A Community of Love, Unity and Service

St. Paul the First Hermit

Saint Paul was born in Upper Egypt in about the year 229, and became an orphan at the age offifteen. He was very rich and highly educated. Fearing lest the tortures of a terrible persecutionmight endanger his Christian perseverance, he retired into a remote village. But his paganbrother-in-law denounced him, and Saint Paul, rather than remain where his faith was in danger,entered the barren desert, trusting that God would supply his wants. And his confidence wasrewarded; for on the spot to which Providence led him he found the fruit of a palm-tree for food,its leaves for clothing, and the water of a spring for drink.

His first plan was to return to the world when the persecution was over; but tasting great delightsin prayer and penance, he remained for the rest of his life, ninety years, in penance, prayer andcontemplation.

God revealed his existence to Saint Anthony, who sought him for three days. Seeing a thirstyshe-wolf run through an opening in the rocks, Anthony followed her to look for water and foundPaul. They knew each other at once, and praised God together. While Saint Anthony was visitinghim, a raven brought them a loaf of bread, and Saint Paul said, “See how good God is! For sixtyyears this bird has brought me half a loaf each day; now at your coming, Christ has doubled theprovision for His servants.”

The two religious passed the night in prayer, then at dawn Paul told Anthony that he was about todie, and asked to be buried in the cloak given to Anthony by Saint Athanasius. He asked him thisto show that he was dying in communion with Saint Athanasius, the invincible defender of theFaith against the Arian heresy. Anthony hastened back to fetch it, and when he was returning toPaul he saw his co-hermit rising to heaven in glory. He found his dead body kneeling as in prayer,and saw two lions come and dig his grave. Saint Paul, The Patriarch of Hermits, died in his onehundred and thirteenth year.

St. Honoratus

Saint Honoratus was of a consular Roman family that had settled in Gaul. In his youth herenounced the worship of idols and gained his elder brother, Venantius, to Christ. The twobrothers, convinced of the hollowness of the things of this world, desired to renounce it with allits pleasures, but a fond pagan father put continual obstacles in their way. At length, taking withthem for their director Saint Caprais, a holy hermit, they sailed from Marseilles to Greece,intending to live there unknown in a desert. Venantius soon died happily at Methone, andHonoratus, who was ill, was obliged to return to Gaul with his guide.

He first led the life of a hermit in the mountains near Frejus. Two small islands lie in the sea nearthat coast; on the smaller, now known as Saint HonorÉ, the Saint settled, and when others cameto him there, he founded the famous monastery of Lerins, about the year 400. Some of hisfollowers he appointed to live in community; others, who seemed more perfect, in separated cellsas anchorites. His rule was borrowed in large part from that of Saint Pachomius.

Nothing can be more amiable than the description Saint Hilary has given of the excellent virtues ofthis company of saints, especially of the charity, concord, humility, compunction, and devotionwhich reigned among them under the conduct of their holy Abbot. Saint Honoratus was, bycompulsion, consecrated Archbishop of Arles in 426, and died, exhausted with austerities andapostolical labors, in 429.

St. Marcellus, Pope

During the third century paganism and Christianity vied for supremacy in the Roman Empire.Hoping to stifle the Church completely, the emperor Diocletian in 303 began the last and fiercestof the persecutions. In time, Christian charity conquered pagan brutality, and as the Churchattracted more and more members, the Roman government would be compelled to recognize itsexistence, but it was only after almost three hundred years, during which persecutions had forcedChristian worship underground, that the Church would finally come out into the open after theEdict of Nantes in 313. It was still young and disorganized, vulnerable to heresy and apostasy,and needed a strong leader to settle questions of doctrine and discipline.

Such a leader came to the Chair of Peter in 304, when Saint Marcellus was elected pope. SaintMarcellinus, his predecessor, while being taken to torture, had exhorted him not to cede to thedecrees of Diocletian, and it became evident that Marcellus did not intend to temporize. Heestablished new catacombs and saw to it that the divine mysteries were continually celebratedthere. Then three years of relative peace were given the church when Maxentius became emperorin 307, for he was too occupied with other difficulties to persecute the Christians.

