We believe the same great truths, and divine mysteries,--we profess the same faith which produced such wonderful fruits in the souls of the saints. Whence comes it that it has not the like effects in us?--that though we acknowledge virtue to be the richest treasure of the soul of man, we take little pains about it, pa.s.sionately seek the things of this world, are cast down and broken under every adversity, and curb and restrain our pa.s.sions only by halves?--that the most glorious objects, G.o.d and heaven, and the amazing and dreadful truths, a judgment to come, h.e.l.l, and eternity, strike us so feebly, and operate so little in us?
The reason is plain: because we meditate not sufficiently on these great truths. Our notions of them are dim and imperfect; our thoughts pa.s.s so slightly over them, that they scarce retain any print or traces of them.
Otherwise it is impossible that things {110} so great and terrible should excite in us no fear, or that things in their own nature infinitely amiable, should enkindle in us no desire. Slight and faint images of things move our minds very weakly, and affect them very coldly, especially in such matters as are not subject to our senses. We therefore grossly deceive ourselves in not allotting more time to the study of divine truths. It is not enough barely to believe them, and let our thoughts now and then glance upon them: that knowledge which shows us heaven, will not bring us to the possession of it, and will deserve punishments, not rewards, if it remain slight, weak, and superficial. By serious and frequent meditation it must be concocted, digested, and turned into the nourishment of our affections, before it can be powerful and operative enough to change them, and produce the necessary fruit in our lives. For this all the saints affected solitude and retreats from the noise and hurry of the world, as much as their circ.u.mstances allowed them.
Footnotes: 1. {} 2. Ep. 83, ad Magn.
3. B. 71.
4. Hist. B. 5, c. 5.
5. Apol. c. 5. L. ad Scap. c. 4.
6. Chron.
7. Or. 2, de 40 mart.
8. _Christianorum_ FORTE _militum precationibus impetrato imbri_.
Tertull. Apolog. c. 5. Euseb. l. 5, c. 5. Some take the word _forte_ here to signify, _casually, accidentally, as hap was_. Several learned Protestants have written in defence of this miracle: see Mr.
Weston"s dissertation in 1748. The exceptions of Le Clerc, Hist.
Eccl. p. 744, and of Moyle, in his essay on the Thundering Legion, deserve no notice. The deliverance of the emperor is represented on the _Columna Antoniniana_, in Rome, by the figure of a Jupiter Pluvius, being that of an old man flying in the air, with his arms expanded, and a long beard which seems to waste away in rain. The soldiers are there represented as relieved by this sudden tempest, and in a posture, partly drinking of the rain-water, and partly fighting against the enemy; who, on the contrary are represented as stretched out on the ground with their horses, and upon them only the dreadful part of the storm descending. The original letter of Marcus Aurelius concerning this matter, was extant when Tertullian and St. Jerom wrote. See Hier. in Chron. Euseb. ad annum 176. Tert.
Apol. c. 5, et lib. ad Scapul. The letter of Marcus Aurelius to the senate now extant, is rejected as supposit.i.tious by Scaliger, (Animadv. In Eus. ad an. 189.).It is published in the new edition of the works of Marcus Aurelius, printed by Robert Fowlis in 1748, t.
1, p. 127, in Greek, t. 2, p. 126, in Latin, with notes, ib. p. 212.
Mamachi, t. 1, p 366.
ST. SEVERINUS, ABBOT,
AND APOSTLE OF NORIc.u.m, OR AUSTRIA.
From his life, by Eugippius his disciple, who was present at his death.
See Tillemont, t. 16, p. 168. Lambecius Bibl. Vend. t. 1, p. 28, and Bollandus, p. 497.
A.D. 482.
