Category: Saints

5 min read

Saints

St. Werburgh And Her Saintly Family

Karen Edmisten

March 18, 2019 11:14 am March 18, 2019

5 min read

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5 min read

Holiness tends to run in families. Many devout parents raise young men to look to the priesthood and pray for their daughters to consider consecrated life. Sometimes God even calls…

Holiness tends to run in families. Many devout parents raise young men to look to the priesthood and pray for their daughters to consider consecrated life. Sometimes God even calls more than one child in a family to religious life.

Rare, however, is the religious who can boast, “My mother was an abbess.” St. Werburgh, an Anglo-Saxon princess who became a Benedictine nun, and an abbess herself, could boast (though she never would) not only an abbess mother, but also a grandmother and great aunt who became abbesses, plus four other nuns in the family: her aunt and three more great-aunts.

All eight of these family members are venerated as saints.

Saintly Relations

Werburgh was born in Staffordshire, England, early in the seventh century. Her mother, St. Ermengild, was a pious, prayerful woman who married the pagan king of Mercia. Ermengild’s strong Christian influence transformed her husband’s life and that of countless others. The king became a Christian, and so did many in his kingdom.

When her husband died, Ermengild became a Benedictine sister at Minister-in-Sheppy, an abbey that had family connections: It had been founded by her mother, the abbess St. Sexburga. Eventually, Ermengild succeeded her mother as superior.

Actually, Ermengild was following in her mother’s footsteps. Sexburga had also become a nun after her husband’s death. After serving as abbess at Minister-in-Sheppy for several years, however, Sexburga yearned to grow in holiness through a quieter, more obscure life. She left Minister-in-Sheppy and placed herself under the authority of her holy sister, St. Etheldreda of Ely.

Nevertheless, obscurity was a luxury not granted to Sexburga. Her gifts of leadership dictated otherwise: She eventually succeeded Ethel-dreda as abbess of Ely.

Saintliness spread throughout this family. St. Sexburga’s sisters, St. Ethelburga, St. Saethryth, and St. Withburga, as well as her daughter, St. Ercongata, were all called to be nuns. So zeal for God was a natural and integral part of Werburgh’s everyday life as she grew up.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Werburgh felt called to consecrated life. Though her beauty and elegance attracted a number of suitors, her strongest desire was to serve God as a nun. She eventually convinced her father to let her enter the Abbey of Ely, where she was trained by her great-aunt and her grandmother.

Saintly Gifts

Werburgh’s gifts of self-discipline, obedience and leadership were soon apparent. Her uncle, who assumed the throne after her father’s death, asked her to oversee all convents in his dominion.

Werburgh, like her grandmother, was drawn to solitude and desired to live an obscure life. But as with her grandmother, the Lord had other plans. Always obedient, she consented to His will and her uncle’s request.

The saint began her new role by reforming the convents. She also established new ones in Trentham, Hanbury, Staffordshire, Weedon and Northhamptonshire.

Many miracles are associated with the saint. It’s thought that she posthumously orchestrated the execution of her wishes regarding her own burial.

Knowing that all the monasteries in her charge would want to house her remains, she made arrangements to be buried at Hanbury. However, when she died in 699 at Trentham, the nuns there were determined to keep her. They stubbornly refused to transport Werburgh’s remains and even went so far as to lock them up and place a guard at the crypt.

The people of Hanbury, determined to honor the saint’s wishes, crept into Trentham late at night and marveled when all locks and bars fell open at their touch. Guards slept through the entire episode, and Werburgh’s body was spirited away to its resting place in Hanbury.

Due to the miracles and cures that occurred at the saint’s tomb, her body was exhumed in 708 to move it to a more accessible viewing place in the church. Werburgh’s brother, King Coenrad, was present and was stunned to see that his sister’s body was incorrupt.

He was so moved by what he witnessed that he experienced a conversion. Coenrad left his royal post and became a monk.

An Enduring Example

Werburgh’s remains were eventually moved to Chester, where a shrine was built to the beloved saint. She’s the patroness of that town, and a number of churches throughout England are dedicated to her.

When the shrine was destroyed (along with countless other holy sites) under the reign of King Henry VIII, her relics were scattered. Yet, amazingly, by the late 1800s, many parts of the shrine had been recovered and were reassembled. The shrine is still standing today in Chester Cathedral.

