Saint for the Day

• June 7 – St. Robert of Newminster
  In 1132, Robert was a monk at Whitby, England, when news arrived that thirteen religious had been violently expelled from the Abbey of St. Mary, in York, for having proposed to restore the strict Benedictine rule.  He at once set out to join them, and found them on the banks of the Skeld, near Ripon, living in the midst of winter in a hut made of hurdles and roofed with turf.  In the spring, they affiliated themselves to St. Bernard’s reform at Clairvaux, and for two years struggled on in extreme poverty.  At length the fame of their sanctity brought another novice, Hugh, Dean of York, who endowed the community with all his wealth, and thus laid the foundation of Fountains Abbey.  In 1137, Raynulph, baron of Morpeth, was so edified by the example of the monks at Fountains that he built them a monastery in Northumberland, called Newminster, of which St. Robert became abbot.  The holiness of his life, even more than his words, guided his brethren to perfection, and within the next ten years three new communities went forth from this one house to become centres of holiness in other parts.  The abstinence of St. Robert in refectory alone suffice to maintain the mortified spirit of the community.  One Easter Day, his stomach, weakened by the fast of Lent, could take no food, and he at last consented to try to eat some bread sweetened with honey.  Before it was brought, he felt this relaxation would be a dangerous example for his subjects, and sent the food untouched to the poor at the gate.  The plate was received by a young man of shining countenance, who straightway disappeared.  At the next meal the plate descended empty, and by itself, to the abbot’s place in the refectory, proving that what the Saint sacrificed for his brethren had been accepted by Christ.  At the moment of Robert’s death, in 1159, St. Godric, the hermit of Finchale, saw his soul, like a globe of fire, borne up by the angels in a pathway of light; and as the gates of heaven opened before them, a voice repeated twice, “Enter now, my friends.” Reflection—Reason and authority prove that virtue ought to be practised.  But facts alone prove that it is practised; and this is why examples have more power to move our souls, and why our individual actions are of such fearful importance for others as well as for ourselves.

  Taken from the “Pictorial Lives of the Saints: with Reflections for Every Day in the Year”

Sunday Sermon

• Trinity Sunday

  

  In the name of the Father,
  and of the Son,
  and of the Holy Ghost.
  —St. Matthew xxviii. 19.

  To-day, my dear brethren, the church celebrates the greatest of all the mysteries of our religion: the mystery of the Holy Trinity; of the one God in three Divine Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  We all believe it; we must believe it if we would be saved. But no one of us can perfectly understand it. St. Patrick, you know, is said to have illustrated it to his converts by showing them the shamrock with its three leaves on one stem; but, of course, he never pretended that this was a perfect explanation of it. No perfect explanation of it can be given to us.

  And why not? Is it because it really has no explanation? No, but because we are not able to understand the one which might be given. Explain the solar system to a child of five years: will he understand you? It is something the same with us and this greater mystery of God.

  Some people, especially at the present day, who consider themselves very wise, say to themselves and to others: “Oh! this doctrine of the Trinity cannot be true.” Ask them why not, and they will say: “Because we cannot understand it; it seems to us to be nonsense.”

  Well, what does their argument amount to? Just to this: “If the doctrine were true we should understand it; but we don’t understand it, therefore it is not true.”

  “If it were true,” they say, “we should understand it.” And why? “Why, of course, because we are so wise that we can understand everything. It is well enough for stupid people, like those benighted Romanists, to believe what they don’t understand, but such a proceeding would be quite below our dignity and intelligence. It is quite absurd to suppose that there is any mystery so deep that we cannot see to the bottom of it.”

  Now, I do not want to accuse these worthy people of any one of the seven capital sins; they are, no doubt, as good as they are wise. But there is something in what they say that looks just a little bit like one of those sins; like the first and most deadly of them all: that is, the sin of pride. And there is not much doubt that pride has in some form or other had something to do with all heresies; so I am afraid that those who deny the Holy Trinity are not quite free from it.

  You think so, my brethren, I have no doubt. But, after all, are you not perhaps guilty of a little of the same sin yourselves? You believe in the Holy Trinity, it is true, but are there not some other things which you do not fully believe, though you ought to, and for very much the same reason?

  God has given you the gift of faith; and you are willing to believe what you know to be of faith, even if it be beyond your reason, especially if it be something, like the Holy Trinity, beyond the reason of any one else. But are you not sometimes rather unwilling to believe other matters of religion, for which there is good authority, just because you, with your present lights, do not quite see through them? That is just the trouble with the heretics of whom I have spoken; is it not so with you, too, perhaps?

  Do you not say even about some of these matters: “Oh! I do not think the same about that as the priests do; they are welcome to their opinion but I claim the right to mine”? It may be some question of morals; then you say: “The priest say so-and-so is not right; but I don’t see any harm in it. I have got a conscience of my own.”

  Did it ever occur to you that as God knows more, and has told more to his church about himself than you could have found out, so he may have enlightened it rather more about some other matters in its own sphere than he has enlightened you, even though they are not of faith? And even setting that aside, is it not possible that those who have studied a subject know more about it than those who have not?

  I think there is only one answer to these questions. Try, then, to have the same humility which you have about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in other things too. You believe that the officers of a ship know a little more about her position and proper course than you do; make the same presumption in favor of those who are in charge of the bark of St. Peter. It is only reasonable to think so; only showing a little of the same common sense which you show in other things.

  ~Five Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year