WE know nothing of the birth or country of this saint. From the purity of his Latin, he was generally supposed to be a Roman; and his care to conceal what he was according to the world, was taken for a proof of his humility, and a presumption that he was a person of birth. He spent the first part of his life in the deserts of the East; but, inflamed with an ardent zeal for the glory of G.o.d, he left his retreat to preach the gospel in the North. At first he came to Astures, now Stokeraw, situate above Vienna; but finding the people hardened in vice, he foretold the punishment G.o.d had prepared for them, and repaired to Comagenes, now Haynburg on the Danube, eight leagues westward of Vienna. It was not long ere his prophecy was verified; for Astures was laid waste, and the inhabitants destroyed by the sword of the Huns, soon after the death of Attila. St. Severinus"s ancient host with great danger made his escape to him at Comagenes. By the accomplishment of this prophecy, and by several miracles he wrought, the name of the saint became famous.
Favianes, a city on the Danube, twenty leagues from Vienna, distressed by a terrible famine, implored his a.s.sistance. St. Severinus preached penance among them with great fruit; and he so effectually threatened with the divine vengeance a certain rich woman, who had h.o.a.rded up a great quant.i.ty of provisions, that she distributed all her stores among the poor. Soon after his arrival, the ice of the Danube and the Ins breaking, the country was abundantly supplied by barges up the rivers.
Another time by his prayers he chased away the locusts, which by their swarms had threatened with devastation the whole produce of the year. He wrought many miracles; yet never healed the sore eyes of Bonosus, the dearest to him of his disciples, who spent forty years in almost continual prayer, without any abatement of his fervor. The holy man never ceased to exhort all to repentance and piety: he redeemed captives, relieved the oppressed, was a father to the poor, cured the sick, mitigated or averted public calamities, and brought a blessing wherever he came. Many cities desired him for their bishop; but he withstood their importunities by urging, that it was sufficient he had relinquished his dear solitude for their instruction and comfort.
{111}
He established many monasteries, of which the most considerable was one on the banks of the Danube, near Vienna; but he made none of them the place of his constant abode, often shutting himself up in a hermitage four leagues from his community, where be wholly devoted himself to contemplation. He never ate till after sunset, unless on great festivals. In Lent he ate only once a week. His bed was sackcloth spread on the floor in his oratory. He always walked barefoot, even when the Danube was frozen. Many kings and princes of the Barbarians came to visit him, and among them Odoacer, king of the Heruli, then on his march for Italy. The saint"s cell was so low that Odoacer could not stand upright in it. St. Severinus told him that the kingdom he was going to conquer would shortly be his; and Odoacer seeing himself, soon after, master of Italy, sent honorable letters to the saint, promising him all he was pleased to ask; but Severinus only desired of him the restoration of a certain banished man. Having foretold his death long before it happened, he fell ill of a pleurisy on the 5th of January, and on the fourth day of his illness, having received the viatic.u.m, and arming his whole body with the sign of the cross, and repeating that verse of the psalmist, _Let every spirit praise the Lord_,[1] he closed his eyes, and expired in the year 482. Six years after, his disciples, obliged by the incursions of Barbarians, retired with his relics into Italy, and deposited them at Luculano, near Naples, where a great monastery was built, of which Eugippius, his disciple, and author of his life, was soon after made the second abbot. In the year 910 they were translated to Naples, where to this day they are honored in a Benedictin abbey, which bears his name. The Roman and other Martyrologies place his festival on this day, as being that of his death.
A perfect spirit of sincere humility is the spirit of the most sublime and heroic degree of Christian virtue and perfection. As the great work of the sanctification of our souls is to be begun by humility, so must it be completed by the same. Humility invites the Holy Ghost into the soul, and prepares her to receive his graces; and from the most perfect charity, which he infuses, she derives a new interior light, and an experimental knowledge of G.o.d and herself, with an _infused_ humility far clearer in the light of the understanding, in which she sees G.o.d"s infinite greatness, and her own total insufficiency, baseness, and nothingness, after a quite new manner; and in which she conceives a relish of contempt and humiliations as her due, feels a secret sentiment of joy in suffering them, sincerely loves her own abjection, dependence, and correction, dreads the esteem and praises of others, as snares by which a mortal poison may imperceptibly insinuate itself into her affections, and deprive her of the divine grace; is so far from preferring herself to any one, that she always places herself below all creatures, is almost sunk in the deep abyss of her own nothingness, never speaks of herself to her own advantage, or affects a show of modesty in order to appear humble before men, in all good, gives the _entire_ glory to G.o.d alone, and as to herself, glories only in her infirmities, pleasing herself in her own weakness and nothingness, rejoicing that G.o.d is the great _all_ in her and in all creatures.
