Saint Nicholas Tavelic and Companions’ Story (1340 – November 14, 1391)
Nicholas and his three companions are among the 158 Franciscans who have been martyred in the Holy Land since the friars became custodians of the shrines in 1335.
Nicholas was born in 1340 to a wealthy and noble family in Croatia. He joined the Franciscans, and was sent with Deodat of Rodez to preach in Bosnia. In 1384, they volunteered for the Holy Land missions and were sent there. They looked after the holy places, cared for the Christian pilgrims, and studied Arabic.
In 1391, Nicholas, Deodat, Peter of Narbonne, and Stephen of Cuneo decided to take a direct approach to converting the Muslims. On November 11, they went to the huge Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem and asked to see the Qadix—Muslim official. Reading from a prepared statement, they said that all people must accept the gospel of Jesus. When they were ordered to retract their statement, they refused. After beatings and imprisonment, they were beheaded before a large crowd.
Nicholas and his companions were canonized in 1970. They are the only Franciscans martyred in the Holy Land to be canonized. Their liturgical feast is celebrated on November 14.
Reflection
Francis presented two missionary approaches for his friars. Nicholas and his companions followed the first approach—live quietly and give witness to Christ—for several years. Then they felt called to take the second approach of preaching openly. Their Franciscan confrères in the Holy Land are still working by example to make Jesus better known.
I’ve been here with you for many years, so you know that I know a guy. Actually, I know a couple of guys, and those guys know a couple of other guys. So, I have sources of information that you may or may not have. As the song goes, I have friends in low places. I know people on the dark side. Over the years, I have queried my sources on several topics, and they have been most helpful. There is one query in particular that all my sources gave me the same answer. So, I have it on good authority that Mother Teresa was never a member of Hells Angels. You can take that to the bank. I heard she liked to ride, so why was Mother Teresa never a member of Hells Angels? Because she didn’t want to be. Why not? She had the greatest of all things in her heart which is Jesus Christ. Over the years, through many trials, tribulations, and great suffering, she survived with joy because she always kept Christ in her heart. No matter how great her difficulties were, she found peace in the person of Jesus. The world will only find peace when they have Jesus in their hearts.
Just this week, I received a phone call from the diocese. They told me that I have to migrate my emails to another location. Yeah, what are the odds of that happening. I’ll give you a clue as to where they can migrate them. Many years ago, the diocese called my former secretary and said, “Father’s email account is full. He’d better delete some of them or we are going to close the account.” My secretary said, “Father has been in Iraq for the last eight months.” I tend to ignore these requests. Let me put it this way; we built Catholic hospitals, Catholic orphanages, and Catholic universities. We Christianized the world by bringing God’s love to it and all without computers or the internet. When I was in seminary, I used an old-fashioned manual typewriter. People actually wrote books using those things.
There are evil people in the world. A small percentage are evil because they are mentally ill. Some of them are over at FU (Felon University; i.e., the prison). Most people are evil because they have satan in their hearts. They are not evil because they don’t have fresh plumbing or a smartphone. Do you realize that we have saints who didn’t have flush plumbing? “Oh, people are bad because they don’t have stuff. If they just had flush plumbing, a smartphone, or more bandwidth, they would be okay.” It has been proven over the years that giving people stuff does not work. My parents grew up poor, and they weren’t sociopaths. My uncle did go to prison, but he was a correctional officer and got to go home at night. It’s not the lack of stuff that makes people evil. It’s what is lacking in the heart. I’ve been with men all over the world, and we didn’t have stuff other than what we could carry. None of us were sociopaths. They would die for me, and I would die for them. Sociopaths may not have had stuff, but they certainly didn’t have Christ in their hearts and so they are evil.
There is no negotiating with evil. It would be like negotiating with cancer. “Hey, Cancer, we’ll let you have the gall bladder, but you cannot go anywhere else.” “Okay, you can have the appendix, but don’t touch any of the survivors.” No! You have to eradicate cancer by putting pharmacies into people to kill every cancer cell in the body to make sure it doesn’t come back. Would you be happy if your doctor told you that they got most of the cancer? Would you be happy with that? No, you wouldn’t. Cancer is evil in the body. Sin is evil in the soul. You cannot make friends with evil, and you cannot negotiate with it. It must be converted or destroyed.
In the synod on synodality, they are promoting openness while people are being butchered and babies are being decapitated in the Holy Land. They have no conception of reality. “Well, we all believe in the same god.” No, we don’t. “But we are all Christians, so we believe in the same god.” No, no, no! I’m throwing the BS flag on that one too. All religions are not equal. So, you cannot say that we are all Christian. My Christian God doesn’t think that killing babies in the womb is a really good idea. Decapitating babies or making excuses for those who do is pure evil and satanic. My Christian God also doesn’t think that washing our hands of mom and dad when they get a little too old to care for is a good idea. “Sorry, Mom and Dad. We need the bed. Bye-bye!” No! Our God does not do that. But the Nazis did. Life unworthy of life was a Nazi designation for segments of the population which, according to the Nazi regime, had no right to live. Know what happened after the war? We tracked every one of them down and we hung them. A little neck stretching exercise courtesy of the U.S. Army.
We don’t negotiate with evil. It is either converted or it must be destroyed. You cannot negotiate with evil. Jesus said, “Let your Yes mean Yes and your No mean No. Anything else is from the Evil One.” (Matthew 5:37). He didn’t say to negotiate. The danger for us is that they use all these fancy words that actually mean nothing. I have a degree in philosophy. I hear all these fancy words, and it’s academic bravo sierra. We would use all those big words to fill up a term paper, so it looked like we’d actually done some work. It’s a game. Congress said, “We’ve come to an agreement.” Nah. The only way to have peace in the world is to have Jesus constantly in our souls. Evil is in the world because satan, and not Jesus, is in our hearts.
How will you apply this message to your life? ________________________________
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