Though she lived in an age foreign to our modern sensibilities, St. Werburgh remains an enduring example of devotion, obedience and humility. Like her grandmother before her, she gave up her personal preference about how to serve God, instead doing as He willed. God gave her many gifts, which her family nurtured, and she, in turn, gave the gifts completely back to God.

Holiness does run in families. We may not all be able to boast a band of nuns in our lineage, as St. Werburgh could. But she and her saintly ancestors show us that living, teaching and handing down the Faith will always bear fruit, sometimes in sublime and miraculous ways.

Karen Edmisten writes from Nebraska.

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3 min read

Saints

St. Mary of Egypt: A saint to invoke against sexual promiscuity

Thomas Craughwell

March 18, 2019 10:40 am March 18, 2019

3 min read

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3 min read

The sexual revolution of the 1960s dramatically altered the moral landscape of the Western world. But of course, sexual promiscuity was not invented in the 1960s; it has always been…

The sexual revolution of the 1960s dramatically altered the moral landscape of the Western world. But of course, sexual promiscuity was not invented in the 1960s; it has always been with us, although it may have been more rampant in some places and some periods of history than others.

St. Mary of Egypt was born into a family of Egyptian Christians. At age 12, she ran away from home and went to live in Alexandria, the most cosmopolitan, most sophisticated and in many ways one of the most corrupt cities in the Mediterranean world. She supported herself as a singer and dancer. At some point, we don’t know when, she lost her innocence.

Mary’s sexual appetite took over her personality. She cruised the streets of Alexandria, looking for partners. Her favorite diversion was to corrupt innocent young men. But many years later, as she told St. Zosimus — the monk who wrote down her autobiography — she never accepted money from the men she slept with, she never became a prostitute.

Once, while walking along the wharves at the harbor, she saw a group of men boarding a ship. She asked one of the sailors who the men were, and where were they going. He said they were all pilgrims, heading to Jerusalem to celebrate there the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On impulse, Mary decided to go, too. By the time the ship reached the Holy Land, Mary had seduced every pilgrim and every member of the crew.

In Jerusalem she continued her usual routine of looking for new partners. On the holy day, a throng of pilgrims made their way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Mary, out of curiosity, joined them. But when she reached the threshold of the church, some invisible force held her back. She could not enter. All at once the wickedness of her life overwhelmed her, and she began to cry.

Near the door was a carving of the Blessed Virgin. Turning to the sacred image, Mary prayed for the first time in years, “Help me,” she begged Our Lady, “for I have no other help.” With that, the power that had kept her from entering the church withdrew and Mary went in. She found a priest and made a full confession.

After the Mass and veneration of the Holy Cross, Mary left Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan River and headed out into the desert. There she became a hermit, living a life of prayer and penance for nearly 50 years.

Toward the end of her life she encountered the monk Zosimus, to whom she told her story. Then she begged him to return to her on Holy Thursday with the Blessed Sacrament — it had been decades since she had been able to receive holy Communion. Zosimus returned, as he had promised, but he found that Mary had died. He buried her, then went back to his monastery and began to make known the story of Mary of Egypt.

Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

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7 min read

Saints

St. John the Baptist’s Birthday

D.D. Emmons

March 14, 2019 11:05 am March 14, 2019

7 min read

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7 min read

Jesus said, “Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist” (Mt 11:11). Each year on June 24 the Catholic Church honors the birth of…

Jesus said, “Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist” (Mt 11:11). Each year on June 24 the Catholic Church honors the birth of John by reflecting on his unique role as the precursor of Jesus. The solemnity held on that date praises John as a worthy example of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

A solemnity is the most significant feast the Church can establish. While other saints are remembered with feast days to remember their deaths, St. John the Baptist, like Our Lady, is honored with solemnities to recall both his birth and his death.

Why do John and Mary receive such honors? The Church commemorates Our Lady’s nativity in part as a recognition that she was born without sin.

So what about John? With the feast of the prophet’s nativity, the Church seems to intimate that John, too, was born sinless, though there is no definitive teaching on the matter.

In Luke’s Gospel account, Mary, pregnant with Jesus, went to visit her relative Elizabeth, who was six months along in her pregnancy with John. At Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth was “filled with the holy Spirit” (1:41) and her unborn son “leaped for joy” (v. 44) in her womb. Both Elizabeth and her child were responding to the awesome reality of being in the presence of God in the flesh.

