Saint for the Day

• April 10 – St. Bademus

  April 10

   St. Bademus, Martyr

  

              Bademus was a rich and noble citizen of Bethlapeta, in Persia, who founded a monastery near that city, which he governed with great sanctity.  He conducted his religious in the paths of perfection with sweetness, prudence, and charity.  To crown his virtue, God permitted him, with seven of his monks, to be apprehended by the followers of King Sapor, in the thirty-sixth year of his persecution.  He lay four months in a dungeon, loaded with chains; during which lingering martyrdom he every day received a number of stripes.  But he triumphed over his torments by the patience and joy with which he suffered them for Christ.  At the same time, a Christian lord named Nersan, prince of Aria, was cast into prison because he refused to adore the sun.  At first he showed some resolution; but at the sight of tortures his constancy failed him, and he promised to conform.  The king, to try if his change was sincere, ordered Bademus to be introduced into the prison of Nersan, which was a chamber in the royal palace, and sent word to Nersan that if he would dispatch Bademus, he should be restored to his liberty and former dignities.  The wretch accepted the condition; a sword was put into his hand, and he advanced to plunge it into the breast of the abbot.  But being seized with a sudden terror, he stopped short, and remained some time without being able to lift up his arm to strike. He had neither courage to repent, nor heart to accomplish his crime.  He strove, however, to harden himself, and continued with a trembling hand to aim at the sides of the martyr.  Fear, shame, remorse, and respect for the martyr made his strokes forceless and unsteady; and so great was the number of the martyr’s wounds, that the bystanders were in admiration at his invincible patience.  After four strokes, the martyr’s head was severed from the trunk.  Nersan, a short time after, falling into public disgrace, perished by the sword.  The body of St. Bademus was reproachfully cast out of the city by the infidels; but was secretly carried away and interred by the Christians.  His disciples were released from their chains four years afterward upon the death of King Sapor.  St. Bademus suffered on the 10^th of April in the year 376. Reflection.—Oh! What ravishing delights does the soul taste which is accustomed, by a familiar habit, to converse in the heaven of its own interior with the Three Persons of the adorable Trinity!  Worldlings wonder how holy solitaries can pass their whole time buried in the most profound solitude and silence.  But those who have had any experience of this happiness, are surprised with far greater reason how it is possible that any souls which are created to converse eternally with God, should here live in constant dissipation, seldom entertaining a devout thought of Him whose charms and sweet conversation eternally ravish all the blessed.

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

  

Sunday Sermon

• Low Sunday

  

  For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments.
  —1 St. John v. 3.

  We have in these words the infallible test of a true Christian life. He alone truly loves God who keeps his commandments. I once heard of a man who used to get down on his knees every morning and recite the Ten Commandments as a part of his morning prayers. I believe that that man’s religion was practical. He certainly had in his mind the right idea of what religion meant. We are apt to keep the commandments too much in the background. True, we have them and know them well enough, but they don’t shine out in our lives as they should. Here is a man that prays, but don’t pay his honest debts. Here is another that always goes to Mass, but has the habit of cursing. Another is honest and just with his neighbors, but, as everybody knows, gets drunk.

  People sometimes talk about the difficulties of having faith; but this is not where the trouble lies. The real struggle and conflict of religion is to correct the morals of men. True religion insists upon the keeping of the commandments, and that is why it is so repugnant to men. Faith is easy to the virtuous; if men wished to be moral there would be no difficulties about faith. We sometimes hear people say: “Your religion is a perfect tyranny.” Yes, if you choose to call the Ten Commandments tyranny. This is the only tyranny that I have ever found. I think, also, that every Catholic will testify that these Ten Commandments are what really make religion hard, and that if these could only be set aside men would never complain of its being hard. I never heard of a Catholic who was willing to keep the Ten Commandments who thought that anything else connected with his religion was hard. Here we have, then, in a nutshell, the whole secret of the opposition of men to the true religion; but, inconsistent as it may seem and really is, men, while they hate, have yet to admire what they hate. An apostate monk may set himself up as a reformer and talk about “justification by faith alone,” but the world laughs at such nonsense. It trembles, though, when it hears our Lord say: “Every tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire.” “If any man loves me he will keep my commandments.” This pretended reformer, Doctor Martin Luther, who called that wonderful Epistle of St. James, in which we are taught that “faith without good works is dead,” “an epistle of straw,” proved, however, to the world by his own life that it was this straw of being obliged to keep the commandments which broke his back, as it has broken the backs of so many others. But people do not have to leave the church to be thus broken, for we have in the bosom of the church, also, those who try to have piety without morality; but they are the hypocrites, the sham followers of Christ. They will some day, unless they speedily change their lives, hear our Lord saying to them: “I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Ah! may we not some of us have good reason to fear that we shall one day be judged as hypocrites? The bankrupt merchant is afraid to look at his books, and trembles at the thought of attempting to calculate his liabilities; so those false Christians dare not look at the law of God to examine their lives by it. But, to their shame and grief, the day of reckoning will come. The devil may whisper to such, “Soul, take thy ease,” but, thank God! there is the voice of God’s church, which will not allow us to delude ourselves.

  If we Catholics go to hell it will be with our eyes wide open. The waves of passion can never drown that voice. It will always tell us of our sins, and will never let us be content in being hearers of the law, unless we are also doers. This is the way which is certainly pointed out to us; “and it shall be called the holy way.”

  Five Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year  Volume 2
  Imprimatur 1886