Current Feasts, Saints and other Holy Days

St Francis of Assisi - October 4

Friar & Patron Saint of Animals

Francis was born in 1181, the son of a successful cloth merchant of Assisi. Although christened John, he is always known as Francis (the Frenchman) because his mother was from Provence. As a young man, Francis took an active part in the social life of the city. He also saw service in a petty war with nearby Perugia. This led to a spell as a prisoner of war. On his release he turned his back on warfare. He continued to be involved in the social life of Assisi; but now a strain of seriousness became more and more apparent.

As Francis was feeling his way towards his new vocation, he knelt before a Byzantine-style crucifix in the half-ruined Church of San Damiano and prayed. The crucifix seemed to speak to him, “Francis, go and rebuild my church, which you see is in ruins.” With typical compulsiveness he sold some goods belonging to his father to pay for repairs, and went to live with the priest of San Damiano. A long and bitter altercation with his father culminated in the famous scene before the bishop of Assisi. Francis renounced his earthly father and all his wealth, even to the clothes he was then wearing. Dressed in a grey-brown peasant’s smock that the bishop gave him and with a piece of rope for a belt, Francis began a life of poverty, preaching the love of Christ.

The life of Francis after his conversion is inextricably entangled with the development of the Order of Friars Minor, which he almost unwillingly founded. He was living by himself at first, but then was joined by a small group of disciples. They lived at Portiuncula, three kilometres from Assisi, near a leper colony. A simple rule was approved in 1210. The order grew beyond all expectation and soon outgrew the carefree, unbelievably poverty-laden beginnings. The resultant tensions between simple poverty and the demands of a large organisation were part of the cross Francis had to bear. He accepted, reluctantly, a more formal rule in 1223, which made the order a part of the wider church. Francis resigned as minister-general of the order in 1220. He saw clearly that he lacked the administrative skills to run a large order. His place was taken by Brother Elias.

Alongside the active preaching in Italy and beyond (the first friars reached England in 1224), there was a strong strand of contemplative and eremitical devotion in Franciscan spirituality. In Francis’ own life this reached a climax in the seraphic vision of his crucified Lord and the marking of his body with the very wounds of Christ (stigmata which he bore till his death two years later). Francis’ preaching tours included one to the crusaders’ camp at Damietta in Egypt, which left him totally disillusioned about the crusades. He was never a robust man, and the preaching tours, his austerities, and the horrific medical practices of the period all weakened his health. In 1226 he was carried home to die at the chapel of the Portiuncula below Assisi. He was buried in the Church of San Giorgio, Assisi, but his relics were transferred in 1230 to the new basilica built by Brother Elias. There they remain. Francis was canonised only two years after his death.

Much loved, but misunderstood, St Francis is today chiefly thought of as an animal and nature lover, but this, though a strand of his spirituality, is much less than the whole. His rejection of material possessions and security, his deep love of the by-no-means perfect church of his day, his missionary zeal, his deep devotion to the passion of his master, whom he strove so closely to follow (“naked following the naked Christ”); all these are as much St Francis as the sermon to the birds and the Wolf of Gubbio.

Source: https://www.anglican.org.nz/Resources/Worship-Resources-Karakia-ANZPB-HKMOA/For-All-the-Saints-A-Resource-for-the-Commemorations-of-the-Calendar/For-All-the-Saints

The Holy Guardian Angels - October 2

The guardian angels were originally commemorated with St Michael. They were first given a day of their own in Portugal in the sixteenth century, and the idea was extended to the whole of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Clement X in 1670.

Angels are beings who have a purely spiritual existence. In the Old Testament, they are somewhat ill-defined beings, whose primary task is to act as messengers and envoys of God. Among their tasks are the protection and support of those who are faithful to God (e.g. in the escort of the Israelites from Egypt - Exodus 23:20; cf. Psalm 91:11). In the period between the Old and New Testaments, the categories and functions of angels became much more precisely defined, and many elements of this development can be seen in the New Testament writings.