This event seems to be the fulfillment of the prophecy earlier spoken to John’s father by the angel Gabriel that the child would be “filled with the holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb” (Lk 1:15). As a result, the belief has been commonly held since ancient times that at that moment John was sanctified — that is, he was cleansed from original sin, as if he were “baptized” in his mother’s womb.

Note here that this would mean John was freed from original sin in the womb, and was later born without sin, but not that he was conceived without sin. The Immaculate Conception is a privilege unique to Our Lady among the saints; she was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her existence.

Of course, the other great difference between John and Our Lady is that she was preserved as well from all actual sin throughout her life, while John was not.

On the date of his nativity, then, we honor John the Baptist, who was filled with the Holy Spirit while in his mother’s womb, was chosen by God to herald His Son, lived a model life of holiness and was martyred for his faith.

Celebrating John’s Birth

While never overshadowing the Father or the Son, the mysteries of John’s birth and his prominent role in the life of Christ are given special significance by the Church.

Normally, when a saint’s feast day or solemnity falls on a Sunday, it is superseded by the Sunday liturgy. But the solemnity honoring the Baptist’s nativity is one of the exceptions. If it occurs on the Lord’s Day, the prayers, readings and psalms associated with the solemnity of John are not replaced by a different Sunday liturgy.

John died as a martyr who witnessed to the truth of God’s intention that marriage should be a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. That martyrdom is celebrated by the Church with a memorial on Aug. 29. Yet even if John had not been a martyr, the Church would no doubt have still celebrated his life and ministry as the herald of her Lord.

The solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist is one of the Church’s oldest celebrations introduced into both the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) liturgies to honor a saint. It was publicly observed as early as the fourth century.

Choosing a Date

June 24 was eventually chosen as the date for the solemnity because Scripture tells us that John was conceived six months before Jesus (see Lk 1:36). Presumably, then, John was born about six months before Christ, and Christ’s nativity was celebrated on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24.

But there was yet another important factor in fixing John’s birth date. Centuries before the time of Christ, some pagan cultures annually celebrated the summer solstice, which occurs in late June. They recognized that after the solstice, the days began getting shorter. For a variety of reasons, they traditionally acknowledged the change of seasons by lighting bonfires that were kept burning all night.

This lighting of fires was a widespread ritual among different groups of non-Christians immigrating into Europe in the Church’s early centuries. The Church recognized the importance of somehow accepting this ancient and very popular tradition among the people they were seeking to convert, but she did not want it to be associated with a pagan ritual.

The events in the life of Christ did not offer an obvious connection to this midsummer festival, so early Church leaders turned to the life of John the Baptist. As the birth of Christ was celebrated at the winter solstice in late December, so John the Baptist’s birth would be celebrated at the summer solstice.

It was and is a perfect fit: The nativity of John portends the nativity of Jesus.

The solemnity of John’s nativity was officially established at the Church Council of Agde in 506. From that time forward, Catholics have celebrated the birth of John the Baptist on June 24.

For an indication of how highly this celebration was once regarded, consider the circumstances surrounding the Battle of Fontenay, in what is now France, in the year 841. Two rival Frankish armies, meeting face-to-face on June 23, did not want to risk fighting on St. John’s feast day. So they agreed to postpone the battle until the day after it!

Celebrations Today

Today the age-old custom of lighting fires on the eve of St. John’s day can be seen in places all over the world, especially in Europe. In this way they acknowledge John and his heralding of Jesus, who is “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12). That these fires have their roots in a pagan ritual takes nothing away from the honor that most participants today pay to the Baptist.

Parades and festivals are often held in addition to the bonfires, which go on until daybreak. Christians in some countries splash one another with water or go swimming at midnight in remembrance of their baptism, all in honor of St. John.

In other places, celebrants place twigs and firs in their homes, recalling the time John spent in the wilderness preparing himself to introduce Christ. Church observances often include fasting and prayers on the night before. In some countries, the day itself is a holy day of obligation (though not in the United States).

A Model of Holiness

John was the herald of Christ, “a voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord'” (Mt 3:3). But he was also much more.

The Baptist provided a model of heroic holiness. He publicly condemned hypocrisy and immorality, calling all to repentance. He challenged the greed and materialism of his day, following a life of poverty, simplicity and selflessness that inspired not only his contemporaries, but also the later pioneers of Christian monasticism.

