『Catholic Saints & Feasts』のカバーアート

Catholic Saints & Feasts

Catholic Saints & Feasts

著者： Fr. Michael Black
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"Catholic Saints & Feasts" offers a dramatic reflection on each saint and feast day of the General Calendar of the Catholic Church. The reflections are taken from the four volume book series: "Saints & Feasts of the Catholic Calendar," written by Fr. Michael Black.

These reflections profile the theological bone breakers, the verbal flame throwers, the ocean crossers, the heart-melters, and the sweet-chanting virgin-martyrs who populate the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church.Copyright Fr. Michael Black キリスト教 スピリチュアリティ 聖職・福音主義
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  • October 9: Saint John Henry Newman (England and Wales)

    October 9: Saint John Henry Newman (England and Wales)
    2025/10/07
    October 9: Saint John Henry Newman (England and Wales)
    1801–1890
    Memorial; Liturgical color: White

    As mellow as a breeze, as elegant as a swan, he walked alone the path to Rome

    Pope Benedict XVI, a professional theologian, did not typically perform beatification ceremonies, instead entrusting them to his Cardinals. But such was Benedict’s immense respect for Cardinal John Henry Newman’s life and thought that the Pope not only personally celebrated Newman’s beatification Mass but even traveled to England, Newman’s homeland, to do so in September 2010.

    Cardinal Newman is known to most American Catholics as the namesake of the Newman Centers, which are found on the campuses of many secular universities in the United States. Yet Newman’s profile casts a much broader shadow than these university centers alone. John Henry Newman was a man of vast learning culled from a life of prodigious reading. He was a one-man library who mastered both Greek and Latin, had a comprehensive knowledge of Scripture, and was conversant with the theological nuances of every great theologian of the first five centuries of the Church. In addition, Newman elucidated complex theological material in a prose so elegant that the words of his many essays and books seem to glide across the page.

    It was precisely in his writing where Newman’s gifts sparkled. He had that elusive gift called style. Newman’s swan-like gracefulness can be favorably compared with any other man or woman who has ever put pen to paper in the English language. Newman’s ability to express lyrically and precisely his every thought would have counted for little if he had had nothing to say. But, of course, Newman did have something to say. He had much to say, in fact.

    The silken threads of Newman’s words weave like a loom. His intricate sentences thread over and under and around each other, creating a taut and beautiful garment of masterful theology, original insight, and deep historical awareness. When a foe pulled at this or that thread of his theological fabric, Newman would unsheath his pen from its inkwell and wield it like a rapier to slice into shreds his opponent’s arguments, but never his character. Newman did not make personal attacks. Newman’s exquisite works make for compelling reading, provided the reader concurs. If not, Newman was, and is, a gigantic problem who must be confronted.

    John Henry Newman was a convert to Catholicism. He was raised as an Anglican and was somewhat evangelical in his youthful love of the Lord Jesus. As his head sunk deeper and deeper into books in adulthood, however, he concluded that to be immersed in history was to cease to be a Protestant. His conversion to Catholicism shook the English academic world and led to decades of adversarial letters, books, and essays arguing disputed theological points between Newman and his colleagues. But Newman’s ability to express his ideas on the page was so superior, his arguments so unassailable, and the personal cost he paid for converting so agonizing, that the totality of his witness ultimately carried the day.

    Yet Newman was more than just a brain in a jar. His bravery in converting to Catholicism manifested steely resolve and deep virtue not otherwise apparent in his genteel and sensitive personality. His conversion cost him almost everything—status, friendship, income, prestige, academic positions—and on and on. Yet his example emboldened numerous others in subsequent decades to walk the same path to Rome which Newman had first trod alone. A whole generation of English academic converts to Catholicism trace their theological lineage to Cardinal Newman.

    In the last few years of his life, Newman lived like a monk without a desert. Though he was never ordained a Bishop, Father Newman was named a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. It was a wreath of laurel crowning a great man’s quiet holiness, brave perseverance, immense erudition, and unequalled polish in composing from within the most dramatic work he ever authored—the story of his own holy life.

