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Vincent de Paul (Vincent Depaul) was born on 24 April, 1581, of a Gascon peasant family in Pouy, in the south-east of France. He went to a Franciscan school in Dax and graduated in theology at Toulouse University.  He remained in Toulouse until he went to Marseilles to collect an inheritance. On his way back from Marseilles, there is a story that he was seized by Turkish pirates and brought to Tunis where he was sold as a slave.  But, after converting his ‘owner’ to Christianity, he was freed in 1607, though some doubt the veracity of this event.

Vincent was ordained priest at the unusually early age of 19.  He began his priestly life as a court chaplain and was supported by the revenues of a commendatory abbey, but his life changed following a false accusation of theft. In 1609, he was associated with Pierre (later Cardinal) de Berulle and became tutor to the children of the Gondi family.  In 1617, he was made parish priest of Chatillon-les-Dombes.  All during his life he combined an apostolate among the well-off upper classes with an utter devotion to the care of the poor and oppressed.  While chaplain with the Gondi family, he gave help to prisoners condemned to work on galley ships, and in 1622 preached missions to prisoners in Bordeaux.

Vincent is probably best known for the two religious congregations he founded. In 1625, he set up a congregation of priests.  They lived from a common fund and renounced all church honours.  They devoted themselves to serving Catholics in the smaller towns and villages.  The purpose was to restore a more flexible apostolate among the diocesan clergy.

In 1633, they were given care of the Paris priory church of Saint-Lazare.  From this church the congregation came to be known as ‘Lazarists’.  Because of their founder they are also known as Vincentians, although the official name is the Congregation of the Mission (CM). Also in 1633, Vincent founded the Daughters of Charity (Filles de Charite).  They were the first congregation not to live in cloister so that they could devote themselves entirely to the poor and the sick.

Vincent said that their cloister was the street. In this he realised the original idea of Francis de Sales, whose congregation had been made to follow a more traditional religious life by Rome. In this venture, Vincent was aided by (St) Louise de Marillac, who was the first superior.  Together with Louise de Marillac, Vincent organised hospitals for the sick poor, founded institutions for abandoned children, opened soup kitchens, created job training programmes, taught young women to read, improved prison conditions, and organised countless local charities in the villages throughout France.

It is said that, even during his life, Vincent became a legend. Every level of society—clergy and laity, rich and poor, outcasts and convicts—all were won over by his charisma and selfless devotion.  Here was a man totally guided by his love for God and neighbour.

Rich women collected money and in other ways supported his countless good works. He gave alms for war-victims in Lorraine, sent his priests to Poland, Ireland, and Scotland (even the Hebrides).  From 1643, during the regency of Anne of Austria, who greatly admired him and valued his advice, he had considerable influence in her court.  The one exception was when he tried to persuade her to dismiss Cardinal Mazarin. He was also very aware of the dangers of Jansenism, to which he was strongly opposed.

He died on 27 September, 1660, at the age of nearly 80 and was canonized by Pope Clement XII in 1737. Pope Leo XIII named him patron of all charitable societies.  Among these is the lay movement called the Society of St Vincent de Paul, which was founded in 1833 by Frederick Ozanam.

Both the Vincentians and the Daughters of Charity are found today in many parts of the world.  The Irish Vincentians sent many priests as missionaries to English-speaking parts of the world, especially Britain, Australia and the US.

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Commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Psalm 111; Matthew 9:35-38

The Gospel reading from Matthew is a short description of the public life of Jesus.  We are told that he moved constantly through towns and villages.  He taught in synagogues and proclaimed the Good News of the Reign of God, inaugurating a society where people’s lives were based on mutual love and service and living together as brothers and sisters in God’s family. He also brought healing to those suffering from all kinds of sickness, of whatever kind.

When Jesus saw the crowds of people he was moved with compassion for them.  He saw them troubled and abandoned, not knowing where they were going, like sheep without a shepherd.

