Yes, yes, Christmas season. But you know how I am about those saints. Two good ones today.
Simeon Stylites may have heard a vocational call to stay in one spot for most of his life, but his feast day is all over the place, calendar-wise. He’s on the Roman calendar for January 5, although in this country the celebration of St. John Neumann would dominate that day – as if we’d be celebrating a Pillar Saint at all…Various Eastern Christian groups celebrate him on different days, including Byzantine Catholics, who celebrate him on September 1.
He’s in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints, from which I’ve excerpted a couple of pages below. The question might come up – why include this nutty guy in a book of saints for children in the 21st century at all? Isn’t he a little scary and off-putting? Don’t we want the kids to feel that Christianity is normal and fun and won’t make them weird?
Nope. Christianity, to take a Chestertonian sort of position, is both the most normal thing in the world and the weirdest. It is normal because it alone reflects the whole of life and reality as it is, but since the World dwells mostly in denial of this reality, yes, Christianity is weird. The sooner kids understand that paradoxical dynamic, the better.
Further, Catholic spirituality is all about seeing the movement of grace everywhere. Read the great spiritual writers. They will advise you to seek God in all that happens to you: in those who hurt you, in those who mock you, in suffering and in witnessing what seems strange and even insane.
It’s radical. But in this place, to a man praying atop a pillar, people were drawn, and once drawn, heard about Jesus.
Radical witness takes all forms.
So just a couple of pages from the book. He’s in the section, “Saints Are People Who Surprise Others.”
And then, of course, St. John Neumann, another Saint to Make You Tired:
When time came for his ordination, the bishop was sick; the date for was never reset because Bohemia had an over-abundance of priests. John decided to go to America to ask for ordination and work with emigres. He walked most of the way to France, then took ship for America. John arrived unannounced in Manhattan in 1836. Bishop John Dubois was happy to see him as there were 36 priests for the 200,000 Catholics in New York and New Jersey. John was ordained on 28 June 1836, and sent to Buffalo. There the parish priest, Father Pax, gave him the choice of the city of Buffalo or of the rural area; John chose the more difficult country area. He stayed in a small town with an unfinished church, and when it was completed, he moved to a town with a log church. There he built himself a small log cabin, rarely lit a fire, slept little, often lived on bread and water, and walked miles to visit farm after remote farm. John’s parishioners were from many lands and tongues, but John knew twelve languages, and worked with them all.
He joined the Redemptorists and eventually became Bishop of Philadelphia. And then….
He built fifty churches and began building a cathedral. Opened almost one hundred schools, and the number of parochial school students in his diocese grew from five hundred to nine thousand. Wrote newspaper articles, two catechisms, and many works in German. First American man and first American bishop to be canonized.
Phew
Turning again to the Horse I Like to Beat, note the reason for the hard work and dedication: not building his brand or getting you to pay attention to him, but, energized by Christ, to serve Him through serving others. Doesn’t matter if anyone knows who you are or not. Your “influence” starts with those right in front of you, today, at this moment.
Radical witness takes all forms.
He’s in the kids book o’ saints, as well.
And then, a person who is almost twenty years old now ponders a holy place:
Crafts & Vintage