    Saint John Henry Newman, from your place in heaven, we ask that your virtues of serenity amid controversy, of erudition amid confusion, and of steadfastness amid attacks provide a holy example to all Christians to persevere in seeking the truth.
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    6 分
  • October 9: Saint Denis, Bishop, and Companions

    October 9: Saint Denis, Bishop, and Companions
    2025/10/08
    October 9: Saint Denis, Bishop, and Companions
    Third Century
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of Paris

    A missionary bishop is beheaded and the Church’s eldest daughter thrives

    Therapod, Spinosaurus, Ornithopod, Ceratopsid, Triceratops. Creatures with strange names from long ago with three toes, sharp protruding vertebrae, duck heads, three horns and jaws that crushed like the serrated walls of a trash compactor. A cephalophore? A theological neologism for another creature from long ago—a martyr who carries his own head after being decapitated. Today’s saint, Denis, is the most well-known cephalophore. He cradled his own head in his arms as proof of his sacrifice, much like a soldier might point to his battle scars to prove his valor. An early medieval tradition states that Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris, after being beheaded, preached a sermon on forgiving his assassins from the mouth of his own severed head while walking seven miles from his execution site to his grave. This legend is, historically, as flimsy as tissue paper, but theologically as solid as granite.

    Saint Denis was a missionary bishop sent to Gaul in the mid-third century, perhaps by the martyr Pope Saint Fabian. By that time, Gaul had been evangelized only in pockets. Blanket conversion of its numerous tribes was destined for a later century, when a unified kingdom imposed a unified faith. Even great movements must have modest beginnings. So the bishop Denis, the priest Rusticus, and the deacon Eleutherius made their way north to a small Roman city called Lutetia, on the banks of the Seine River, where they served both native Romans and the Parisii, the local Gallic tribe. Denis and his companions settled on an island next to Lutetia called, today, Île de la Cité. It is the heart of Paris, the site of Notre Dame Cathedral, and the zero point from which all distances are measured in France. Denis and his companions, embodying the three Holy Orders, were successful enough to provoke the envy of pagan priests who convinced the local governor to imprison and torture them.

    Tradition relates that around 275 A.D., the martyrs were led to a pagan height overlooking Lutetia for their ritual beheading, thus lending the hill its name, Montmartre, or martyrs’ hill. After the sword dropped and Denis’ head separated from his torso, legend relates that he chose his own place of burial by walking, head in his arms, from Montmartre to the present day site of the Basilica for which he is the eponym. This church became the burial place of the kings of France, who strove to surpass each other in devotion to Paris’ patron.

    The form of capital punishment speaks, consciously or unconsciously, to the crime being punished. The heretic is burned, like his books, his flesh melting in the fires which replicate on earth those waiting for him in eternal damnation for having led the faithful astray. Every false clause, sentence, and paragraph of the heretic’s books must float into the air as cinders, never to mislead again. Death by drowning during the Reformation killed those who rejected or taught falsehoods concerning the saving waters of baptism. Hanging, a firing squad, lethal injection, suicide by jumping, the electric chair: all convey subtle meaning via the manner in which they extinguish life.

    Decapitation is the purest form of capital punishment, caput being Latin for “head.” The decapitation of a bishop, in particular, was meant to separate the head of the Church from its body, leaving the ship without its pilot. Saint John the Baptist, Saint Paul, Saint Cyprian, Pope Saint Sixtus II, were all Christian leaders and were all beheaded. The legend of Saint Denis is fanciful but profound. The story captures the meaning of decapitation and responds to it. Bishop Denis’ head is cleaved from his body but still united to it. Christ’s head can never be separated from His body the Church. Christ is one, head and body, and every bishop stands in Christ’s stead to exercise the fullness of Christ’s priestly ministry to teach, govern, and sanctify the people of God. A shepherd always pastors a flock, a pilot always helms a ship, and a bishop is always united to a diocese, even if that diocese is long dormant. The bishop images Christ the head to the earthly members of Christ’s body.