He saw the vastness of their needs and knew that he himself, in his humanity, could not serve them all.  So Jesus called on his disciples to help and for them to call on many others to help in the work of making God’s Reign a reality in the world.  He told them:

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

One person who answered this call with extraordinary generosity was Vincent de Paul.  We find him doing exactly the same work of Jesus – proclaiming the Gospel, bringing healing to the sick, and help to the poor and destitute.  And like Jesus, he invited a large group of both men and women to involve themselves in this work.  We thank God for the all great work they have done and continue to do.

But we too, must hear the word of Jesus.  The harvest is still great and the labourers are not nearly enough to bring it in.  Every baptised Christian is being invited to answer this call to help make our world the kind of place God wants it to be—a world of love, service and mutual sharing.

The First Reading is from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians.  In the passage Paul is telling the Christians of Corinth how few of them have come from either the educated or influential classes.  But it is precisely through their lack of the world’s resources that the Wisdom of God can shine through them:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

And it is true that the Christian communities in the early Church largely consisted of simple people and even slaves.  Yet, such was the power of the Gospel message that Christian message spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond to the rest of the world.  As Paul says, because the Message itself has a power to win over people of all kinds, we should just tell it:

Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord..

Vincent de Paul himself came from peasant stock but, like his Master, reached out with the Gospel message to people of all classes.  But, like his Master, too, he was filled with compassion for the poor and needy and did so much for them.  And his work continues both in the congregations he founded and in those lay organisations inspired by his example. We must ask for ourselves, where do I fit into all this?  And my family?  And my parish?

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Commentary on Hosea 2:16-17,21-22; Psalm 44; Matthew 25:1-13

The Gospel reading for the feast is the parable of the Ten Bridesmaids from Matthew. It is one of three parables from near the end of Jesus’ public life in a section which deals mainly with the Second Coming of Christ and what is known as the General Judgement. The main theme of the three parables is the importance of being ready to meet Christ at the end of our lives.

The parable of the Ten Bridesmaids (or in some translations, the Ten Virgins) speaks of ten young women who go out to meet the bridegroom as he comes for the wedding ceremony. In our society, it is the groom who waits for the bride, but here it is the other way round. And though, in our time, traditionally brides have had the reputation for unpunctuality, here it is the man who causes the delay.

Each of the bridesmaids was carrying an oil lamp to greet the groom when he arrived. We are told that five of them were ‘wise’ and five were ‘foolish’. The foolish ones neglected to take extra oil with them, but the wise had brought flasks of oil in case of running short.

The bridegroom was long delayed and the young women became drowsy and even fell asleep. Then, at midnight, the cry went up:

Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.

By now, the lamps had all gone out and the foolish young women asked the wise to give them some oil for their lamps. The wise ones refused, saying that they did not have enough for all of them. They told the foolish ones to go and buy some for themselves.

While they were away, the bridegroom arrived and:

…those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet, and the door was shut.

When the foolish young women came back, they asked for the locked door to be opened: 

Lord, Lord, lord, open to us.

They then hear what are perhaps the most terrible words in the Gospels:

…I do not know you.

The message of the parable is clear. It is an image of our lives. Our life is a journey to our final goal – to be fully united with our Creator and Lord. But on the way we need to prepare ourselves, we need to be ready.

Jesus had said earlier in Matthew’s Gospel that we are to be the light of the world. But there is a danger that our light will go out. What is the oil we need to keep our light shining? The ‘oil’ is our maintaining a close relationship with Christ through steadfast prayer and living our lives in a constantly loving and caring relationship with those around us, especially those in greatest need, whatever that need may be.  As long as we live in this way, there will be oil to keep our light shining. And we will know Jesus because we will recognise, love and serve him in our brothers and sisters. And, at the end, he too will know us. It will be a meeting of old friends.