Footnotes: 1. Ps. 150.
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ST. LUCIAN,
APOSTLE OF BEAUVAIS, IN FRANCE.
HE preached the gospel in Gaul, in the third century; came from Rome, and was probably one of the companions of St. Dionysius, of Paris, or at least of St. Quintin. He sealed his mission with his blood at Beauvais, under Julian, vicar or successor to the b.l.o.o.d.y persecutor Rictius Varus, in the government of Gaul, about the year 290. Maximian, called by the common people Messien, and Julian, the companions of his labors, were crowned with martyrdom at the same place a little before him. His relics, with those of his two colleagues, were discovered in the seventh age, as St. Owen informs us in his life of St. Eligius. They are shown in three gilt shrines, in the abbey which bears his name, and was founded in the eighth century. Raba.n.u.s Maurus says, that these relics were famous for miracles in the ninth century.
St. Lucian is styled only martyr, in most calendars down to the sixteenth century, and in the Roman Martyrology, and the calendar of the English Protestants, in all which it is presumed that he was only priest; but a calendar compiled in the reign of Lewis le Debonnaire,[1]
gives him the t.i.tle of bishop, and he is honored in that quality at Beauvias. See Bollandus, p. 540; though the two lives of this saint, published by him, and thought to be one of the ninth, the other of the tenth age, are of little or no authority. Tillemont, T. 4, p. 537.
Loisel and Louvet, Hist. de Beauvais, p. 76.
Footnotes: 1. Spicileg. T. 10, p. 130.
ST. PEGA, V.
SHE was sister to St. Guthlack, the famous hermit of Croyland, and though of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, forsook the world, and led an austere retired life in the country which afterwards bore her name, in Northamptonshire, at a distance from her holy brother. Some time after his death she went to Rome, and there slept in the Lord, about the year 719. Ordericus Vitalis says, her relics were honored with miracles, and kept in a church which bore her name at Rome, but this church is not now known. From one in Northamptonshire, a village still retains the name of Peagkirk, vulgarly Pequirk; she was also t.i.tular saint of a church and monastery in Pegeland, which St. Edward the Confessor united to Croyland. She is called St. Pee in Northamptonshire, and St. Pege at Croyland. See Ingulph. et Ord. Vitalis, l. 4. Florence of Worcester, ad ann. 714. Harpsfield, sec. 8, c. 19.
ST. VULSIN, BISHOP OF SHIREBURN, C.
WILLIAM of Malmesbury informs us, that St. Dunstan, when bishop of London, appointed him abbot of twelve monks at Thorney, since called Westminster, where Saint Mellitus had built a church in honor of St.
Peter. Vulsin was afterwards chosen bishop of Shireburn; his holy life was crowned with a happy death in 973. He is called Ultius by Matthew of Westminster, {113} but his true ancient name, given by Capgrave, is Vulsin. See Malmesbury de Pontif. Angl. l. 2. Capgrave and Harpsfield, saec. 10, c. 9, saec. 11, c. 16.
ST. GUDULA, V.
CALLED IN BRABANT GOULE, OR ERGOULE, IN FLEMISH SINTE-R-GOELEN,
PATRONESS OF BRUSSELS.
ST. AMALBERGE, mother of this saint, was niece to Pepin, mayor of the palace. Gudula was educated at Nivelle, under the care of St. Gertrude, her cousin and G.o.d-mother; after whose death, in 664, she returned to the house of count Witger, her father, and having by vow consecrated her virginity to G.o.d, led there a most austere and holy life, in watching, fasting, and prayer. By her profuse alms, in which she bestowed her whole revenue on the poor, she was truly the mother of all the distressed; though her father"s castle was two miles from the church of our Saviour at Morzelle, she went thither early every morning, with a maid to carry a lantern before her; and the wax taper being once put out, is said to have miraculously lighted again at her prayers, whence she is usually represented in pictures with a lantern. She died on the 8th of January, not in 670, as Miraeus says, but in 712, and was buried at Ham, near Villevord. In the reign of Charlemagne, her body was removed to the church of our Saviour at Morzelle, and placed behind the high altar; this emperor, out of veneration of her memory, often resorted thither to pray, and founded there a nunnery, which soon after changed its name of St. Saviour for that of St. Goule: this house was destroyed in the irruptions of the Normans. The relics of St. Gudula, by the care of Charles, duke of Lorrain, (in which Brabant was then comprised,) were translated to Brussels, in 978, where they were first deposited to the church of St. Gery, but in 1047, removed into the great collegiate church of St. Michael, since called from her St. Gudula"s.
