Saints and Feasts

January

Feast day: January 2

These two intellectual men became monastic brethren and good friends, both becoming very influential in the fourth-century church as it struggled to clarify its doctrine. Both of them emphasized orthodox teaching on the Trinity, a teaching itself shaped by a Christology recognizing Christ and fully human, fully divine.

Feast day: January 4

Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first canonized saint born in the United States, born in New York City in 1774. After her husband WIlliam died in 1803, Elizabeth Ann's interest and involvement with Catholicism grew, as did her devotion to the Eucharist. She founded the Sisters of Charity, dying in 1821.  

Feast day: January 6

"Brother Andre, St Andre Bessette, is a great saint. Not because of his powers of healing or because he managed to get built a magnificent Church to St Joseph on Mount Royal in Montreal. He is not great because of the following he had when he had when he was alive and the even greater following he has now. He is great because he is a sign of hope and a witness to the power of God’s grace. He was a weak, uneducated, not very bright and not very healthy nobody who was reluctantly accepted by the Congregation of the Holy Cross. He was given the only job he could do. He was the porter or doorman. At the door he could wait and pray. As John Milton wrote on his blindness, they also serve who only stand and wait. At the door, he met people, he healed people, he prayed with people. At the door he communicated holiness and the love of God. At the door, this simple man became a saint. And if he could do that, imagine what God’s grace could do in us, if we only let God work in us as he wants and not as we want him to. Saint Andre Bessette, pray for us." (Homily of Prior Michael Brunner) 

Feast day:  January 11

Of particular significance to our community is Aelred of Riveaulx, as the patron of two notable confreres, Aelred Graham and Aelred Wall, and of one of our school’s dormitories. The ruins of his medieval monastery at Riveaulx in North Yorkshire remain a much-visited tourist site. It was a Cistercian community founded by twelve monks of Clairvaux Abbey. Aelred, born in Northumbria, became the monastery’s abbot in 1147, holding that position until his death about twenty years later. Active in monastic, political, and diplomatic affairs, he is known for his writings on friendship and charity, some written at the request of Bernard of Clairvaux. Aelred wisely centers his teaching on friendship in Christ’s own friendship with us.

Feast day:  January 12 

Like Aelred, another important Northumbrian, Benet Biscop however preceded Aelred by five centuries, and was part of the important seventh-century generation of Benedictines in England that included Ceolfrid and Bede, one of his pupils. He was a founder of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, which in the 10th century was translated to Glastonbury.

Feast day: January 23

Homily of Saturday morning Mass, January 23, 2021: We are celebrating the feast of Saint Marianne Cope [note: the sermon preached at her beatification was by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins. The Vatican website offers the following summary of her life; Abbot Matthew's comment in italics]:

Barbara Koob (now officially "Cope") was born on 23 January 1838 in SE Hessen, West Germany. She was one of 10 children born to Peter Koob, a farmer, and Barbara Witzenbacher Koob. The year after Barbara's birth, the family moved to the United States. The Koob family found a home in Utica, in the State of New York, where they became members of St Joseph's Parish and where the children attended the parish school. (so, she was fully an American citizen)

Although Barbara felt called to Religious life at an early age, her vocation was delayed for nine years because of family obligations. As the oldest child at home, she went to work in a factory after completing eighth grade in order to support her family when her father became ill. Finally, in the summer of 1862 at age 24, Barbara entered the Sisters of St Francis in Syracuse, N.Y. On 19 November 1862 she received the religious habit and the name "Sr Marianne", and the following year she made her religious profession and began serving as a teacher and principal in several elementary schools in New York State. She joined the Order in Syracuse with the intention of teaching, but her life soon became a series of administrative appointments. 

As a member of the governing boards of her Religious Community in the 1860s, she participated in the establishment of two of the first hospitals in the central New York area. In 1870, she began a new ministry as a nurse-administrator at St Joseph's in Syracuse, N.Y., where she served as head administrator for six years. During this time she put her gifts of intelligence and people skills to good use as a facilitator, demonstrating the energy of a woman motivated by God alone. Although Mother Marianne was often criticized (note this) for accepting for treatment "outcast" patients such as alcoholics, she became well-known and loved in the central New York area for her kindness, wisdom and down-to-earth practicality. 

In 1883, Mother Marianne, now the Provincial Mother in Syracuse, received a letter from a Catholic priest asking for help in managing hospitals and schools in the Hawaiian Islands, and mainly to work with leprosy patients. (now remember, leprosy at this time was not curable) The letter touched Mother Marianne's heart and she enthusiastically responded: "I am hungry for the work and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders.... I am not afraid of any disease, hence, it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned "lepers'" (they were abandoned!).

She and six other Sisters of St Francis arrived in Honolulu in November 1883. With Mother Marianne as supervisor, their main task was to manage the Kaka'ako Branch Hospital on Oahu, which served as a receiving station for patients with Hansen's disease gathered from all over the islands. The Sisters quickly set to work cleaning the hospital and tending to its 200 patients. By 1885, they had made major improvements to the living conditions and treatment of the patients. (Of course, before them had come Fr. Damien de Veuster, who is now St. Damien and he had worked with the lepers. But they added a sort of cultural and medicinal uplift to the lives of these poor people who were otherwise completely neglected) In November of that year, they also founded the Kapi'olani Home inside the hospital compound, established to care for the healthy daughters of Hansen's disease patients at Kaka'ako and Kalawao. The unusual decision to open a home for healthy children on leprosy hospital premises was made because only the Sisters would care for (these children) so closely related to people with the dreaded disease. (in other words, the parents were outcasts, and so were the children even though they were healthy)

Mother Marianne met Fr Damien de Veuster (the famous Fr. Damien) …for the first time in January 1884, when he was in apparent good health. Two years later, in 1886, after he had been diagnosed with Hansen's disease, Mother Marianne alone gave hospitality to the outcast priest upon hearing that his illness made him (no longer welcome to the government or the church in Honolulu, the leaders of the church. ...About him: when they brought the ship supplies in to where a priest was, he could not get on the ship; one on the ship would yell his sins to the priest standing on land above the ships and go to Confession in that way) In 1887, when a new Government took charge in Hawaii, its officials decided to close the Oahu Hospital and receiving station and to reinforce the former alienation policy. The unanswered question:  Who would care for the sick, who once again would be sent to a settlement for exiles on the Kalaupapa Peninsula on the island of Molokai? In 1888, Mother Marianne again responded to the plea for help and said:  "We will cheerfully accept the work...". She arrived in Kalaupapa several months before Fr Damien's death together with Sr Leopoldina Burns and Sr Vincentia McCormick, and was able to console the ailing priest by assuring him that she would provide care for the patients at the Boys' Home at Kalawao that he had founded. Together the three Sisters ran the Bishop Home for 103 Girls and the Home for Boys. The workload was extreme and the burden at times seemed overwhelming. In moments of despair, Sr Leopoldina reflected:  "How long, O Lord, must I see only those who are sick and covered with leprosy?". 

Mother Marianne's invaluable example of never-failing optimism, serenity and trust in God inspired hope in those around her and allayed the Sisters' fear of catching leprosy. (Of course, remember too, once she was in that situation, never would she be allowed back in this country; never again would she see friends, relatives or anybody – she was on her own)  She taught her Sisters that their primary duty was "to make life as pleasant and as comfortable as possible for those of our fellow creatures whom God has chosen to afflict with this terrible disease...".  Mother Marianne never returned to Syracuse. She died in Hawaii on 9 August 1918 of natural causes and was buried on the grounds of Bishop Home.

Saint Marianne Cope, pray for us.