After assessing the problems facing the Church, Saint Marcellus planned a strong program ofreorganization. Rome then as now was the seat of Catholicism, and his program was initiatedthere. He divided the territorial administration of the Church into twenty-five districts or parishes,placing a priest over each one, thus restoring an earlier division which the turmoil of thepersecutions had disrupted. This arrangement permitted more efficient care in instructing thefaithful, in preparing candidates for baptism and penitents for reconciliation. With these measuresin force, Church government took on a definite form.

Marcellus’ biggest problem was dealing with the Christians who had apostatized during thepersecution. Many of these were determined to be reconciled to the Church without performingthe necessary penances. The Christians who had remained faithful demanded that the customarypenitential discipline be maintained and enforced. Marcellus approached this problem withuncompromising justice; the apostates were in the wrong, and regardless of the consequences,were obliged to do penance. It was not long before the discord between the faithful and theapostates led to violence in the very streets of Rome.

An account of Marcellus’ death, dating from the fifth century, relates that Maxentius, judging thepope responsible for the trouble between the Christian factions, condemned him to work as aslave on the public highway. After nine months of this hard labor, he was rescued by the clergyand taken to the home of a widow named Lucina; this woman welcomed him with every sign ofrespect and offered him her home for a church. When the emperor learned that Christian riteswere being celebrated there, he profaned the church by turning it into a stable and forced the HolyFather to care for the animals quartered there. In these sad surroundings, Marcellus died onJanuary 16, 310. He was buried in the catacombs of Priscilla, but later his remains were placedbeneath the altar of the church in Rome which still bears his name.

Blessed Stephanie Quinzani

Blessed Stephanie was born near Brescia, Italy, in 1457, of fervent Christian parents. She wasbrought up in the village of Soncino, where there was a Dominican monastery well known for itspreachers, eminent in doctrine, eloquence and sanctity. One of them knew her family and taughttheir little daughter the Ave Maria and other prayers. He told her that when he died he wouldmake her his heir. A few years later, when Blessed Matthew Carreri died, she felt her heartpainfully wounded, and suddenly saw the deceased man, who told her this was the heritage he hadpromised her. Suffering was to be her lot, and her existence was one of those of which people say:“It is more admirable than imitable.”

Our Lord appeared to Stephanie when she was seven years old, accompanied by His holy Mother,Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Catherine of Siena, and told her He wanted herto be a Dominican like those great Saints. She promised she would enter a monastery, or at leastbe a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. Later in her life it was this latter path that sheadopted, and she was given the habit of the Third Order. When she was about eleven years old,on the feast of Saint Andrew she saw that Apostle with a large cross, and he said to her: “Mydaughter, this is the road to heaven. Love God, fear God, honor God, embrace the cross, and fleethe world.” She began then to practice great austerities; even while working in the fields with herparents she wore a hair shirt and a rope cincture full of knots. She fasted perpetually. At the ageof fifteen, on Good Friday, Our Lord told her she would endure in each of her members part ofwhat He Himself had suffered. Her head afterwards bore traces of a crowning with thorns, andmany persons saw her, every week on Fridays, suffering a kind of agony.

For forty years, she also endured the worst moral sufferings. She was in darkness, aridity,abandonment. This martyrdom of the soul was a worse torment for her than that of the body. AnAngel said to her: “There are several means which cause a reasonable creature to rise to perfectlove of God, but one of the principal ones is the life of suffering, a life steeped in sorrow andbitterness which must be accompanied and followed by thanksgiving and resignation to the divineWill. Affliction is the road to perfect love and perfect transformation.” She was given Saint Paulto be her guide and instruct her in the secrets of mystical theology, that is, of the interior lifeunder the immediate direction of God.

