Saint for the Day

• November 7—St. Willibrord

  

  Willibrord was born in Northumberland in 657, and when twenty years old went to Ireland, to study under St. Egbert; twelve years later, he felt drawn to convert the great pagan tribes who were hanging as a cloud over the north of Europe. He went to Rome for the blessing of the Pope, and with eleven companions reached Utrecht. The pagans would not accept the religion of their enemies, the Franks; and St. Willibrord could only labor in the track of Pepin Heristal, converting the tribes whom Pepin subjugated. At Pepin’s urgent request, he again went to Rome, and was consecrated Archbishop of Utrecht. He was stately and comely in person, frank and joyous, wise in counsel, pleasant in speech, in every work of God strenuous and unwearied. Multitudes were converted, and the Saint built churches and appointed priests all over the land. He wrought many miracles, and bad the gift of prophecy. He labored unceasingly as bishop for more than fifty years, beloved alike of God and of man, and died full of days and good works. Reflection.—True zeal has its root in the love of God. It can never be idle; it must labor, toil, be doing great things. It glows as fire; it is, like fire, insatiable. See if this spirit be in you!
• November 7 ~ St. Willibrord

  

    The blessing of God seems to rest visibly on the apostolic work of this saint. His pleasantness of manner won the hearts of all. He worked many miracles and had the gift of prophecy.

    Behold an high priest who in his days, pleased God and was found righteous. –Lauds: First Antiphon.

     The lover flieth, runneth, and rejoiceth, he is free, and cannot be restrained. He giveth all for all, and hath all in all; because he resteth in one sovereign good above all, from whom all good floweth and proceedeth. –Imitation: Book III.

    Ideal: St. Willibrord was the kind of saint you were asked to copy yesterday. Nothing could disturb his peace of mind. In all things that happened he could find some means for practicing virtue. He was the kind of saint who would rejoice with the ducks on the day it rained when he wanted to go to a picnic.

    Today: You have probably read or heard the poem that ends at each stanza with “It all depends upon the state of mind.” That was a slogan of the saints. They feared nothing, nor fretted about anything except a possible offense of God. Think about it; nothing else in the world is really a misfortune except that. Bring Everyman to class and ask your teacher to read it to you; it will prove that statement made in the last sentence.

    ~Slogan: What exchange shall a man give for his soul?

  

  ~A Character Calendar
  Sister Mary Fidelis, Sister Mary Charitas
  Imprimatur 1931

Sunday Sermon

• Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost~ How to be Masters of Ourselves

  

  “Many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping), that they are the enemies of the Cross of Christ; whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is their shame: who mind earthly things.” — Phil. iii. 18

  Sensuality is the bane of man’s existence. The dominion of the passions over reason is the source of his greatest misery. “Every passion,” says St. Ambrose, ” is a slavery,” because it subjects man to an unjust and tyrannous bondage.

  The present, or at least the ultimate, happiness of the creature is wrecked unless he resists the attacks of sensuality and frees himself from the control of the passions. The Spirit of God and the spirit of the world, the flesh, and the devil cannot exist together in the soul. Whoever seeks to serve at once God and mammon is of those “whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame,” who are “the enemies of the Cross of Christ,” because they strive to destroy a fundamental principle of the Christian religion, namely, self-denial.

  “We must live in this world,” says St. Francis of Sales, ” as if our spirits were in heaven and our bodies in the tomb.” We must live a dying life, and die a living and a life-giving death in the life of our King and most sweet Saviour! This we do by self-denial.

  Yet the very word — self-denial — fills the mind of some with terror, with thoughts of long fasts and of scourgings, of mental suffering and of bodily misery. These are they “who mind earthly things.” They cannot appreciate the necessity of self-denial because they are insensible to spiritual things. Their world is the region of the senses. They love their bodies and serve them with fidelity, they devote their time to the study of how they can get the most pleasure out of life, and they wander along through their probation wondering why they find so little comfort for their pains.

  Self-denial does not consist in mere bodily mortifications, Fasting and other corporal austerities are but means by which the animal man is brought into subjection. The real end of self- denial is that the soul may be the master of the man. St. John of the Cross tells us “that there is great reason to lament the ignorance of some who burden themselves with indiscreet penances and with many other disorderly exercises of their own self-will, putting all their confidence in such acts and believing that they become saints by means of them. If they would but use half the same diligence in mortifying their unruly appetites and passions they would make more advancement in a single month than in many whole years with all other exercises.”

  “Be assured,” says St. Francis of Sales, “that the mortification of the senses in seeing, hearing, and speaking is far more profitable than wearing even sharp chains or hair-shirts. It ought to be our principal aim to conquer ourselves, and from day to day to go on increasing in spiritual strength and perfection. But above all it is necessary to overcome our little temptations to anger, suspicion, jealousy, envy, duplicity, vanity, foolish attachments and so on, for by so doing we shall gain strength to resist more violent temptations.” A man’s chief care, then, ought to be turned within himself, for a man who governs his passions is master of the world. We must either command them or be enslaved by them.

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