Four canonizations on Sunday in Rome. Biographies of the Blesseds:
Blessed George Preca from Malta, founder of the Society of Christian Doctrine, a lay group dedicated to catechesis and evangelization:
The main priority of the Society is catechetical work in the parishes. Every evening all the Society’s Centres are open for the catechetical formation of
children and youths and occasionally adults as well. All Members are expected to participate in this activity after their normal day’s work. After their catechetical classes, the Members participate in a daily one-hour session for their own on going formation in Church doctrine and related studies, pedagogical training and communal prayer. Such activities take place on all days of the week including Saturdays and Sundays. Every Wednesday a general meeting of all Members of the Society resident in Malta takes place in the Society’s Mother House. Additional activities are organised especially for the children to include recreational and related activities. The Society also organises specialised courses for its basis on a national scale.
Blessed Marie-Eugénie of Jesus, born in the early 19th century to a secular and materially succesful family:
When she was 19, Anne-Eugénie attended the Lenten Conferences at Notre Dame in Paris, preached by the young Abbé Lacordaire, already well-known for his talent as orator.
Lacordaire was a former disciple of Lamennais — haunted by the vision of a renewed Church with a special place in the world. He understood his time and wanted to change it. He understood young people, their questions and their desires, their idealism and their ignorance of both Christ and the Church.
His words touched Anne-Eugénie’s heart, answered her many questions, and
aroused her generosity. Anne-Eugénie envisaged Christ as the universal liberator and his kingdom on earth established as a peaceful and just society.
"I was truly converted," she wrote, "and I was seized by a longing to devote all my strength or rather all my weakness to the Church which, from that moment, I saw as alone holding the key to the knowledge and achievement of all that is good."
Just at this time, another preacher, also a former disciple of Lamennais, appeared on the scene. In the confessional, Father Combalot recognized that he had encountered a chosen soul who was designated to be the foundress of the congregation he had dreamed of for a long time. He persuaded Anne-Eugénie to undertake his work by insisting that this congregation was willed by God who had chosen her to establish it. He convinced her that only by education could she evangelize minds, make families truly Christian, and thus transform the society of her time. Anne-Eugénie accepted the project as God’s will for her and allowed herself to be guided by the Abbé Combalot.
At 22, Marie Anne-Eugénie became foundress of the Religious of the Assumption, dedicated to consecrate their whole life and strength to extending the Kingdom of Christ in themselves and in the world. In 1839, Anne-Eugénie, with two other young women, began a life of prayer and study in a flat at rue Ferou near the church of St. Sulpice in Paris. In 1841, under the patronage of Madame de Chateaubriand, Lacordaire, Montalembert and their friends, the sisters opened their first school. In a relatively short time there were 16 sisters of four nationalities in the community.
Marie Anne-Eugénie and the first sisters wanted to link the ancient and the new — to unite the past treasures of the Church’s spirituality and wisdom with a type of religious life and education able to satisfy the demands of modern minds. It was a matter of respecting the values of the period and at the same time, making the Gospel values penetrate the rising culture of a new industrial and scientific era. The spirituality of the congregation, centered on Christ and the incarnation, was both deeply contemplative and dedicated to apostolic action. It was a life given to the search for God and the love and service of others.
Immediately he was sent to England where the Passionists had founded three monasteries and it was here that, for a period of time, he undertook the ministry of vice master of novices in the monastery of Broadway. He also did parochial ministry in the Parish of St. Wilfred and neighboring areas until 1856 when he was transferred to the newly established monastery of Mount Argus, on the outskirts of Dublin.
Blessed Charles Houben lived almost the remainder of his life in this retreat and was greatly loved by the Irish people to point that they referred to him — a native of Holland — as Father Charles of Mount Argus. He was a pious priest, outstanding in exercising obedience, poverty, humility and simplicity and to an even greater degree, devotion to the Passion of the Lord.
Due to his poor mastery of English, he was never a formal preacher and he never preached missions. Rather he successfully dedicated himself to spiritual direction, especially through the sacrament of reconciliation.
The fame of his virtue was such that crowds of people would gather at the monastery to seek his blessing. There are also numerous testimonies to the miraculous cures that he worked, to the extent that even during his lifetime he was known as a miracle worker.
Precisely because of this fame that extended throughout all of Great Britain as well as in America and Australia, in 1866, to give him time to rest, he was transferred to England where he lived for a time in the communities at Broadway, Sutton and London. There he ministered as usual and there too, inside and outside the monastery, he was sought by the faithful, both Catholics and non-Catholics.
He returned to Dublin in 1874 where he remained until his death on Jan. 5, 1893.
During his funeral, there was proof of the popular devotion that had surrounded him throughout his life. A newspaper of the time reported: "Never before has the memory of any man sparked an explosion of religious sentiment and profound veneration as that which we observed in the presence of the mortal remains of Father Charles."
An Irish site dedicated to him.
Like St. Bernardine of Siena and St. John of Capestrano, Br. Simon spread devotion to the Name of Jesus, obtaining the conversion of innumerable sinners. He, the first of the Friars Minor, took up the duty of preacher in the Cathedral of Wawel in 1463. Because of his dedication to preaching the Gospel, the ancient sources conferred the title of “predicator ferventissimus” on him.
In his desire to give homage to St. Bernardine of Siena, the inspirer of his preaching, he, with some Polish confreres, went to Aquila to participate in the solemn transfer of the body of the saint, on the 17th May 1472, to the new Church erected in his honour. He was again in Italy in 1478, on the occasion of the General Chapter of Pavia. He had a way, then, to be able to satisfy his deepest desire to visit the tombs of the Apostles in Rome and to extend his pilgrimage to the Holy Land later. He lived this experience in a spirit of penance, truly loving the passion of Christ, with the hidden aspiration of spilling his own blood for the salvation of souls, if it would please God. He emulated St. Francis in his love for the Holy Places. In view of the possibility of being captured by the non-believers, he wished to learn the Rule of the Order by heart before undertaking the journey in order “to have it always before the eyes of his mind”.
The love of Simon for his brothers and sisters was manifested in an extraordinary way during the last year of his life, when an epidemic of plague broke out in Krakow. The city was under the scourge of the disease from July 1482 to the 6th January 1483. The Franciscans of the convent of St. Bernardine tirelessly did all they could to care for the sick as true consoling angels.
Br. Simone, held it to be a “propitious time” to exercise charity and to fulfil the offering of his own life. He went everywhere comforting, giving succour, administering the sacraments and announcing the consoling Word of God to the dying. He was soon infected. He suffered the pain of the disease with extraordinary patience and, near the end, expressed his desire to be buried under the threshold of the church so that all could trample on him. On the sixth day of the disease, the 18th July 1482, without fear of death and with his eyes fixed on the Crucifix, he gave his soul back to God.
You can watch the canonizations live at, er…4am Eastern on Sunday morning, repeated at noon on EWTN or via Vatican TV. (And if you didn’t know, the Vatican TV site has a live webcam feed from St. Peter’s Square, which is interesting to click on at various times of the day.)
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