    Saint Denis and companions, you died in the mission fields of the Church’s eldest daughter, France. Your blood spilled long ago so that our blood would not spill today. We thank you for your witness and ask your intercession to make us fearless like you.
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    7 分
  • September 23: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest

    September 23: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest
    2025/09/22
    September 23: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest
    1887–1968
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of civil defense volunteers and adolescents

    A humble friar’s love for Christ burns holes in his hands

    Long-married spouses often develop similar patterns of speech. A boy might learn to walk just like his father, and a girl might favor the same hairstyle as her mom. Teenagers in the same cliques dress alike and cut their hair in a similar fashion. It is natural to adopt the traits of the one you love, to mimic their behavior, dress, speech, and habits, consciously or unconsciously. Lover and beloved converge, master and disciple unite, leader and follower bond. Today’s saint did not have a reference group apart from Christ Himself. Jesus Christ inhabited every corner of the mind, soul, and imagination of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. Pio’s life fused with Christ’s so totally that Pio’s very body bore the marks of his beloved. Not the same haircut, clothes, or gait, but the same nail marks and bloody wounds. Father Pio merged with Christ such that to look upon the friar’s hands was to see the crucified palms of the Son of God on Calvary.

    Padre Pio grew up dirt poor and uneducated in a village near Naples, Italy, in 1887. Neither his parents nor his grandparents could read or write. He was baptized as Francesco and helped on the family’s small plot of land as a boy. The family was deeply religious, in the good, medieval way that perdured in rural Southern Europe far longer than it did in Northern lands. Saints, feast days, devotions, processions, fasts, the Mass, angels, saints, the Virgin, and God were the stuff of life. They saturated the atmosphere of Pietrelcina. Little Francesco and his family breathed Catholic air. It entered their bloodstream, circulated in their veins, and oozed out of every corpuscle. When he was about ten years old, Francesco decided to dedicate his life to God as a Franciscan friar. After completing some schooling and being privately tutored, he entered a nearby Franciscan friary at age fifteen. He took the name Pio (Pius) after a saint honored in his hometown. He was ordained a priest in 1910.

    Padre Pio lived virtually his entire priestly life at a modest Franciscan friary in the rural town of San Giovanni Rotondo. Beginning in 1918, he began to experience the stigmata, or marks of the sufferings of Christ. He bled where Christ bled. Holes perforated his hands. He had sharp pains in his side. He also began to display supernatural gifts: bilocation, prophecy, miracles, and healings. His personal routine of prayer and mortification was also stupefying. He did not want his private passion play to go on tour, but it did. He became famous throughout Italy for being holy. Then he became widely known the world over. By the time of his death in 1968, Padre Pio was a bona fide Catholic superstar.

    Padre Pio had mystique. That mystique was not rooted in good looks, a chateau on the Côte d’Azur, or in movie stardom, but in how he said Mass. People flocked to witness Padre Pio say long, intense, devotional Masses. In the modern world, sin has mystique. It’s cool, retrograde, impulsive, and “edgy.” A life of sin and vice is seen as more authentic than a life of goodness and virtue, because the sinner supposedly does not hide his real self behind a social curtain. Padre Pio hid nothing. He was totally authentic, totally sincere, and totally holy. His life was a rebuke of sin. He did not pretend to “share” others’ burdens by joining them in sin. He entered into the real drama of life by embodying Christ. A true Christian is authentic when he separates himself and his friends from sin, when he creates the mystique of Christ around him, and when, like Christ, he draws all men to himself.

    Saint Pio, your intense love of God was communicated to the faithful in your celebration of Mass, your wise counsel in the confessional, and in your mystical experiences. What was so manifest in you was rare but lies latent in every priest. Help every priest to be an icon of Christ.
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    6 分
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