Wherever John went, he was surrounded by vast crowds and followers, some thinking he was the Messiah. Yet he didn’t take advantage of these people. Rather, he told them clearly that he wasn’t who they thought he was, and that they must experience a conversion of heart in preparation for the Messiah (see Jn 1:19-27).

When Jesus began His ministry, John sent his disciples to Jesus and then faded into the background, humbly accepting his diminishing role with the words: “He [Christ] must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). He forgot himself and lived for Jesus.

John’s message to the people so many years ago was that the Lord is imminent, so we must be prepared. On the solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the Church renews that message.

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2 min read

Saints

St. Frances of Rome

Emily Stimpson Chapman

March 8, 2019 10:41 am March 8, 2019

2 min read

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2 min read

St. Frances of Rome could have lived an easy life, full of food, parties and pleasure. But she didn’t want an easy life. She wanted to serve Christ by serving…

St. Frances of Rome could have lived an easy life, full of food, parties and pleasure. But she didn’t want an easy life. She wanted to serve Christ by serving the poor.

Born in 1384 to a wealthy Roman family, Frances married at age 12 into an equally wealthy Roman family: the Ponzianis. Her husband, Lorenzo, was a good man — generous, kind and enamored by his bride. Frances, however, was initially disappointed with him, as she would have been with any match. She wanted to become a religious and found the social obligations of marriage almost unbearable.

Help soon came, though, through her sister-in-law, Vannozza, who also longed to live a life of service and prayer, and together the two devised a plan that allowed them to pursue spiritual disciplines while still carrying out family obligations.

Not long afterward, in the early 15th century, famine struck Rome. With the help of her sister-in-law and the support of her husband, Frances ordered that no one who came to the Ponziani palace begging for food was to be turned away.

Corn and wine were distributed liberally until her father-in-law learned of her generosity. He ordered Frances to stop. She refused. So, he sold off the family’s extra corn and wine, keeping only what the family needed. Frances continued feeding the poor just the same, emptying their corn loft rather than allow others to go hungry.

The loft never completely went empty, though, for on the very day Frances gave away the last kernels, the entire supply was miraculously replenished. The same happened with the wine. When the family cask ran dry, new wine mysteriously appeared in it, finer than the previous wine.

Frances would go on to form a small community of like-minded lay women committed to caring for the poor: the Oblates of Mary. After her husband’s death in 1436, Frances lived with the Oblates for four years, serving as their superior, until her own death in 1440. She was canonized in 1608.

Imitating St. Frances

Support an organization that feeds victims of famine, war and systemic national poverty.
Make a meal for a family with a new baby.
Invite a young family or a person who lives alone to join you for dinner.

This article originally appeared in OSV Newsweekly.

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7 min read

Saints

Blessed John Henry Newman

Carl E. Olson

March 5, 2019 8:03 am March 5, 2019

7 min read

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7 min read

“He is the one Englishman of that era who upheld the ancient creed with a knowledge that only theologians possess, a Shakespearean force of style, and a fervor worthy of…

“He is the one Englishman of that era who upheld the ancient creed with a knowledge that only theologians possess, a Shakespearean force of style, and a fervor worthy of the saints.” This description of Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), from the 1913 edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia, captures well three of the many impressive qualities of the man: his theological knowledge, his masterful literary abilities and his holiness.

Given Cardinal Newman’s reputation during his lifetime, both for his prodigious intellect and for his personal sanctity, support for his canonization not surprisingly began at his death. His formal cause for sainthood has been underway for some time now, making headlines, at times, even in secular publications.

An article in America magazine in 1941, along with Pope Pius XII’s support of the 1945 “Centenary of Newman’s Conversion,” played essential roles in moving the process along.

In an address to the Cardinal Newman Academic Symposium in 1975, Pope Paul VI acknowledged the powerful and ongoing witness of Cardinal Newman:

“He who was convinced of being faithful throughout his life, with all his heart devoted to the light of truth, today becomes an ever brighter beacon for all who are seeking an informed orientation and sure guidance amid the uncertainties of the modern world — a world which he himself prophetically foresaw.”

In fact, the Pope had hoped that he might celebrate the Holy Year of 1975 with the beatification of the English cardinal. But more research was needed before that event could take place.

Finally, in January 1991, Pope John Paul II declared Cardinal Newman to be “Venerable.” He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and was approved for canonization by Pope Francis in 2019.

