St. Ambrose (340?-397)

One of Ambrose’s biographers observed that at the Last Judgment people would still be divided between those who admired Ambrose and those who heartily disliked him. He emerges as the man of action who cut a furrow through the lives of his contemporaries. Even royal personages were numbered among those who were to suffer crushing divine punishments for standing in Ambrose’s way.

When the Empress Justina attempted to wrest two basilicas from Ambrose’s Catholics and give them to the Arians, he dared the eunuchs of the court to execute him. His own people rallied behind him in the face of imperial troops. In the midst of riots he both spurred and calmed his people with bewitching new hymns set to exciting Eastern melodies.

In his disputes with the Emperor Auxentius, he coined the principle: “The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.” He publicly admonished Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of 7,000 innocent people. The emperor did public penance for his crime. This was Ambrose, the fighter, sent to Milan as Roman governor and chosen while yet a catechumen to be the people’s bishop.

There is yet another side of Ambrose—one which influenced Augustine, whom Ambrose converted. Ambrose was a passionate little man with a high forehead, a long melancholy face and great eyes. We can picture him as a frail figure clasping the codex of sacred Scripture. This was the Ambrose of aristocratic heritage and learning.

Augustine found the oratory of Ambrose less soothing and entertaining but far more learned than that of other contemporaries. Ambrose’s sermons were often modeled on Cicero and his ideas betrayed the influence of contemporary thinkers and philosophers. He had no scruples in borrowing at length from pagan authors. He gloried in the pulpit in his ability to parade his spoils—“gold of the Egyptians”—taken over from the pagan philosophers.

His sermons, his writings and his personal life reveal him as an otherworldly man involved in the great issues of his day. Humanity, for Ambrose, was, above all, spirit. In order to think rightly of God and the human soul, the closest thing to God, no material reality at all was to be dwelt upon. He was an enthusiastic champion of consecrated virginity.

The influence of Ambrose on Augustine will always be open for discussion. The Confessions reveal some manly, brusque encounters between Ambrose and Augustine, but there can be no doubt of Augustine’s profound esteem for the learned bishop.

Neither is there any doubt that Monica loved Ambrose as an angel of God who uprooted her son from his former ways and led him to his convictions about Christ. It was Ambrose, after all, who placed his hands on the shoulders of the naked Augustine as he descended into the baptismal fountain to put on Christ.

St. Nicholas (d. 350?)

The absence of the “hard facts” of history is not necessarily an obstacle to the popularity of saints, as the devotion to St. Nicholas shows. Both the Eastern and Western Churches honor him, and it is claimed that, after the Blessed Virgin, he is the saint most pictured by Christian artists. And yet, historically, we can pinpoint only the fact that Nicholas was the fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Lycia, a province of Asia Minor.

As with many of the saints, however, we are able to capture the relationship which Nicholas had with God through the admiration which Christians have had for him—an admiration expressed in the colorful stories which have been told and retold through the centuries.

Perhaps the best-known story about Nicholas concerns his charity toward a poor man who was unable to provide dowries for his three daughters of marriageable age. Rather than see them forced into prostitution, Nicholas secretly tossed a bag of gold through the poor man’s window on three separate occasions, thus enabling the daughters to be married. Over the centuries, this particular legend evolved into the custom of gift-giving on the saint’s feast. In the English-speaking countries, St. Nicholas became, by a twist of the tongue, Santa Claus—further expanding the example of generosity portrayed by this holy bishop.

St. Sabas (b. 439)

Born in Cappadocia (modern-day Turkey), Sabas is one of the most highly regarded patriarchs among the monks of Palestine and is considered one of the founders of Eastern monasticism.

After an unhappy childhood in which he was abused and ran away several times, Sabas finally sought refuge in a monastery. While family members tried to persuade him to return home, the young boy felt drawn to monastic life. Although the youngest monk in the house, he excelled in virtue.

At age 18 he traveled to Jerusalem, seeking to learn more about living in solitude. Soon he asked to be accepted as a disciple of a well-known local solitary, though initially he was regarded as too young to live completely as a hermit. Initially, Sabas lived in a monastery, where he worked during the day and spent much of the night in prayer. At the age of 30 he was given permission to spend five days each week in a nearby remote cave, engaging in prayer and manual labor in the form of weaving baskets. Following the death of his mentor, St. Euthymius, Sabas moved farther into the desert near Jericho. There he lived for several years in a cave near the brook Cedron. A rope was his means of access. Wild herbs among the rocks were his food. Occasionally men brought him other food and items, while he had to go a distance for his water.

Some of these men came to him desiring to join him in his solitude. At first he refused. But not long after relenting, his followers swelled to more than 150, all of them living in individual huts grouped around a church, called a laura.

The bishop persuaded a reluctant Sabas, then in his early 50s, to prepare for the priesthood so that he could better serve his monastic community in leadership. While functioning as abbot among a large community of monks, he felt ever called to live the life of a hermit. Throughout each year —consistently in Lent—he left his monks for long periods of time, often to their distress. A group of 60 men left the monastery, settling at a nearby ruined facility. When Sabas learned of the difficulties they were facing, he generously gave them supplies and assisted in the repair of their church.

Over the years Sabas traveled throughout Palestine, preaching the true faith and successfully bringing back many to the Church. At the age of 91, in response to a plea from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sabas undertook a journey to Constantinople in conjunction with the Samaritan revolt and its violent repression. He fell ill and, soon after his return, died at the monastery at Mar Saba. Today the monastery is still inhabited by monks of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and St. Sabas is regarded as one of the most noteworthy figures of early monasticism.

St. John Damascene (676?-749)

John spent most of his life in the monastery of St. Sabas, near Jerusalem, and all of his life under Muslim rule, indeed, protected by it. He was born in Damascus, received a classical and theological education, and followed his father in a government position under the Arabs. After a few years he resigned and went to the monastery of St. Sabas.

