Saint for the Day

• September 18 – Saint Joseph Cupertino
  Joseph Desa was born in the little city of Cupertino, near the Gulf of Tarento, in 1600. It is said in the acts of the process of his canonization that at the age of five he already showed such signs of sanctity that if he had been an adult, he would have been venerated as a perfect man. Already in his youth he was ravished in ecstasies which literally tore him away from the earth; it has been calculated that perhaps half of his life for some sixty years was spent literally above the ground. But much remains to be said of Saint Joseph, apart from his visible divine favors. He almost died at the age of seven from an interior abscess, which only his prayer to Our Lady cured. He learned to be a shoemaker to earn his living, but was often absent in spirit from his work. He treated his flesh with singular rigor. The Cardinal de Lauria, who knew him well for long years, said he wore a very rude hair shirt and never ate meat, contenting himself with fruits and bread. He seasoned his soup, if he accepted any, with a dry and very bitter powder of wormwood. At the age of seventeen he desired to become a conventual Franciscan, but was refused because he had not studied. He entered the Capuchins as a lay brother, but the divine favors he received seemed everywhere to bring down contempt upon him. He was in continuous contemplation and dropped plates and cauldrons. He would often stop and kneel down, and his long halts in places of discomfort brought on a tumor of the knee which was very painful. It was decided that he lacked both aptitude and health, and he was sent home. He was then regarded everywhere as a vagabond and a fool, and his mother in particular was harsh, as had been her custom for long years. She did, however, obtain permission for him to take charge of the stable for the conventual Franciscans, wearing the habit of the Third Order. Saint Joseph proved himself many times to be perfectly obedient. His humility was heroic, and his mortification most exceptional. His words bore fruit and wakened the indifferent, warned against vice and in general were seen to come from a man who was very kind and very virtuous. He was finally granted the habit. He read with difficulty and wrote with still more difficulty, but the Mother of God was watching over him. When by the intervention of the bishop he had been admitted to minor Orders, he desired to be a priest but knew well only one text of the Gospel. By a special Providence of God, that was the text he was asked to expound during the canonical examination for the diaconate. The bishop who was in charge of hearing candidates for the priesthood found that the first ones answered exceptionally well, and he decided to ordain them all without any further hearings, thus passing Joseph with the others. He was ordained in 1628. He retired to a hermitage where he was apparently in nearly continuous ecstasy, or at least contemplation. He kept nothing for himself save the tunic he wore. Rejoicing to be totally poor, he felt entirely free also. He obeyed his Superiors and went wherever he was sent, wearing sandals and an old tunic which often came back with pieces missing; the people had begun to venerate him as a Saint, and had cut them off. When he did not notice what was happening, he was reproached as failing in poverty. The humble Brother wanted to pass for a sinner; he asked for the lowest employments, and transported the building materials for a church on his shoulders. He begged for the community. At the church he was a priest; elsewhere, a poor Brother. Toward the end of his life all divine consolations were denied the Saint, including his ecstasies. He fell victim to an aridity which was unceasing, and he could find no savor in any holy reading. Then the infernal spirits inspired terrible visions and dreams. He shed tears amid this darkness and prayed his Saviour to help him, but received no answer. When the General of the Order heard of this, he called him to Rome, and there he recovered from the fearful trial, and all his joy returned. He still had combats with the enemy of God to bear just the same, when the demons took human form to attempt to injure him physically. Other afflictions were not spared him, but his soul overcame all barriers between himself and God. He died on September 18, 1663, at the age of 63, in the Franciscan convent of Osino. He had celebrated Holy Mass up to and including the day before his death, as he had foretold he would do.

Sunday Sermon

• Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost ~ Correction for Faults

  

   “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in any fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted.” — Gal. vi. I.

  Perhaps there is no duty so hard to perform well as that of correction ; and of course I refer chiefly to parental correction. Some parents are too lenient. They sin by petting their children. They over-praise them to their faces. They give them to understand that they are not loved, but worshipped. They believe them against school teacher, neighbor, or relative. They are the slaves of the child’s lightest whim. And long before old age comes such parents are apt to suffer from that very miserable infliction, a spoiled child. Children are said to be the crown of their parents ; the spoiled child is a crown of thorns. Others, on the contrary, are too severe. If they really love their little ones they have discovered how to disguise it. They are too exacting. They scold, and they scold often, and long and loud. They bring up past offences, long since atoned for. They dwell much on their own merits as good parents. They correct in anger. Impulse guides them, or rather drives them, in place of affection and a spirit of justice. The sudden slap and the rude shove for the smaller ones ; the blow of the fist, the kick for the larger ones. And oh ! the deadly curse, the evil wish connected with Satan’s name, the wish for eternal loss for one’s own child, the harsh name, the face flaming with rage, the shouting voice ; brethren, all this drives the boys to the saloon, and the girls to the dangerous companionship. Is it not, then, a difficult thing to avoid both extremes, to be neither too lenient nor too severe? Does it not show us how high a place in Paradise a faithful parent shall enjoy ? Does it not — this matter of parental correction alone — show us why our Blessed Lord raised the parental office to a sacramental state? St. Paul in the text — although speaking of correction in general — lays down two rules which good parents know by experience to be the two wings of their flight to heaven: first, parents should be spiritual, and second, they should be meek. Spiritual, because to be a good parent “is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy.” Brethren, lay this to heart : the married state is indeed happy, but only by the grace of God. Natural dispositions go before all supernatural life. But the natural man is clay which the potter moulds into a vessel of election. And how often do we see easy going, kindly-natured young people become crabbed enough after marriage. They lack the grace of God ; that is the reason of their difficulties in governing their children. They do not pray enough. They do not come often enough to the sacraments. They are unwilling to inconvenience themselves by joining the rosary society or the temperance society. The necessary spirit of sacrifice is absent from the family ; and that spirit is born of the practices of religion. Furthermore, the spirit o.f meekness is necessary : The true spirit of correction is not the spirit of authority, but the spirit of meekness. If one’s mind is all puffed up with the importance of one’s dignity and the greatness of one’s merit; if one is always itching to have his authority respected by his children, instead of seeking to be loved by them on account of his devoted affection ; if by his harsh voice, his exacting spirit, his cold and distant manner, his stinginess — if by such means he undertakes to keep ” his children in their place,” they will be neither virtuous nor happy. And least of all will he be happy himself. After all, dear brethren, there is but one object in bringing up a family : to train souls how to be good children of God. Now, if human beings can be kept out of sin in any other way but by much loving kindness, then the Christian religion is a mistake. Once St. Philip Neri was surrounded by a troop of noisy boys. Some of his friends, who were annoyed by their shouts and laughter and boyish clatter, complained of them to him. ” Why, Father Philip,” they said, ” how can you stand such a noise about you ? ‘ ‘ The saint smiled and answered, “They might chop wood on my back if it would only keep them out of sin.” Let it therefore be the one object of parents to so correct their children as to gradually remove the defects of character and nature which may cause them to sin. It may sometimes be good to punish with a certain severity, but always without passion; after a little time, at least, of deliberation, and especially in such a way that the child may know that the chastisement is inflicted by one who loves God and his child’s soul too much to neglect proper correction.

  

  Five-minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year By the Priests of the Congregation of St. Paul, 1893