But if we live our lives in self-seeking ways, Jesus will not be part of it, and at the end, he will not know us. Edith Stein, in the earlier part of her life, led a life where God had little or no part.  But after her conversion and discovery of Christ, then she was indeed a “wise bridesmaid” in living faithfully her Carmelite vocation. And when the final trial came, she was ready to go in and meet her Lord, to whom she was already well known. Let us learn some of her wisdom.

The First Reading consists of verses from the prophet Hosea. This book uses the prophet’s own unfortunate marriage (where his wife Gomer was unfaithful to him) as an image of the relationship of the faithless Israel with Yahweh. And, just as Hosea felt he could not desert his wife because of her adultery, so Yahweh cannot abandon Israel. In today’s reading, Yahweh speaks of his loving relationship with Israel:

Therefore, I will now allure her
and bring her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her…she shall respond
as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
(NRSVue Translation*: Hosea 2:14-15)

Here the text speaks of the Exodus, of Yahweh leading out his people from the slavery of Egypt when they were more faithful to him than now. Then the prophet writes:

I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
(NRSVue Translation: Hosea 2:19-20)

This is the promise Yahweh makes, in spite of Israel’s unfaithfulness. Despite her conversion to Christianity, Edith remained a Jew all her life. She could not be otherwise. But as a Carmelite Sister, Edith had become betrothed to the Lord and became the bride of Christ. And she remained unwaveringly faithful, even to the sacrifice of her life for her Spouse.
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*The verses in the Book of the Prophet Hosea are arranged slightly differently in different translations. The First Reading verses cited in the two quotations above are from the NRSVue Translation.

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Edith Stein was born on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement (12 October, 1891), in Breslau, Silesia, (now Wroclaw, Poland).  She was the youngest of 11 children in a devout Jewish family.  When she was not yet two years old her father died suddenly, leaving Edith’s mother to raise the seven remaining children (four had died in childhood) and to manage the family business. Brought up on the Psalms and Proverbs, Edith considered her mother a living example of the strong woman of Proverbs 31. However, by her teenage years, Stein had lost her Jewish faith and regarded herself an atheist, although she continued to respect her mother’s total openness to God.

One of the first women to do university studies in Germany, Edith moved from the University of Breslau to the University of Gottingen in order to study under Edmund Husserl, the founder of the philosophical study of phenomenology. It was her study of philosophy which led her to acknowledge the existence of a transcendent reality. Under the influence of friends who had discovered Christianity, her atheism began to falter.

During the summer of 1921 at the age of 29 and while on holidays with friends, she found herself alone one evening.  Apparently by chance, she happened on the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila, the founder of the reformed Carmelites, and read it in one sitting. The effect of the book was to convince her that truth was with Christianity and the next day she went out to buy a missal and a catechism.

She was baptized on 1 January, 1922 and gave up her assistantship with Husserl to teach at a Dominican girls’ school in Speyer from 1922 to 1932.  Her spiritual directors knew that her conversion to Christianity and her seclusion in a contemplative order would be a double blow to her devout Jewish mother.  At the same time, they knew the Church could benefit from her ability as a writer and speaker, which would be excluded within the walls of an enclosed convent. In fact, she did become a significant voice in the Catholic Woman’s Movement in Germany. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Edith was already well known in German academic circles.

With the growing persecution of the Jewish community, she wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI denouncing the Nazi regime and asked the Pope openly to condemn the regime, “to put a stop to this abuse of Christ’s name”.  However, for reasons that are unknown, a response to her request did not materialise.

By March of 1933, her colleagues at the Educational Institute in Muenster, aware that they could no longer protect her, offered her a teaching position in South America.  However, if she accepted, she would not see her 84-year-old mother again, so she felt it was now time for her to enter the convent. In that same year, she was deeply moved by a homily she heard during a Holy Thursday service at the Carmelite convent in Cologne. She decided that as someone who understood that a cross was being placed on the Jewish people, she wanted to take it up in their name.  But she did not yet know what carrying the cross would entail.