See her life wrote by Hubert of Brabant, in the eleventh century, soon after this translation of her relics to St. Michael"s, who a.s.sures us that he took the whole relation from an ancient life of this saint, having only changed the order and style.
ST. NATHALAN, BISHOP OF ABERDEEN, C.
HE possessed a large estate, which he distributed among the poor; and seeing that agriculture is an employment best suiting a life of contemplation, he made this an exercise of penance, joining with the same a.s.siduous prayer. He was a proficient in profane and sacred learning, and being made bishop, (to which dignity he was raised by the pope, in a journey of devotion which he made to Rome,) he continued to employ his revenues in charities as before, living himself in great austerity by the labor of his hands, and at the same time preaching the gospel to the people. By his means Scotland was preserved from the Pelagian heresy. He was one of the apostles of that country, and died in 452. He resided at Tullicht, now in the diocese of Aberdeen, and built the churches of Tullicht Bothelim, and of the Hill; in the former of these he was buried, and it long continued famous for miracles wrought by his relics, which were preserved there till the change of religion.
See King, the Chronicles of Dumferling, and the lessons of the Aberdeen Breviary on this day. The see of Aberdeen was {114} not then regularly established; it was first erected at Murthlac by St. Bean, in the beginning of the eleventh century, and translated thence to Aberdeen by Nectan, the fourth bishop, in the reign of king David.[2] See Hector Boetius in the lives of the bishops of Aberdeen,[3] and Spotswood, b. 2, p. 101.
Footnotes: 1. The Aberdeen Breviary resembles that called _of Sarum_, and contains the feasts of many French saints. It was printed at Edinburg, by Walter Chapman, in 1509.
2. Few authentic memoirs of the ancient Scotch church, or history, have been handed down to us, except those of certain n.o.ble families. A catalogue of the bishops of Galloway, from St. Ninia.n.u.s, in 450; of the archbishops of Glascow, from St. Kentigern; of St. Andrew"s, from the year 840; and of the bishops of the other sees, from the twelfth century, is printed at the end of an old edition of Spotsword in 166{} and reprinted by bishop Burnet, in an appendix to his memoirs of the house of Hamilton.
3. De vitis episcopor. Aberd. Praelo. Afrensiano, anno 1522.
JANUARY IX.
ST. PETER OF SEBASTE, B.C.
From the life of his sister St. Macrina, composed by their brother St.
Gregory of Nyssa; and from St. Gregory Naz. Or. 20. See also Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. l. 4, c. 30. Rufin, l. 2., c. 9, and the judicious compilation of Tillemont, in his life of St. Gregory of Nyssa, art. 6, t. 9, p. 572.
About the year 387.
