St. Leander, Bishop of Seville, Confessor, A.D. 596.
by VP
Posted on Monday February 26, 2024 at 11:00PM in Saints
"He entered into a monastery very young, where he lived many years, and attained to an eminent degree of virtue and sacred learning. These qualities occasioned his being promoted to the see of Seville; but his change of condition made little or no alteration in his method of life, though it brought on him a great increase of care and solicitude for the salvation of those whom God had placed under his care, as well as for the necessities of the whole Church, and particularly of the Church of Spain. He was a man of that eminent piety and public spirit, that he forgot himself, when the service of God and his flock was before him. His great affliction was the errors of the Visigoths, who were all generally infected with Arianism. But his prayers and tears were so powerful with the divine mercy, that God in a short time made him the instrument of converting to the Catholic faith Hermenegild the king's son, who died a martyr by his father's cruelty. He also afterwards so far prevailed with the father, that the care of his other son was committed to him; by which means the whole nation soon after renounced its errors, to the great comfort of this prelate, and of the whole Church. Having seen the fruit of his labours, he departed this life, full of joy, in the sixth century.
Let the blessings which attended this prelate move you to pray that a like spirit may animate the prelates and pastors of God's Church. And let his zeal raise in you a compassion for all those, whose obstinacy in vice and errors keeps them out of the way of salvation. You have a horror of seeing a limb cut off, or witnessing a public execution; but what are these to the consideration of such vast numbers running into hell-fire? Pray that God would remove this blindness. Let no joy remove this misery of your neighbor from your heart; that you may be ever mindful of the compassion and charity due to him." The Catholic Year by Rev. Fr. John Gother
Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows (1838-1862)
by VP
Posted on Monday February 26, 2024 at 11:00PM in Saints
"Our Lady's Creed by St. Gabriel:
I believe, O Mary, that thou art the mother of all men.
I believe that thou art our life and, after God, the sole refuge of sinners.
I
believe that thou art the strength of Christians, and their help,
especially at the hour of death; that following thee, I shall not stray;
that praying to thee, I shall not be abandoned; that standing with
thee, I shall not fall.
I believe that thou art ready to aid those
who call upon thee, that thou art the salvation of those who invoke
thee, and that thou art willing to do more good for us than we can
desire; that even when not asked, thou dost hasten to our assistance.
I
believe that in thy name is to be found a sweetness like to that
experienced by Saint Bernard in the name of Jesus - that it is joy to
the heart, honey to the mouth and music to the ears and that, after the
name of Jesus, there is no other name through which the faithful receive
so much grace, so much hope and so much consolation.
I believe that
thou art a co-redemptrix with Christ for our salvation, that all the
graces which God dispenses pass through thy hands, and that no one will
enter heaven except through thee who art rightly called the 'Gate of
Heaven.'
I believe that true devotion to thee is a most certain sign of eternal salvation.
I believe that thou art superior to all tire saints and angels, and that God alone surpasses thee.
I
believe that God has given to thee in the highest possible degree, all
the graces, special and general, with which He can favor His creatures.
I believe that thy beauty and excellence surpass that of all angels and men.
I
believe that thou alone didst fulfill perfectly the precept: 'Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God": and that the very seraphim of heaven can
learn from thy heart how to love God.
I believe that if all the love
which all mothers have for their children, all that all husbands and
wives have for each other, all that all the angels and saints have for
those who are devoted to them, were united in one, it would not equal
the love that thou hast for even one soul."
Chaplet of Our Lady of Sorrows
Prayer to St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows:
Dear Saint Gabriel, your very name recalls your particular devotion to Christ the Man of Sorrows and to Mary the Afflicted Mother. You died young as a Passionist religious but left to us all an example of a life of Christlike sacrifice. Intercede for our seminarians and young religious who are in desperate need of your patronage amid today’s sensual and selfish world. Amen.
"We also remarked in him a tender devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He was truly enamoured of Christ in the Eucharist. Frequently, he spoke to his companions of his sacramental Lord with an emotion and vivacity so intense that he aroused the enthusiasm of those who listened to him. To Christ in the tabernacle his thoughts instinctively turned, and all the impulses of his heart impelled him to go before the altar to pour out his affections. Many times in the day and night, he would send his angel guardian to visit the Blessed Sacrament when his occupations would not permit him to do so in person. And sometimes he would tell his angel to go to the place where Christ was most lonely and forgotten, there to adore and keep vigil with Him.
“When out for a walk, if we entered a church, his first thought was to look for the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, and then to kneel before it in silent adoration. He became all affected and moved when he spoke of the coldness with which so many receive the Holy Eucharist, and of the outrages, profanations and sacrileges committed against It by unbelievers and even by bad Christians. From these insults offered to Jesus he took occasion to admire His patience and mercy; and he would redouble his efforts to make reparation so far as he could.
(...)
The words which, at this time, he addressed to his brother who had just been ordained to the priesthood, may be taken as indicative of the sentiments that actuated his own conduct. "Shun idleness, and apply yourself to study. One of the thoughts that frightens me when I think of becoming a priest is the study it demands, and few are the days on which this reflexion does not occasion me serious thought.”
To Gabriel, study was not merely an occupation, not merely an essential requisite for admission to the priesthood. To him knowledge was power: power, in the first place, that would enable him to discharge the work of the ministry for which he was preparing, not only efficiently, but in the full spirit of the Church, who bids her children learn wisdom from the lips of her priests, and who commands her priests not only to recognize the value of learning, but also to acquire it, and set it in motion in the great combat waged between mere human reason and divine revelation in the arena of human thought and moral responsibility.
In the second place knowledge, in his eyes, was power that would raise him to higher levels in the sanctity to which he aspired. To him the ultimate purpose of every endeavor was to know God better. He was accustomed to repeat to his companions the saying of one of the wise philosophers of the Middle Ages:
"Logic is good, which teaches us how to separate truth from falsehood; grammar is good, which teaches us to write and speak correctly; rhetoric is good, which teaches us to speak with elegance and to persuade; geometry is good, which teaches us to measure the earth on which we dwell; so is arithmetic, or the art of reckoning, by means of which we can convince ourselves of the small number of our days; and music is good, which teaches us harmonies, and makes us think of the sweet song of the Blessed; and finally, astronomy is good, which makes us consider the heavenly bodies, and the virtues of the stars, darting forth splendor before God. But much better is theology, which alone can be truly called a liberal science, because it frees the human soul from its miseries, and prepares it for the acquiring of virtue.”
And this the study of theology did for Gabriel. The sublime and amazing truths it unfolded before his mind - of God, His nature and His attributes - brought the divine Majesty closer to him and by its very beauty and splendor, enraptured his soul until, entirely overwhelmed by the divine attractiveness, his soul surrendered itself to God in completest love and profoundest homage. Thus his studies were for him an act of worship.
“He directed his attention chiefly to his interior, stripping his heart of its vices and clothing it with the opposite virtues.
He kept before his eyes his own nothingness and misery; his former life in the world, his propensity to evil, his weakness and selfishness. With all these motives he was deeply penetrated, especially during the time of meditation; and by this means he attained such a lowly opinion of himself that he greatly feared and distrusted self, relying in all things solely on the assistance of God's grace. He often said: 'Of myself I can do nothing. Of myself, I am capable only of sin, yes, even of the greatest crimes.' He spoke thus because he was thoroughly convinced that what he said was true."
Source: Saint Gabriel, Passionist by Father Camillus J Hollobough, C.P., 1923