So, on 15 October, the feast of St Teresa of Avila and just after her 42nd birthday, Edith entered the Carmel of Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  Her family, and especially her mother, felt it was a betrayal of her people just at a time when persecution of the Jews was being intensified by what they regarded as Christian oppressors (although Nazism was atheistic). They wondered how she could do such a thing, how she could believe in a man who could call himself God. Yet, after the mother’s death in 1936, Edith’s sister Rosa also became a Catholic.

Edith stayed in Cologne for five years, happy in her vocation and still engaged in her scholarly studies. However, after the terrible Kristallnacht of 9 November, 1938, there were fears for Edith’s safety and she was sent secretly to a Carmelite convent in Echt in The Netherlands. Her converted sister Rosa joined her there as a Third Order Carmelite, serving as the convent portress. When Holland was overrun by the Nazis, there was a plan to move the two sisters to Switzerland. However, before this could be done, a strongly worded encyclical from the Dutch bishops on 20 July, 1942 against anti-Semitism resulted in all convert Jews being arrested to be sent to the death camps.

Edith and Rosa Stein were arrested on 2 August, 1942. As they were led away, Edith said to her sister:

Come, Rosa…We go for our people.

The sisters were brought to Auschwitz and died in the gas chambers only a week later. Edith Stein was just 50 years old. During those final days, Edith showed great inner strength and gave encouragement to her fellow prisoners and even helped look after small children when their mothers were too distressed to do so. One woman who survived the war wrote:

Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.

Like her Master, she died with him and, like him, she died for her people and for their persecutors. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 1 May, 1987 and canonised as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her Carmelite given name) on 11 October, 1998.  She is also one of the five Patrons of Europe.

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Peter Faber (Pierre Favre) was born in 1506 in Villaret, Savoy in the south of France. As a boy, he looked after his father’s sheep in the French Alps. While tending sheep during the week, he taught cathechism to children on Sundays. Aware of his call to be a priest, he longed to study. At first, he was entrusted to the care of a priest at Thones and later to a neighbouring school at La Roche-sur-Foron. With the consent of his parents, in 1525 he went to the University of Paris.  It was here that he discovered his real vocation. He was admitted to the College of Sainte-Barbe where he shared lodgings with a student from Navarre named Francis Xavier.  They became close friends and graduated on the same day in 1530 with a master of arts degree.  Peter also met Ignatius Loyola at the university, and both Peter and Francis came under his influence. While Peter taught Ignatius the philosophy of Aristotle, Ignatius directed him in the spiritual life.

Peter was ordained priest in 1534, the first priest in Ignatius’ group, and was celebrant of the Mass on 15 August of the same year at which Ignatius and his companions made their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, with the intention of going to the Holy Land.  Soon three more became members of the group. After Ignatius, Peter Faber was the one for whom the companions had the deepest respect because of his knowledge, his holiness and his influence on people.

Leaving Paris on 15 November, 1536, Peter and the companions met up with Ignatius in Venice in January 1537.  They planned to evanglise in the Holy Land, but the instability of the region made it impossible.  So they now decided to form a religious congregation and went to Rome, where the Society of Jesus was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. After some time preaching and teaching in Rome, the pope sent Peter to Parma and Piacenza in Italy, where he preached the Gospel with success.   He was then sent to Germany to defend the Catholic faith against the Reformers at the Diet of Worms in 1540. From Worms, Peter was called to another Diet at Ratisbon in the following year.  He was disturbed by the unrest caused by Protestantism, but even more by the decadence of Catholic life.  He saw that what was needed was not discussion with the Protestants, but the reform of the Catholic Church, in particular, the clergy.  He spent a successful 10 months at Speyer, Ratisbon and Mainz.  He influenced princes, prelates, and priests who opened themselves to him and amazed people by the effectiveness of his outreach.

