I do that. I just never bring it up. I let them bring it up because they have to accept it. You don’t take away someone’s crutch without giving them another one. If they are Catholic, I ask them if they would like to be anointed with the Last Rites “just in case.” I tell those who have made their peace with God, that at some point our good Lord will come for them. And they will see Him coming with a smile on His face and arms wide open to embrace them. So, open your arms and run to Him and know that there will never again be a risk of losing Him by sin.
The good news and bad news for us is the same . . . We are going to die. If I go to hospice care, I’m having bacon at every meal. What’s the worst that can happen, right? We are all going to die. But the good news for those who love God is that it is not bad news. We will be with the One who has loved us all our lives beyond all our imaginations and Who will forgive anything if we say we are sorry. That’s the good news. We will have joy and peace forever. We will be far more able to help those we love to come to the same place we are. Never be discouraged. The fear of death is normal. We were not supposed to die. But the more we love God, the more that fear recedes from us.
Father’s Afterthoughts . . . I want to thank everyone for my birthday party last week. I must be losing my situational awareness with age because I had no idea. Even though the party took four months of planning, it was a complete surprise. Now, at the Spanish Mass today, I’m going to yell at them. They know that I don’t understand a lot of Spanish, and so they talked about plans for the party right in front of me! But I want to thank you for your kindness. It was overwhelming, humbling, and a bit embarrassing.
Mary Connor, a shut-in from our parish, passed away on Saturday. She had all the Sacraments of the Church, and now she is at rest. When I saw her on Thursday, I asked her how she was feeling, to which she replied, “I feel like bleep!” I almost said, “Well, you look it.” But I didn’t. So, please pray for her soul.
How will you apply this message to your life? _______________________________________
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