This coming week, there are a number of friars and nuns
venerated with Holy days. The men and
women under discussion in this week’s blog have each founded a monastic
order. Each has been canonized in the
Catholic faith, and as such, are included in our Anglican / Episcopalian calendar
as well.
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| St. Dominic |
Dominic, 1220 (August
8)—Dominic was the founder of the Dominican Order of Priests. He received
his calling while on a trip with his bishop to visit the Albigenses in southern
France. The Albigenses were dualists who
believed in one god of light and good and another god of darkness and
evil. The party stopped at an inn and
Dominic stayed up all night talking with the innkeeper who, by morning was
ready to convert to orthodox Christianity.
Dominic knew that his calling was to convert the Albigensis people. All seemed to be progressing until one of the
Albigensis murdered a papal legate and the Pope called for a crusade against
the people. Dominic, who by this time
had formed a familiar relationship with these people, was upset by this
crusade. He founded an order of priests
and friars, whose constitutional belief was to combat false doctrine by
studying philosophy and theology for the use of logic, not force. One of Dominic’s most famous pupils was
Thomas Aquinas who studied and wrote reconciling Christianity with Aristotle’s
philosophy. Ironically, it was the
Dominican Order that was significantly involved in the interrogations and tortures of the Inquisition.
The Dominicans are often referred to as Domini Canes, or “the Hounds of God”
and St. Dominic is often portrayed in art with a dog bearing a torch in its
mouth. The Dominicans were also known
informally as the Blackfriars after the color of their robes.
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| St. Clare of Assisi |
Clare of Assisi, 1253
(August 11)—St. Clare founded the Order of the Poor Ladies, an order for
women in the Franciscan tradition. Clare
was born to a wealthy family and at 18 heard a sermon given by Francis of
Assisi. She was so inspired by his
sermon that she ran away from home and begged Francis to allow her to follow
him. She was provisionally housed with
nearby Benedictine nuns (as the Franciscans did not have an order for
women). Her father, a Count, had
arranged a lucrative marriage for his daughter and was furious with her
desertion. He tried to retrieve her but
was unable to enter the convent. Francis
soon acquired a somewhat dilapidated house for her that would become the Order
of the Poor Ladies. Clare’s younger
sister Agnes soon joined her, as did several other beautiful young women of
wealthy households. It was said with tongue-in-cheek that the
“Poor Clares,” as they became familiarly known, accepted only the most
beautiful daughters. The newly formed order did not have a written rule, so
while Francis was away, Cardinal Ugolino, with an agenda of his own contrary to
the Franciscans, develop a rule for the order.
Clare stood in opposition to a number of its tenets, particularly those
that removed the Franciscan intent. Pope
Gregory offered to absolve the order from their vow of poverty, but she felt
that kind of absolution tantamount to removing the obligation to follow
Christ. She wrote a rule for the order
and submitted it to the Pope who was so impressed by her that he granted her
request. Thus the first monastic rule of
order written by a woman was established. Clare is frequently depicted in art
as carrying a ciborium. There is a
miracle attributed to her that tells of a raid upon the convent of St. Damiano. She is said to have calmly, in the midst of
panic all around her, picked up the ciborium from her private prayer chapel and
taken it to the window where invaders were attempting to break in. They saw the ciborium with the Host of Christ
resting within and fled in terror. She gathered her sisters and together they
prayed for salvation. A great storm
descended and raged until the invading army left Spoleto altogether.
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| St. Maximilian Kolbe |
Maximilian Kolbe,
1942 (August 14)—Kolbe was Franciscan friar from Poland, dedicated to the
Immaculate Mary and who was martyred. He
became a friar of the Conventual Franciscans in 1911 and was ordained a priest
in 1918. In 1915, while still in seminary, he founded Militia Immaculata, known in America as the Knights of the
Immaculate. This foundation was created
in response to protests made by the freemasons against Pope Puis X, its intent
to convert sinners and enemies to the Catholic faith by intercessions through
Mary. The Militia Immaculata created
a daily newspaper with a circulation of over 230,000. Because of its content,
Kolbe was accused of anti-Semitism, which is ironic because he frequently
harbored Jews escaping the Nazi regime. He established a number of monasteries
throughout the world, including Krakow, Poland and Nagasaki, Japan (which
escaped destruction by virtue of having been built on the protective side of
the mountain). During WWII, Kolbe
sheltered over 2,000 Jews who successfully escaped to freedom. He was arrested by the Gestapo and eventually
was sent to Auschwitz. The wardens at
Auschwitz developed a particularly ruthless plan for discouraging escape
attempts: for every prisoner who attempted escape, whether successful or not,
ten others would be executed in their stead.
When this inevitably happened while Kolbe was there, a young man cried
out in fear for his wife and children, so Kolbe offered to take his place,
saying he was old and had no loved ones who needed him. As the Nazis preferred
young, strong prisoners able to work, they agreed to the switch. The execution was to be one of slow death by
starvation. Kolbe celebrated Mass and
sang hymns every night in that execution chamber, and after two weeks of
starvation and dehydration, only he remained alive and conscious. In the end, he was given a lethal injection
of carbolic acid and his remains were cremated on August 15—the Assumption of
Mary. His death was not in vain, for the fellow whose place he took, Franciszek
Gajowniczek, was released after five years of imprisonment and lived to be 95 years old. He honored and revered the ragged stranger monk for
the rest of his life. Gajowniczek was a guest of
Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982 when Kolbe was canonized.
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