Recalled to Spain by Ignatius, Faber left the field where he had been so successful, and on his way won over his native region of Savoy, which never ceased to venerate him as a saint. He had hardly been in Spain six months when the pope ordered him back to Germany. He spent the next 19 months working for reform in Speyer, Mainz, and Cologne.  Gradually he won over the clergy and discovered many vocations among the young.  Among these was a young Dutchman, Peter Canisius who, as a Jesuit, would earn the title of Apostle of Germany.  After spending some time in Leuven (Louvain) in 1543, he was called in the following year to go to Portugal and then to Spain.  He was instrumental in establishing the Jesuits in Portugal.

He was called to the principal cities of Spain, where he did much good.  Among the vocations he nurtured was that of Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, who, following the death of his wife, would become a Jesuit and later the third General of the Jesuits. Faber, still only 40 years old, was now worn out by his constant labours and long journeys, always made on foot. Pope Paul III wanted to send him to the coming Council of Trent as theologian of the Holy See, and King John III of Portugal wanted to make him Patriarch of Ethiopia.  However, he only got as far as Rome on his way to the Council.  Suffering from a fever after his journey, he died in the arms of Ignatius in Rome on 1 August, 1546. Peter Faber was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1872. He is remembered for his travels through Europe promoting Catholic renewal and his great skill in directing the Spiritual Exercises.

On 17 December, 2013, Pope Francis issued a decree declaring Peter Faber a saint. The decree was an “equivalent canonisation”. This means the pope added the name of Peter Faber to the universal calendar of saints without needing proof of a miracle performed through his intercession or without holding a formal canonisation ceremony.

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Commentary on Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 44:1,10-15; Matthew 13:16-17

The memorial’s very short Gospel reading is taken from Matthew.  It is in the chapter containing the parables of the Kingdom.  After having spoken of the reasons why he taught in parables, Jesus told his disciples how privileged they were:

…blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

The disciples of Jesus, of course, were especially privileged to spend their days in the company of the Son of God and to hear his Word directly from his mouth.  It was probably only later, when this Gospel came to be written, that they realised just how privileged they really were. And, of course, even though it is more than 2,000 years later, we too are so privileged to hear the same words as the guide to our life.  And we might ask, why us?  Why not other people?  But of course question should be: how are we responding to this message, and how is it being lived out in our daily lives?  And to what extent are we sharing it with those who have never heard it? Today’s Gospel, of course, is directed at Joachim and Anne who had the privilege of being the parents of Mary, the Mother of God.

The First Reading from the Book of Sirach is from a passage which is in praise of Israel’s great ancestors. Some of the words apply very appropriately to Mary’s parents:

Their descendants stand by the covenants;
their children also, for their sake.
Their offspring will continue forever,
and their glory will never be blotted out.

And there are words that apply in our context to Jesus:

Their bodies are buried in peace,
but their name lives on generation after generation.

And indeed, so many centuries later, the parents of Mary are still remembered and honoured. It is a day for all of us remember with respect our own parents and to pray for all who are parents now.

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Scripture tells us absolutely nothing about Mary’s family.  All that we have is really legend. It comes mainly from a second century writing called the Proto-Gospel (Protevangelium) of James.  We need to realize that in the early Church it took some time before the books, which now form part of our New Testament, were finally chosen.  There were many other ‘pseudo-gospels’, which in the end, were not accepted as genuine.  One of the more respected of these was the Proto-Gospel of James.  It is possible that it does contain some genuine traditions about Mary, although this would be difficult to prove.

Out of devotion to Mary, some people were saying that she had been conceived by divine intervention like Jesus.  But by asserting that she had two human parents, whom we know as Joachim and Anne, it is asserted that she was born in the normal way, like every other human person. They are both regarded as the parents of Mary and true grandparents of Jesus.

According to the legend, their names were Joachim and Anne. It is said they were rich and pious people of Nazareth. Like a number of the characters in the Old Testament, and Elizabeth in the New Testament, they were said to be childless in a society where this was considered a social stigma.  So Joachim withdrew to the desert to pray while Anne remained in the home, praying for a child whom she would devote to the service of God. Their prayer was heard, Joachim returned to his wife and they conceived a girl whom they named Mary.

