The feast day of St. Anthony of Egypt is celebrated on January 17. He was a hermit and monk.
St. Anthony of Egypt was orphaned at the age of 20. His inheritance was quite large. He was inspired by the Gospel of Mark 10:21:
“Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor.”
St. Anthony proceeded to do just that. He was drawn to a life of solitude, fasting and prayer. He eventually chose to go out into the desert to live in solitude. He was followed by other monks who turned to him for guidance. With them a monastery was founded. St. Anthony became well known for his teaching. He tutored Athanasius, Jerome, Basil and Augustine.
While it is known that St. Anthony wrestled with the devil to resist many temptations, he was also known for the healings which occurred through his prayers of intercession.
St. Anthony died in solitude at the age of 105 in the year 356.
The feast day of St. Wenceslas is celebrated on September 28. He is most remembered for the Christmas Carol Good King Wenceslas. He became King of Bohemia at the age of 18.
King Wenceslaus was born to the Duke of Bohemia. His family had been converted by St. Cyril and St. Methodius. His mother however, was a pagan. After her husbands death she persecuted Christians.
The Duchess Ludmilla was the mother in law of Drahomira and grandmother to Wenceslaus. She taught him about religion. He practiced his faith and received the sacramentsin secret.
When he became King of Bohemia the persecution ended. He built churches, recalled priests from exile and welcomed Christian missionaries into Bohemia.
St. Wenceslaus had a strong devotion to the Eucharist and helped prepare the altar bread with his own hands. He also made wine from wheat and grapes he grew himself.
A reconciliation was attempted with his family when they gathered at a banquet on the Feast of St. Cosmas and Damien (Sept. 27). The next morning his brother killed him with a lance on the steps of the church. Two years before, his mother had arranged for his grandmother Ludmilla to be strangled to death. The feast day of St. Ludmilla is celebrated on September 16.
The good king died at the age of 22. Miracles were reported at his tomb.
The Christmas Carol sung about Gook King Wenceslaus reminds us to serve others as the good King did. To think less of ourselves and to see Christ in the poor.
“God has not created poverty……it is we who have created it.
The feast day of St. Teresa of Calcutta is celebrated on September 5. On September 4, 2016 Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa, proclaiming her a saint.
Mother Teresa was beatified on October 19, 2003, after confirmation of her first miracle. The miracle was reported that a woman who had a large and very visible tumor, had stayed with the Missionaries of Charity. After she and the Sisters had prayed for Mother Teresa’s intercession, the growth, six to seven inches in length, had disappeared within several hours. Finding no other medical explanation for the sudden cure it was declared her first miracle. Over 3500 other reports are being investigated as possible miracles.
After accepting a second miracle, Pope Francis cleared the way for Mother Teresa to be declared a saint. Pope Francis signed a decree declaring that the inexplicable 2008 recovery of a Brazilian man who suddenly woke from a coma caused by a viral brain infection was due to the intercession of the Albanian nun, who died in 1997.
The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator spearheading Mother Teresa’s canonization case, stated that the man fully recovered following his wife’s prayers and he has since returned to work as a mechanical engineer. The couple also have had two children.
Mother Teresa, as the world knows her, was born to parents Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1916 in Skopje of Macedonia and named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. She was baptized on August 17, 1910 in Macedonia. She was the third child in her family, following sister Aga and a brother, Lazar. Her father, Nikola died, when she was eight years old. Her father was a traveler, an extrovert, and a businessman who spoke five languages. Her mother, Drana, was extremely pious, adopting several orphans. She was known as Gonxha (pronounced gon’KHA) which means “flower bud”.
Gonxha desired early to become a missionary. At the age of eighteen, she joined the Sisters of Loreto. Here she took the name of Sister Mary Teresa after St. Therese of Lisieux. She was sent to Calcutta, India to teach at St. Mary’s High School for Girls, which was run by the Sisters of Loreto. On May 24, 1937, she took her final Profession of Vows to a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She then became known as Mother Teresa. In 1944, she became principal of the school.
While on a train, she received a second calling. Christ spoke to her, asking her to work in the slums of Calcutta, caring for the sickest and poorest of the people. Pursuing this calling changed her life forever. In one year, she received approval to do the work she was being called to do. After six months of basic medical training she went to the slums to aid the needy and dying. Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity with 12 members, most of them students from St. Mary’s. She established a leper colony, an orphanage, a mission house, and several health clinics. In 1971, Mother Teresa visited New York City, where she opened a soup kitchen and a home to care for HIV/AIDS sufferers. In 1979, she received the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1983, Mother Teresa suffered her first heart attack. After suffering from lung, kidney and heart problems for several years, she died on Sept. 5, 1997 at the age or 87. At the time of her death her Missionaries of Charity numbered over 4,000. She had 610 foundations in 123 countries.
In 2003, Mother Teresa’s private correspondence revealed she had experienced a “dark night of the soul”… feeling abandoned by God and lacking in faith. This lasted unusually long; for fifty years. Many saints have experienced such feelings, described by John of the Cross, in his book Dark Night of the Soul. She was filled with loneliness, and torture, due to this lack of consolation from God.
Mother Teresa is known for saying,
“The greatest poverty in the world, among the affluent, as well as the poorest of the poor, is to be unloved, unwanted, and uncared for.”
The world did not know that she spoke from her own experience.
There are many books written about Mother Teresa and her great love and service to the world. The following is one of my favorite quotes.
Suffering is a sign that we have come so close to Jesus on the cross that He can kiss us; that He can show that He is in love with us by giving us an opportunity to share in His Passion.