The idea that each person has a guardian angel is a very ancient, popular one in both pagan and Jewish tradition. It is reflected in Jesus’ reference to the angels who protect the children (Matthew 18:10) and in the reference to the assumption that Rhoda saw Peter’s angel rather than Peter himself (Acts 12:15). This conception was given more formal definition in the Middle Ages by various theologians, including Thomas Aquinas. Pseudo-Dionysius, the sixth century mystical theologian, laid the foundation for the speculative classification of angels into hierarchies.

Source: https://www.anglican.org.nz/Resources/Worship-Resources-Karakia-ANZPB-HKMOA/For-All-the-Saints-A-Resource-for-the-Commemorations-of-the-Calendar/For-All-the-Saints

Mother Marie-Joseph Aubert - October 1

Religious, Social Reformer

Marie Henriette Suzanne Aubert was born near Lyons in France in 1835. Her sense of a religious vocation was fostered by the Curé d’Ars and her concern for the sick and disabled was shaped by a serious childhood accident she suffered. By the age of sixteen she was convinced she had a vocation to serve God as a member of a religious nursing order. Her family was not sympathetic, but when she turned eighteen she went to Paris to begin nursing training. She served as a nurse in the Crimean campaign, mainly at the base hospital in France and on the hospital ships.

After the war she attended medical lectures at the University of Lyons, in spite of the fact that women were not allowed to graduate at this period. Like other young women of her social class, she was encouraged to keep up her languages and music, and for a while she studied piano under Franz Liszt. She persisted in her determination to become a nun, and when she was twenty-five the opportunity presented itself. Bishop Pompallier, who was known to her family, was in France; together with others he had recruited, she sailed from Le Havre for Auckland in September 1860.

Suzanne Aubert began her novitiate in June 1861 as Sister Marie-Joseph of the Congregation of the Holy Family. She joined the other French nuns who with two Maori sisters were attached to the Maori girls’ school in Ponsonby. Within a year her command of Maori was good enough for Bishop Pompallier to send her on mission work to both Northland and the Waikato. With the departure of Bishop Pompallier in 1868, the work of the mission became severely restricted and eventually ended. When Bishop Croke instructed her to return to France, she refused, saying, “I have come here for the Maoris, I shall die in their midst. I will do what I like.”

In February 1871 she went to Napier to work in a lay capacity with the Hawke’s Bay mission run by the Marist Order. She remained with them for the next twelve years, acting as a district nurse to both pakeha and Maori, as well as ministering to the spiritual needs of the Maori. For some years she received a government grant of £40 per annum for medicine to supplement the drugs she prepared herself from native plants and herbs at Meeanee. Dispensary records show that in 1873 alone Meri, as the Maori chose to call her, saw over a thousand patients.

A request she felt she could not deny came from Archbishop Redwood, who sought her help in the re-establishment of the Whanganui River mission. In July 1883, with three sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth and a priest, she left Whanganui for the settlement of Hiruharama (Jerusalem). There, in the midst of an impoverished community, they set up two schools and a dispensary and offered a refuge to orphans and the chronically ill. The work of the mission was supported by work on the land and the sale of medicines in Whanganui.

The Sisters of St Joseph withdrew in 1884, and it was eventually decided that the work would be best supported by setting up a distinct order, with Mother Marie Joseph as its superior. So the Daughters of our Lady of Compassion was formed in 1892.

Up till this point Mother Marie Joseph’s work was almost solely among Maori, but between 1891 and 1901 European children were also taken in at Jerusalem. By 1899 it was apparent that this aspect of the work could best be done in Wellington. Accordingly, the next move was to Wellington, where Mother Aubert and several sisters arrived in 1899 to begin district nursing work with the poor and destitute. A year later she opened St Joseph’s Home for Incurables in Buckle Street. It was at this time that she gave up her reliance on government grants and the sale of produce and medicines, recognising that for her new venture she would “have to trust entirely on Divine Providence and the generosity of charitable souls”. As well as work with the incurables, she opened a day nursery for children in 1902, and a children’s home was soon added to the Buckle Street complex. The needs of the unemployed were met by a soup kitchen in the city. In 1907 the doors of Our Lady’s Home of Compassion for handicapped and incurably ill children were opened.