It was natural in the Church for devotion to be directed to the parents of such a special daughter.  And because, unlike the situation of Mary and Joseph, they had produced a child in the perfectly normal way, they were more easily identified with by other parents. Devotion to St Anne in the Eastern church dates from at least the 4th century. In the West, there was devotion to her as early as the 8th century, but she was honoured by a feast day, July 26, only after the 13th century. Devotion to St Joachim did not really develop until the 15th century. He was only assigned a feast day, 16 September, in 1913. Following the Second Vatican Council, their feasts were combined and are now celebrated together.

At Auray in Brittany, France, there was a very popular shrine to St Anne in the early middle ages. In North America, there is a popular shrine to St Anne in Beaupre, about 30 km from the city of Quebec. It was on 13 March, 1658 that French immigrants erected the first chapel there in her honour.  Among the Catholics of India, too, there is great devotion to St Anne. Although devotion to Joachim is not as popular, devotion to both of them is seen as showing respect for the family.

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Commentary on Wisdom 12:13.16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43 Read Sunday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time (Year A) »

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Information on the life of Irenaeus is sparse, and what is known may be inexact. Irenaeus was born in Proconsular Asia or in one of the bordering provinces in the first half of the 2nd century—about 100 years after the death of Christ. The exact date is disputed. We do know that, while he was still young, he had seen and heard the famous bishop, St Polycarp at Smyrna. Polycarp died in 155 AD and was in direct touch with some of those who knew Jesus.

During the persecution of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Irenaeus was a priest of the Church of Lyons in Gaul. The church leaders of that city, many of whom were suffering imprisonment for their Christian faith, sent him in 177 or 178 AD to Rome with a letter to Pope Eleutherius concerning Montanism and giving testimony to Irenaeus’ good qualities.

Montanism, called after its founder Montanus, was a widespread heresy of the 2nd century AD. It was a kind of extreme Pentecostalism. Montanists believed, for instance, that their prophecies replaced the teachings of the Apostles and that God spoke in and through them. They encouraged ecstatic prophesying, and claimed those who sinned could not be saved. They emphasized chastity and forbade remarriage. For them, Easter had to be celebrated on 14 Nisan, irrespective of the day of the week.

Returning to Gaul from Rome, Irenaeus succeeded the martyr St Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons. During the peace which followed the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, the new bishop was both pastor and missionary. His writings were mostly directed against Gnosticism, another widespread and troublesome heresy in the early Church. It was deeply philosophical, anti-material and influenced by the thinking of Plato. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives the following brief definition:

“A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the “Parent-Spirit”, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.”

We do not know when Irenaeus died, but it must have been at the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 3rd. In spite of accounts to that effect, it is not certain that he died a martyr’s death. His feast is celebrated on 28 June in the Latin Church, and on 23 August in the Greek.

Irenaeus is remembered for the many works he wrote in Greek and which have earned him a special place in Christian literature. As one who had been in contact with Polycarp, who himself had been in direct contact with the Apostolic Church, Irenaeus’ testimony, especially in disputed matters, is of special value.

None of his writings has come down to us in the original text. We have them through citations by later writers including Hippolytus and Eusebius. Two of his complete works, however, have come down to us in translation. The first of these, in Latin, is Adversus haereses (Against heresies), which is mainly a refutation of Gnosticism and some other current heresies. It is regarded as a very important source of information on the thinking of the Church at the time. Some of the most important passages are on the origin of the Gospel of John, the Eucharist and the primacy of the Roman Church. The second work, which we have in an Armenian translation, is more a positive presentation of the Christian faith rather than a polemic. Of his other works only scattered fragments exist; many, indeed, are known only through the mention made of them by later writers, not even fragments of the works themselves having come down to us.