Feast of St Martin of Tours

St Martin of Tours (c.316 - 397) was born in the Roman province of Pannonia (approximating to the western half of modern Hungary) in about 316 and was educated at Pavia in Italy. He was baptized, left the army and after spending some time as a hermit on an island off the Ligurian coast, founded a monastery at Ligugé in western France, where he lived a monastic life guided by St Hilary. Later he was ordained priest and became bishop of Tours. In his actions he gave an example of what a good shepherd should be. He founded other monasteries, educated the clergy, and preached the Gospel to the poor. He died in 397.

The famous story about St Martin is that while a soldier in Amiens he gave half of his military cloak to a beggar and later had a dream in which the beggar revealed himself as Christ.

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The Franciscan Ideal & The New Monasticism

Profoundly saddened by the misfortunes that the Church was then passing through in his time (13th Century), St. Francis of Assisi conceived the incredible design of renewing everything conformably to the principles of Christian law––the Gospel.

After having founded a double religious family, one of Brothers, the other of Sisters, who pledged themselves by solemn vows (poverty, celibacy, and obedience) to imitate the humility of the Cross, Francis, in the impossibility of opening the cloister (monastery, hermitage) to all whom the desire of being formed in his school drew to him, resolved to provide, even for souls living in the whirlpool of the world, the means to tend to Christian perfection.

He founded then an Order properly called Tertiaries,  differing from the two other Orders in that it would not bear the bond of the religious vows, but would be characterized by the same simplicity of life and the same spirit of penance. The Third Order of St. Francis was born to satisfy this thirst for heroism among those who though having to remain in the world did not wish to be of the world.  Thus was born the project which no founder of a regular Order had yet imagined, to cause the religious life to be practiced by all. Francis first conceived the idea and the grace of God gave him to realize it with the greatest success.

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Feast of St Paul of the Cross

"Everything is contained in the Passion of Jesus. Do your best to stay hidden in the wounds of Jesus. In this way you will become rich in everything that is good and filled with God’s true light, so that you will be able to fly to perfect holiness. Be as simple as a child: always see the best in everyone and, with good intention, excuse the one who hurts you, seeing whatever harm he does as the result of some temptation. What destroys community is judging other people’s actions while losing sight of one’s own." - In the Heart of God, the Spiritual Teaching of St. Paul of the Cross

I Am God's Wheat [St Ignatius of Antioch]

I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God.

The Sufferings Of This Present Time [St Cyprian]

The sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us. Who would not strive wholeheartedly to attain to such glory, to become a friend of God and straightway rejoice with Christ, receiving heavenly rewards after earth's torment and suffering?

Feast of St Bruno

St. Bruno was born in 1030 in Cologne, Germany. He became a priest and achieved fame as a professor of theology at Rheims. He decided to leave the world and pursue a life of complete solitude and prayer. He established his hermitage in Chartreuse, near Grenoble, France. Soon he attracted disciples and he established the first monastery of Carthusian monks. Pope Urban II called him to Rome, but later Bruno was able to establish a second monastery in Italy. He died in 1101 at Calabria. This feast is celebrated today both in the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

In the Heart Of The Church I Will Be Love

Ah! my Jesus, pardon me if I am unreasonable in wishing to express my desires and longings which reach even unto infinity. Pardon me and heal my soul by giving her what she longs for so much!

To be Your Spouse, to be a Carmelite, and by my union with You to be the Mother of souls, should not this suffice me? And yet it is not so. No doubt, these three privileges sum up my true vocation: Carmelite, Spouse, Mother, and yet I feel within me other vocations. I feel the vocation of THE WARRIOR, THE PRIEST, THE APOSTLE, THE DOCTOR, THE MARTYR. Finally, I feel the need and the desire of carrying out the most heroic deeds for You, 0 Jesus.

Feast of St Matthew

Because he saw him
through the eyes of mercy...

Jesus saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him: Follow me. Jesus saw Matthew, not merely in the usual sense, but more significantly with his merciful understanding of men.

He saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me. This following meant imitating the pattern of his life – not just walking after him. St. John tells us: Whoever says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Transitus Oblates & The Stigmata

LETTER FROM THE SUPERIOR GENERAL #1
“Transitus has gone public!”
September 17, 2007 Original >>

“Two years before his death, while at prayer on Mount Alverna, the Seraphic Patriarch St. Francis of Assisi, was rapt in contemplation, and received in his own body the impression of the sacred wounds of Christ. Pope Benedict XI ordered the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis to be observed on September 17. Pope Paul V extended it to the whole Catholic world.” (Roman Missal)