Angels, Saints and Nations Sing

This past week was a banner week for Saints and Angels in the Roman Catholic Calendar. Last Sunday, September 27th was the feast of St. Vincent de Paul (†1660), a celebration that was superseded by the twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary, and a special remembrance of San Lorenzo Ruiz (†1637), the first canonized saint of the Philippines. Father Dennis, a Filipino by birth and a thorough-going Jesuit, told the 5:30 pm mass that we were anticipating the feast since, after all, it was “already Monday in the Philippines.” You have all been reacquainted with St. Vincent through the extraordinary charitable works of our SVdP conference here, which last year gathered and immediately distributed $200,000 of direct aid to our neighbors in need, largely in the form of rental and utility payment assistance. I’m sure that St. Vincent was smiling. 

Our remembrance of San Lorenzo, a married man with three children, recalled his simple service to his parish as sacristan and scribe. His mixed Filipino-Chinese origin led to false accusations that he murdered a Spaniard. He took ship with Dominican missionaries to Japan, and was martyred there in 1637. Monday saw another martyr’s feast, “Good King Wenseslaus” (†935) of Christmas carol fame, who provided abundantly for the poor before being usurped and murdered by his pagan brother at the beginning of the tenth century. 

Tuesday, September 29th and Friday, October 2nd marked the feasts of the angelic hosts: the Archangels Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, special messengers of good tidings, healing, and protection, and our guardian angels whose help we sense but rarely acknowledge. 

On September 30th and October 1st, back-to-back, the calendar reminds us of two utterly dissimilar saints: the ferocious St. Jerome (†420), brilliant and utterly cantankerous translator of the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower,” (†1897) whose little way of perfection was the difficult route of doing all things generously and well for the glory of God. She died at 24 of tuberculosis in her Carmelite convent (†, Jerome at 79 after spending much of his long life as a scholar-hermit, accompanied, the legends tell us, by a lion whose injured paw Jerome had healed). 

In the mix, too are some lesser-known saints. St. Francis Borgia (†1572), feast September 30th, great-grandson of a pope and a king, gave up his dukedom to become a follower of St. Ignatius and third superior general of the Jesuit Order. October 3rd celebrates Mother Théodore Guérlin (†1856), a sister of the Presentation in post-revolutionary France who left her native land to minister to children in rural Indiana in the 1830s. With zeal and an entrepreneurial skillset, she founded a dozen schools over 30 years in the mid-19th century. 

This week’s most beloved saint, of course, is St. Francis of Assisi, whose death 800 years ago on October 4th is being celebrated around the world this weekend. Son of privilege, he heard the invitation of Jesus to “rebuild my church,” forsook his wealth and lived a life of evangelical and apostolic poverty that has inspired the world ever since. He took the Gospel at its face value, and with a poet’s soul and determined vision, he reshaped our catholic sensibilities like few persons have since Jesus returned to the Father. 

What a cloud of witnesses (even without the turbulence of angels’ wings!) surrounds us with their prayers, love, and example.