He is famous in three areas. First, he is known for his writings against the iconoclasts, who opposed the veneration of images. Paradoxically, it was the Eastern Christian emperor Leo who forbade the practice, and it was because John lived in Muslim territory that his enemies could not silence him. Second, he is famous for his treatise, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, a summary of the Greek Fathers (of which he became the last). It is said that this book is to Eastern schools what the Summa of Aquinas became to the West. Thirdly, he is known as a poet, one of the two greatest of the Eastern Church, the other being Romanus the Melodist. His devotion to the Blessed Mother and his sermons on her feasts are well known.

LONLINESS

Your loneliness is your Self-wanting to make friends with itself. Your loneliness is your HEART wanting to sing to it. Your loneliness is your BEING wanting to dance with it.

Advent 1 B

e Prepared And Pray - Brennan McGuire

There is nothing so tantalizing as the smell of freshly baked bread. When you walk into a store and you can smell that bread, you immediately want to go and get a loaf of it. I think there is only one thing better than the smell of freshly baked bread in the store and that is having the smell of freshly baked bread in your own home. There is something about it. It waifs through the whole home and fills it up with the smell of freshness of ready-to-eat, ready to gather around for the meal.

But the difference between buying bread at the store and having bread at home is that it takes time and discipline. The ingredients are very straightforward. Bread really has only a handful of main ingredients. You can make it more complex but fundamentally there is a flour, liquid and a rising agent: The flour can be ordinary plain flour or wholewheat flour; the liquid can be either milk, buttermilk or just water, and then the rising agent is either yeast or baking soda. Now you can put an egg in it or you can do without an egg, you can put salt in it or you can do without the salt. You can do lots of other things, but those three main ingredients are fairly common and those are certainly not difficult to find in the store. Yet most of us will not find the time nor have the discipline to do it.

Some of you know this but I love to bake my own Irish brown soda bread. I have my mother's recipe that I have adjusted over the years. Yet I also have a struggle with the time and discipline. However, I find it so important that I make the time and have a routine now. So what I have done is I make my life easier. I have a special shelf and it has all the ingredients right there: a drawer with all the different flours and dry ingredients ready to go. All I need is to get buttermilk and eggs at the store. With all the ingredients already there, it makes it easier. I just uncap all the containers add the flours and boom, boom, boom and within about five minutes, I have all the preparation done.

The reason why I bring that up is because Christmas is always a great time of year but there is only one thing better than regular Christmas is when we are ourselves have prepared really well for it. It's the difference between home baked bread and store bought bread. When we take on the journey of Christmas for ourselves and really use this time we call Advent as a true preparation time. But just like baking bread, it requires discipline. All the ingredients to have a great Christmas are always in place. All the ingredients to have God in our life are always there and all we have to do is put it all together. If you would, the three main ingredients of this time of Christmas is the Trinity: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All we need to do is have the time and the discipline of putting things together so we have a fresh Christmas celebration. So how do find the time and the discipline?

Fundamentally, what we have to understand is Christ is always with us. Just like the ingredients for home baked bread is always there, we need to find the time to prepare it. Advent is the time in which we set aside four full weeks of preparation. We say we are going to set a discipline, we are going to make ourselves be aware of how God is present in our lives and so we commit to making Christmas better. We have the four different candles that represent the four different weeks. And each week, we light a candle as a remembrance of the light of Christ in our life. We emphasize that we are preparing, we spend time and we pray. This is not just going to happen without our effort. Just like we don't get freshly baked bread in the house without making a huge effort. There are things that you can do ahead of time, just like baking bread, which will make it easier. And one of those is the regular prayer time in our life. Now I know you have heard me go on and on about this but yet little success do we have. So few of us seem to have committed to a daily two minutes or four minutes of prayer in our life. Why? Why have we not decided to make this a commitment in our life? Is it that we don't believe God is present in our life? Or are we afraid that God will show us something different from what we are already doing?

I suspect that it's because we do not have a routine or a discipline of prayer. We have to make it a discipline first before it becomes a habit. Christmas is a time when we recognize Christ present in our lives. Once in history and again each year to remind ourselves and we do this by each week lighting the candles, getting a little more excited and having a little more discipline.

So this week as we begin a new year, a new liturgical year, and we may have lost some discipline over this last year but we focus on a new year, a new beginning for us; may we decide to commit to prayer again. May we commit to the time and be aware of that Trinity in our lives, to add the yeast or soda of the Holy spirit, that brings effervescence and rising to our life; to be aware of God the Father, that constant supply of water in our life and to be always present to the flour who is the Christ, there waiting for us to recognize him.

So this Advent, may we prepare for - not bread, but the Lord's coming by preparing our hearts and cutting out some time each and every day for prayer. If we have not started with the two minutes, then maybe we can start with the two minutes. It is the same challenge for students in school, whether it be elementary school, or high school, all the way to seniors. It does not make any difference who we are or where we are at, we need to be in constant communication with our God. So, today, may we be prepared by our time and discipline of prayer. Make ready the way of the Lord and be alert and watch.

Ready to go

A woman in her eighties made the evening news because she was getting married for the fourth time. The following day she was being interviewed by a local TV station, and the commentator asked about what it felt to be married again at that age and would she share part of her previous experiences, since it seem quite unique the fact that her new husband was a ‘funeral director.’ After a short time to think, a smile came to her face and she proudly explained that she had first married a banker when she was in her twenties, in her forties she married a circus ring master, and in her sixties she married a pastor and now in her eighties, a funeral director. The amazed commentator asked her why she had married men with such diverse carriers. With a smile on her face she explained, ‘I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go.’