Cardinal Newman captured even bigger headlines when, in October 2008, his bones were exhumed and nothing was found save a few red tassels from his cardinal’s hat. Damp conditions had led to the decomposition of the body, thus frustrating the intended move of his remains from a cemetery in Rednal, Worcestershire, to a sarcophagus at Birmingham Oratory.

Cardinal Newman had founded the oratory in the 1840s after he left the Anglican denomination to enter the Catholic Church.

A Dramatic Conversion

It was Cardinal Newman’s dramatic conversion that captured, and still captures, the attention and imagination of so many.

Born into a family of bankers, the eldest of six children, the shy and studious Newman had a fondness for reading the Bible and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. The religion of his youth was Anglican and evangelical in nature; he described it in his biographical “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” (1864)as “Bible religion.” (It was also quite anti-Catholic.)

The future cardinal once wrote that he “had no formed religious convictions” until he was 15. “Of course,” he added, “I had a perfect knowledge of my catechism.”

The teenager experienced a profound crisis of faith in 1816, but emerged from it with a newfound fervor, evidenced by his frequent reception of communion in the Anglican Church and taking a private vow of celibacy. At 21 he was a professor at Oriel College, Oxford, and was ordained in June 1824 as a priest in the Anglican Communion.

Newman was a curate of St. Clement’s, Oxford, for two years, and then served as vicar of St. Mary the Virgin, the university church, where he overcame his shyness. Several years of impressive scholarly work followed, including his first major publication, “The Arians of the Fourth Century” (1833).

Much of that work had to do with early Church history and the Church Fathers. Such study would eventually lead him to communion with Rome.

During the 1830s Newman became a leader in the Oxford Movement, which consisted of several Oxford theologians who addressed key issues relating to the authority, nature and history of the Anglican Communion. They also sought to reinvigorate what they considered to be a spiritually lethargic institution.

Because of the many theological tracts published by Newman and others, the movement became known as Tractarianism. In Tract 90, published in 1841, Newman argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles — the defining creedal statements of Anglicanism established in 1563 — were essentially Catholic teachings.

This led to controversy and to Newman’s forced resignation from Oxford.

“From the end of 1841,” he wrote in the “Apologia,” “I was on my deathbed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church.”

Newman retired to the village of Littlemore with a small group of followers and lived a semi-monastic life as he worked on his now-famous “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.” It was during his years there that he worked through his various concerns and questions about Catholic doctrine.

He preached his last sermon at St. Mary’s in September 1843, and shortly thereafter he published a retraction of his previous attacks on the Catholic Church.

On Oct. 8, 1845, with his “Essay” still not completed (he never did finish it), Newman wrote: “I am this night expecting Father Dominic, the Passionist. … I mean to ask of him admission into the One Fold of Christ.”

Blessed Dominic Barberi, an Italian, received Newman into the Catholic Church the next day.

Service in the Church

The following October the new convert traveled to Rome, where he was ordained a Catholic priest and given a doctorate in divinity by Pope Pius IX himself. Father Newman joined the Congregation of the Oratory and, having been given a papal brief, set up an oratory in Birmingham, England.

The years of Cardinal Newman’s life were nearly equally divided between those when he was non-Catholic and those when he was Catholic, and the second half of his life, like the first, did not lack for controversy.

“Apologia Pro Vita Sua” was published in response to personal attacks against him by novelist Charles Kingsley. In it, he defended the civic loyalty of English Catholics against the accusations of William Gladstone.

At the same time, many Catholics remained wary of the new priest, not only because he was a convert, but also because some considered him to be a liberal. This accusation stemmed in part from his concerns about the First Vatican Council’s formal definition of the dogma of papal infallibility. In his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” (1875), however, he affirmed that he had always believed in the doctrine.

Whatever may have been the qualms of some Catholics about his thinking, in 1879 the convert priest was named a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.

Cardinal Newman has sometimes been called the “Father of Vatican II” because of the influence of his writings on several key areas of theology and practice. Pope Paul VI, in his 1975 address, highlighted this influence:

“Many of the problems which [Newman] treated with wisdom — although he himself was frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted in his own time — were the subjects of the discussion and study of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council, as for example the question of ecumenism, the relationship between Christianity and the world, the emphasis on the role of the laity in the Church and the relationship of the Church to non-Christian religions.”