Mother Aubert’s order, The Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, had been formally established at Jerusalem in 1892, but it was not until 1917 that papal approval for her work was granted to her in person. She left New Zealand in 1913 to seek that approval, as a way of circumventing the opposition of the Catholic hierarchy in New Zealand. They would have preferred her to confine her work to Catholic circles. With papal approval of the order she could determine its priorities. She continued nursing in Europe during World War I and did not return to New Zealand till 1920.

As well as her nursing, Mother Aubert found time for writing, and her great love for the Maori she lived among for so long resulted in the publication of a Maori Prayer Book in 1879. While she was at Jerusalem she wrote a Manual of Maori Conversation. In addition, she compiled a collection of spiritual writings called The Directory for the use of her sisters.

In the final years of her life she concentrated on establishing nursing training at the Home of Compassion, but, unfortunately, final approval for this was not given until after her death on 1 October 1926. It is said that her funeral was the largest ever held for a woman in New Zealand.

Source: https://www.anglican.org.nz/Resources/Worship-Resources-Karakia-ANZPB-HKMOA/For-All-the-Saints-A-Resource-for-the-Commemorations-of-the-Calendar/For-All-the-Saints

St Jerome - September 30

Priest, Teacher of the Faith
Translator of the Scriptures

Jerome was the foremost Biblical scholar of his day, his contribution to the translation of Scripture into Latin, the “Vulgate Version”, being the work for which he is best known.

Jerome was born in Stridon in northern Italy of well-to-do Christian parents about 347. As a student in Rome he became a convinced Christian and received baptism. The ascetic lifestyle of a monk seemed to many at that time to represent the Christian way for the committed disciple. While on a trip through Gaul, Jerome decided to adopt that discipline. To follow this way even more thoroughly, Jerome went first to Antioch and then into the Syrian desert where there were many other hermits and monks. It was not a happy experience. Jerome’s pugnacious style in the theological controversies of the time did not help.

However, Jerome was a brilliant student. In the course of his studies he had mastered Hebrew as well as Greek. He was in Rome from 379 to 382 and became private secretary to Pope Damasus, who commissioned Jerome to produce a Latin translation of the Bible. While in Rome, Jerome vigorously promoted monasticism and the ascetic way, and found a sympathetic hearing among some aristocratic Roman matrons. Jerome’s lack of tact gained him enemies, and when Damasus died Jerome found it politic to leave Rome.

Accompanied by Paula and Eustochium, two of the Roman matrons he had counselled, Jerome went back to the east and eventually established a monastery in Bethlehem, where he lived until his death in 420. The Roman matrons lived in a convent nearby.

Jerome devoted his great energies to his work on the Scriptures, not only producing the requested translation, but many commentaries and other works, demonstrating a breadth of reading and scholarship that was quite outstanding. Jerome was less at home in the theological field than the biblical, though that never prevented him from taking up the cudgels on behalf of what he deemed to be correct.

Jerome’s propensity for extravagant and even vitriolic debate led him into a number of quarrels, including a bitter parting of the ways from his old friend Rufinus. Nevertheless, Jerome was an ardent champion of orthodoxy, a master of Latin style, and never sought high position in the church or personal honours of any kind. The “Vulgate” translation, so called because it was the “common” or “well known” version (editio vulgata) of the Bible, included much of Jerome’s work and it became standard in the Latin church for centuries.

Source: https://www.anglican.org.nz/Resources/Worship-Resources-Karakia-ANZPB-HKMOA/For-All-the-Saints-A-Resource-for-the-Commemorations-of-the-Calendar/For-All-the-Saints