THE family of which St. Peter descended, was very ancient and ill.u.s.trious; St. Gregory n.a.z.ianzen tells us, that his pedigree was made up of a list of celebrated heroes; but their names are long since buried in oblivion, while those of the saints which it gave to the church, and who despised the world and its honors, are immortal in the records of the church, and are written in the book of life; for the light of faith, and the grace of the Almighty, extinguishing in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s the sparks of worldly ambition, inspired them with a most vehement ardor to attain the perfection of Christian virtue, and changed their family into a house of saints; three brothers were at the same time eminently holy bishops, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Peter of Sebaste; and their eldest sister, St. Macrina, was the spiritual mother of many saints and excellent doctors; their father and mother, St. Basil the Elder, and St. Emolia, were banished for their faith in the reign of the emperor Galerius Maximian, and fled into the deserts of Pontus; they are recorded together in the Roman Martyrology, on the 30th of May: the grandmother of our pious and fruitful family of saints, was the celebrated St. Macrina the Elder, who was instructed in the science of salvation, by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. St. Peter of Sebaste was the youngest of ten children, and lost his father in his cradle, some think before he was born; and his eldest sister, Macrina, took care of his education, in which it was her only aim to instruct him in the maxims of religion, and form him to perfect piety; profane studies she thought of little use, to one who designed to make salvation the sole end of all his inquiries and pursuits, nor did he ever make them any part of his employment, confining his views to a monastic state. His mother had founded two monasteries, one for men, the other for women; the former she put under the direction of her son Basil, the latter under that of her daughter Macrina. Peter, whose thoughts were wholly bent on cultivating the seeds of piety that had been sown in him, retired into the house governed by his brother, situated on the bank of the river Iris; when St. Basil was obliged to quit that post, in 362, he left the abbacy in the hands of St. Peter, who discharged this office for {115} several years with great prudence and virtue. When the provinces of Pontus and Cappadocia were visited by a severe famine, he gave a remarkable proof of his charity; human prudence would have advised him to be frugal in the relief of others, till his own family should be secured against that calamity; but Peter had studied the principles of Christian charity in another school, and liberally disposed of all that belonged to his monastery, and whatever he could raise, to supply with necessaries the numerous crowds that daily resorted to him, in that time of distress. Soon after St. Basil was made bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, in 370, he promoted his brother Peter to the priesthood; the holy abbot looked on the holy orders he had received as a fresh engagement to perfection. His brother St. Basil died on the 1st of January, in 379, and his sister Macrina in November, the same year.
Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia, a violent Arian, and a furious persecutor of St. Basil, seems to have died soon after them, for St. Peter was consecrated bishop of Sebaste in 380, to root out the Arian heresy in that diocese, where it had taken deep root; the zeal of a saint was necessary, nor can we doubt but G.o.d placed our saint in that dignity for this purpose. A letter which St. Peter wrote, and which is prefixed to St. Gregory of Nyssa"s books against Eunomius, has ent.i.tled him to a rank among the ecclesiastical writers, and is a standing proof, that though he had confined himself to sacred studies, yet by good conversation and reading, and by the dint of genius, and an excellent understanding, he was inferior to none but his incomparable brother Basil, and his colleague n.a.z.ianzen, in solid eloquence. In 381, he attended the general council held at Constantinople, and joined the other bishops in condemning the Macedonian heretics. Not only his brother St. Gregory, but also Theodoret, and all antiquity, bear testimony to his extraordinary sanct.i.ty, prudence, and zeal. His death happened in summer, about the year 387, and his brother of Nyssa mentions, that his memory was honored at Sebaste (probably the very year after his death) by an anniversary solemnity, with several martyrs of that city.[1] His name occurs in the Roman Martyrology, on the 9th of January.
We admire to see a whole family of saints! This prodigy of grace, under G.o.d, was owing to the example, prayers, and exhortations of the elder St. Macrina, which had this wonderful influence and effect; from her they learned most heartily and deeply to imbibe the true spirit of self-denial and humility, which all Christians confess to be the fundamental maxim of the gospel; but this they generally acknowledge in speculation only, whereas it is in the heart that this foundation is to be laid: we must entertain no attachment, says St. Gregory of Nyssa,[2]
to any thing, especially where there is most danger of pa.s.sion, by some sensual pleasure annexed; and we must begin by being upon our guard against sensuality in eating, which is the most ancient enemy, and the father of vice: we must observe in our whole life the most exact rule of temperance, never making the pleasure of sense our end, but only the necessity of the use we make of things, even those in which a pleasure is taken. In another treatise he says,[3] he who despises the world, must also renounce himself, so as never to follow his own will, but purely to seek in all things the will of G.o.d; we are his in justice, his will must be the law and rule of our whole life. This precept of dying to ourselves, that Christ may live in us, and all our affections and actions governed by his spirit, is excellently inculcated by St. Basil the Great.[4]