In a 1990 address given on the first centenary of Cardinal Newman’s death, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

“The characteristic of the great Doctor of the Church, it seems to me, is that he teaches not only through his thought and speech but also by his life, because within him, thought and life is interpenetrated and defined. If this is so, then Newman belongs to the great teachers of the Church, because he both touches our hearts and enlightens our thinking.”

Shortly before his death, Cardinal Newman asked Bishop William Bernard Ullathorne of Birmingham to bless him. Bishop Ullathorne, deeply moved by the request, later wrote: “I felt annihilated in his presence. There is a saint in that man.”

Carl Olson is editor of IgnatiusInsight.com and writes from Eugene, Ore.

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4 min read

Saints

The Unifying Witness of Peter and Paul

Bishop Felipe J. Estevez

March 4, 2019 11:37 am March 4, 2019

4 min read

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4 min read

As one enters St. Peter’s Square in Rome and approaches the magnificent basilica, one’s vision is overwhelmed by the sheer size of the structure and Michelangelo’s dome that sits atop…

As one enters St. Peter’s Square in Rome and approaches the magnificent basilica, one’s vision is overwhelmed by the sheer size of the structure and Michelangelo’s dome that sits atop it. So it would be understandable if one were to enter it without noticing the two monumental statues that stand at either side of the steps leading up to the front doors of the basilica. Huge statues of St. Peter and St. Paul greet pilgrims at the threshold of the holy place as a testimony to the unifying power of these great apostles. Peter and Paul are twin pillars for our Church, if you will. They constantly witness to us the two necessary elements of our Catholic faith: the service of Church authority (Peter) and the outreach of mission (Paul). That is fitting because we need both their teaching and their grace to guide us in our pilgrimage toward our good destiny.

In the years I spent studying in Rome, I had many occasions to reflect on the reality of Peter and Paul as brothers, co-apostles and holy teachers of the Catholic faith. The Church places these two apostles together in a single common feast day and celebrates their memory as one. Both lived, taught and performed their final ministries in Rome (although at different times), and both gave their final witness in Rome through their martyrdom.

Theirs is a unified witness, but it has two unique expressions, as if, in a symbolic way, the Lord had sent them out “two-by-two” to Rome as he had sent out all his apostles on their missions. Both their differences and their union in the Faith symbolize something that is vital for the life of every believer: that in the Catholic Church all gifts and authentic expressions of faith in Christ find their greatest fulfilment. The Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass for their feast day expresses that concept beautifully:

For by your providence, Father,

The blessed Apostles Peter and Paul bring us joy:

Peter, foremost in confessing the faith,

Paul, its outstanding preacher,

Peter, who established the early Church from the remnant of Israel,

Paul, master and teacher of the Gentiles that you call.

And so, each in a different way

Gathered together the one family of Christ;

And revered together throughout the world,

They share the martyr’s crown.

Many Catholics do not fully appreciate that this union of Peter and Paul is found in tangible form to this very day in the coordination of the pope with the bishops in their guidance of the Church, particularly in administering the sacraments and teaching the Faith. Our Catechism explains it so well:

“Sacramental ministry in the Church, then, is a service exercised in the name of Christ. It has a personal character and a collegial form. This is evidenced by the bonds between the episcopal college and its head, the successor of St. Peter …. This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the Church’s very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 879, 881).

Above all, we must never forget that Sts. Peter and Paul were both martyred for the Faith. Their ultimate and greatest testimony to Christ was not in their teaching or in their shepherding of the Church but in their imitation of the Master, even to the point of a violent death. Martyrdom is not an end in itself but rather a demonstration of the ultimate value of loving others (that is, charity) as Jesus did — to the very last drop of his blood (Jn 13:1).

Both Tradition and Scripture place Sts. Peter and Paul at the center point of the Roman Empire in the first century, and we may see in this a divine purpose. Perhaps God wanted the blood of these two great men to form the seed bed of the Church, to nurture the Church at its beginnings with the strongest possible outflowing of grace. The blood of anyone who dies for Christ is of great value, but how much more so is the blood of the two great evangelizers of the world!

As we celebrate the feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul, we must ask ourselves a final question: How will these great apostles strengthen our own Christian witness this year? We may not be called to martyrdom like them, but each of us has our own testimony to give. With Peter, let us reaffirm our fidelity to the Church and to our Catholic identity amid a culture that is often hostile to faith. Like Paul, let us pursue the holiness that alone transforms the world.

Bishop Felipe J. Estevez is bishop of St. Augustine, Florida.

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