Blessed Stephanie could read in souls, and one day prevented a woman from poisoning fourteenpersons, as she had resolved to do. She warned her not to accomplish that crime; otherwise, sheherself would accuse her. She applied herself to the works of mercy and cared for the sick and thepoor. She had to earn her bread by manual work; she begged in addition for alms for the needy.She became known to the nobility of Italy, who wanted to give her residences and keep her intheir own regions; she remained nonetheless in Soncino, in a very poor dwelling. She was helpedby the wealthy when she established a monastery in Soncino. This monastery, where about thirtyyoung Sisters labored to attain religious perfection, and which she directed, was exempted fromall taxes. She fell ill towards the end of the year 1529 and died on January 2, 1530, at the age ofseventy-three years, saying, “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” Many miracles at hertomb made known her sanctity. She was beatified in 1740 by Pope Benedict XIV.

SAINT HONORATUS
Archbishop of Arles

Saint Honoratus was of a consular Roman family that had settled in Gaul. In his youth herenounced the worship of idols and gained his elder brother, Venantius, to Christ. The twobrothers, convinced of the hollowness of the things of this world, desired to renounce it with allits pleasures, but a fond pagan father put continual obstacles in their way. At length, taking withthem for their director Saint Caprais, a holy hermit, they sailed from Marseilles to Greece,intending to live there unknown in a desert. Venantius soon died happily at Methone, andHonoratus, who was ill, was obliged to return to Gaul with his guide.

He first led the life of a hermit in the mountains near Frejus. Two small islands lie in the sea nearthat coast; on the smaller, now known as Saint HonorÉ, the Saint settled, and when others cameto him there, he founded the famous monastery of Lerins, about the year 400. Some of hisfollowers he appointed to live in community; others, who seemed more perfect, in separated cellsas anchorites. His rule was borrowed in large part from that of Saint Pachomius.

Nothing can be more amiable than the description Saint Hilary has given of the excellent virtues ofthis company of saints, especially of the charity, concord, humility, compunction, and devotionwhich reigned among them under the conduct of their holy Abbot. Saint Honoratus was, bycompulsion, consecrated Archbishop of Arles in 426, and died, exhausted with austerities andapostolical labors, in 429.

St. Anthony Abbott

Saint Anthony was born in the year 251, in Upper Egypt. Hearing at Mass the words, “If youwould be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor,” he gave away all his vastpossessions — staying only to see that his sister’s education was completed — and retired intothe desert. He then begged an aged hermit to teach him the spiritual life, and he also visitedvarious solitaries, undertaking to copy the principal virtue of each.

To serve God more perfectly, Anthony immured himself in a ruin, building up the door so thatnone could enter. Here the devils assaulted him furiously, appearing as various monsters, and evenwounding him severely; but his courage never failed, and he overcame them all by confidence inGod and by the sign of the cross. One night, while Anthony was in his solitude, many devilsscourged him so terribly that he lay as if dead. A friend found him in this condition, and believinghim dead carried him home. But when Anthony came to himself he persuaded his friend to takehim back, in spite of his wounds, to his solitude. Here, prostrate from weakness, he defied thedevils, saying, “I fear you not; you cannot separate me from the love of Christ.” After more vainassaults the devils fled, and Christ appeared to Anthony in His glory.

Saint Anthony’s only food was bread and water, which he never tasted before sunset, andsometimes only once in two, three, or four days. He wore sackcloth and sheepskin, and he oftenknelt in prayer from sunset to sunrise.

His admirers became so many and so insistent that he was eventually persuaded to found twomonasteries for them and to give them a rule of life. These were the first monasteries ever to befounded, and Saint Anthony is, therefore, the father of cenobites of monks. In 311 he went toAlexandria to take part in the Arian controversy and to comfort those who were being persecutedby Maximinus. This visit lasted for a few days only, after which he retired into a solitude evenmore remote so that he might cut himself off completely from his admirers. When he was overninety, he was commanded by God in a vision to search the desert for Saint Paul the Hermit. Heis said to have survived until the age of a hundred and five, when he died peacefully in a cave onMount Kolzim near the Red Sea. Saint Athanasius, his biographer, says that the mere knowledgeof how Saint Anthony lived is a good guide to virtue.

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